Maria Guevara - clogging up the pipeline

Normally I limit my blogging to the higher up fuck ups at JJOKE and there are plenty but today I'm going to focus some attention on one of the worst JJOKE staffers.

I hired her way back in the old lobby commission days so I guess in some weird cosmic sense this is karma.

Now Maria Guevarra, who makes $63146, was never a particular stellar staffer, even back in the old days.  She was grouchy with lobbyists and hyper technical in the way she applied the Lobby Act to specific issues.  Which if properly managed was useful in her role as an auditor.  And her niece Mariana Guevarra was one of the best hires I ever made at the old lobby commission, pretty much the exact opposite of Maria, so we tolerated her, kept a close eye on her and didn't give her much autonomy, but we tolerated her.

Now she isn't my problem any more, or so I thought.  She is Christina Wiesnet's problem since Christina is her supervisor now that Maria is in charge of the lobbyist registrations.  And she is Martin Levine's problem since Martin is in charge of the entire lobby compliance program.  And shortly she will be Seth Agata's problem since Seth will be in charge of JJOKE (we don't know when or for how much but that's a different blog).  And now Maria has become my problem again because I have clients that file registrations, which means they have to interact with the black hole of JJOKE.

I blogged about Maria before I just didn't use her name. http://davidgrandeau.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-blog-i-never-thought-i-would-write.html

I'm pretty sure Maria was the staffer that changed the start date, can't prove it since JJOKE is refusing to be public about who did what but I'm pretty sure it was Maria.

Now comes the irony.  One of my clients registered using 2015 dates instead of 2016 dates.  Innocent typo.  I waited for the registration to be approved so that it could be amended to correct the typo.  I waited and waited and waited.  After 2 months of waiting I called Maria to inquire why the registration had not been approved. 

Her answer was that the authorization had not been received.

I had a date stamped copy of it in my hand, from two months earlier, it had been received by JJOKE and I told Maria so.

She told me to wait and she would look for it in her pile of forms (not good)

Several minutes later she found it and assured me she would "get to it"

I asked that she get to it while I was on the phone so that I could amend and correct the typos.

She refused and said she was too busy with other work (payback I guess for the blog piece above).

I told her that as soon as it was approved I would amend the typo and terminate the registration since the client was no longer lobbying and then I called Christina to alert her to the problem.

Christina did not answer her phone nor return my call (payback I guess for the blog piece above).

So I called Martin, who is always very responsive.  He took my call (he always does) listened to my explanation of the issue and said he would look into it and get back to me.  I told him yet again how bad Maria was and suggested he improve JJOKE by subtraction.

I followed up several days later and Martin said it was approved or soon to be approved.

I checked yesterday and it still wasn't approved.

I called Martin to inform him, he said he was told it had been and he would get back to me.

Within 10 minutes the client got an email from Maria listing 4 things wrong with the registration that needed to be fixed to approve it.

The start date. (The typo)

The end date. (The typo)

The clients title on the authorization. (their wasn't one)

The clients name on the authorization (different than the CEO's name on the registration)

Classic Maria being an obstructionist ass and wrong at the same time.

The typos would be corrected if she approved the registration which she knew because I told her and the title and name on the authorization were not required by statute to match the registration.

I called Martin and left him an email since it was after 4:30.  He responded quickly and told me that he had asked them to process the registration so that it might be amended and terminated.

I guess the email to my client was Maria's way of saying fuck you to me as well as to Martin.

Now in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal it's just annoying.

BUT

It did get me checking, what it is that Maria is doing with her time at JJOKE.

Would you care to guess how many registrations are still being processed going back to when I left in 2007?

454

15 from 2007/2008
32 from 2009/2010
21 from 2011/2012
16 from 2013/2014
and 370 from 2015/2016 and that doesn't include the registration amendments

Tell me again why Maria still has a job?

JJOKE, being incompetent since 2012

Seth Agata, did you have any clue how bad the staff was that you have inherited?  Call me whenever you get around to starting I'll be happy to fill you in.

As for the rest of JJOKE I guess I've crossed the Rubicon and you are all fair game.  Get better or read about it.