The County of Orange's lawyer is calling on the California Attorney General to investigate potential illegal deals that could give private control of the $100 million-plus Orange County Fairgrounds property in Costa Mesa to well-connected political insiders.
In an Oct. 30, 2009, letter to Gary Schons–the state AG's top-ranking official in Southern California–County Counsel Nicholas S. Chrisos writes, “it appears” that the public board of the state-owned fairgrounds began violating open meeting and conflict-of-interest laws in July by secretly forming a private foundation to bid on the property, secretly naming themselves to the foundation's private board and hiring–without a bid process–former State Senator Dick Ackerman's law firm as the private entity's consultant.
The fair board was so concerned about secrecy it asked Ackerman's Nossaman, Guthner, Knox and Eliot to create the foundation in July–“eight days before the [law firm's] consulting contract was approved” in public, according to Chrisos.
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A July 29 fair board agenda cryptically informed residents that item
number 7 concerned the “Governor's Initiative to Sell Orange County
Fair N Event Center.” There was no mention of creating a foundation
or spending money to hire related consultants. The fair board routinely
blocks open public inspection of its requests for bids by oddly
requiring citizens to obtain a password for online access. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to sell valuable public properties in an alleged effort to reduce the state's multi-billion dollar deficit.
Chrisos
provided Schons with other concerns, including that the fair
board members “would have a direct personal interest” in the new
private foundation's “financial interests;” and that public funds were
illegally used to hire the two law firms for the private foundation.
It's the governor who appoints individuals to state fair boards. In OC,
at least, the composition is usually a who's who of political
operatives, consultants or campaign contributors.
Robin
Wachner, spokesperson for the fair, declined to answer in-depth
questions about the board's creation of a private foundation. Wachner
said she would ask either board Chairwoman Kristina Dodge or Vice Chairman Dave Ellis to call me to respond to questions. Neither one has called back. Normally chatty Dick Ackerman is mum, too.
Officials at Nossaman told me today that they “handed over” the foundation's articles of incorporations responsibilities to Jones Day lawyer John R. Beeson. Beeson could not be reached for an interview this afternoon. Jones Day represented sheriff-turned-convicted-felon Mike Carona on federal corruption charges earlier this year.
A fascinating side note that gives a glimpse into the incestuous inner workings of OC politics: Linda Ackerman, Dick's wife, is running to replace disgraced state Assemblyman Mike Duvall,
a longtime Ackerman pal. The special election is Tuesday. As vice
chairman of a state committee overseeing utility companies, Duvall had
openly bragged about his juicy sexual affair with a head lobbyist for
utility giant Sempra. When KCBS/KCAL reported last month on
another alleged past sexual relationship between Duvall and Linda
Ackerman's fundraiser, an outraged Dick Ackerman got Jones Day's Thomas Malcolm to threaten a series of news outlets (including this publication) with hostile legal action.
Will the Malcolm/Ackerman duo team up against the media again on the secretive fair privatization issue?
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.