City Attorney Heather Ferbert, having been just elected, decided to create a $300,000/year job for her good buddy Jean Jordan, and then kissed her Bon Voyage as she set off for a four-month tour of the world in a luxury cruise ship. 

People taking a bit of time off before they start a new job is hardly unheard-of. So what? It's not like the job needed to be filled right away since it was invented out of thin air by Ferbert, presumably to funnel a few bucks to a friend. 

But what seems to be setting people off is that Jordan is already collecting her salary, because she is...working from the cruise ship. 

The usual sales pitch for working from home has been that the job can get done just as effectively outside the office, boosting morale and allowing employees to manage other commitments while meeting and even exceeding their professional responsibilities.

But a senior lawyer in the San Diego City Attorney’s Office may be testing the boundaries of remote work.

Newly elected City Attorney Heather Ferbert promoted one of her top deputies to a freshly created executive position paying almost $300,000 a year and permitted her to work remotely during an extended sea cruise around the world.

Jean Jordan, who was an appointed county counsel in Northern California before she was lured to San Diego four years ago, departed on the four-month circumnavigation in late January, the City Attorney’s Office acknowledged.

She’s just over halfway through her global excursion and due home late next month. She’s also collecting her full-time salary and benefits, including vacation.

The City Attorney’s Office confirmed the unusual out-of-office arrangement after The San Diego Union-Tribune requested an explanation in response to complaints the newspaper received about the travel.

Complaints? That's rich! Tens of thousands of San Diego residents spend part of their year working at sea, although admittedly, they get paid a bit less as sailors stationed at Naval Base San Diego, the second-largest surface ship naval base in the entire world. Sailors and Marines are often deployed around the world on ships and nobody complains about THEIR departing from San Diego for months at a time! Taxpayers pay their salaries too, so what is the big deal?

Admittedly, their accommodations are a bit more spartan, the food a bit less luxurious, the booze is smuggled onboard and is rarely top-shelf, but the principle is the same. They are working on the high seas, just as Jordan is. Pretty much the same thing from a certain point of view. 

That point of view, needless to say, is the one held by members of the elite, particularly the government elite, and most particularly in the United States, the government elite in the Blue States. California gives lots of perks and privileges to state and local government employees, although I suspect few of them get their bosses to explicitly sign off on work-from-cruise-ship privileges. 

“In this case, the city attorney thoroughly examined the job responsibilities of the position and determined that all required work could be performed remotely on a temporary basis with no impact on office operations,” he added.

Ferbert “stays in constant communication with all members of her executive team,” and the office “has not experienced any delays or other negative impacts” as a result of the arrangement, Ahmed said.

Jordan was hired as one of the office’s six assistant city attorneys in 2021, when she resigned as county counsel for Sutter County, a largely agricultural community north of Sacramento.

Ferbert approved a reorganization of San Diego’s law office early in her term, weeks after defeating state Assemblymember Brian Maienschein in the race to succeed former City Attorney Mara Elliott.

The restructuring called for putting a new executive assistant city attorney in charge of three other assistants, the lawyers in charge of civil litigation, the City Council, and government services and mayoral departments.

Two other top assistants, attorneys overseeing the criminal division and administration, continue to report directly to the city attorney.

The selfish citizens of San Diego don't seem to appreciate the sacrifices made by Jordan for them. No doubt the daily or weekly or monthly Zoom calls she participates in and the 10 minutes of email reading she has to do when surrounded by stunning beauty, or perhaps before her day trips to exotic locales, are quite the burden. A distraction from her enjoyment of tropical climes and the hunks she meets in every port. (Is that too snarky?). 

There is a point to my snark here, and it is this: an elected official actually considers this defensible, and she does so because, in her world, it is. Does anybody think she will lose her next election because she ripped off the taxpayers like this and displayed so much contempt? If so, they are naive. 

City politics are all about collecting the support of public employee unions, who, in almost all cases, get to decide who will be their bosses. Most citizens feel powerless, and because they do, they effectively are. Public employees and unions associated with them control such a large part of the electorate that it only takes a relative pittance of ordinary voters to ensure victory. There is a voting cartel, essentially, who have cornered the market on votes. 

That's how idiots like Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the brain-dead moron Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass achieve their lofty positions. The business people who pay the lion's share of the taxes cut deals with whoever is in power, the unions back whoever will overlook their corruption and bankrupt the city to fill their own pockets, and enough virtue-signaling liberals or employees of nonprofits create a massive, almost unbeatable voting bloc. 

It's almost a surprise to me that more of this sort of thing doesn't happen, although I guess the best graft is being the leader of an NGO that gets contracts and grants from a city or county. Working for the actual government is probably considered doing time. 

Still, doing time on a cruise ship sounds a bit better than doing so on an Arleigh Burke destroyer--how most of the residents of San Diego who work from the high seas find accommodations.