Important news often gets lost during holiday weeks, but hopefully this was not the case with Frank Mickadeit‘s November 24 Orange County Register column, “Want Turkey?
Check Out Great Park PR.” Based on internal City of Irvine documents, Mickadeit
revealed that Forde N Mollrich, a private political consulting firm tied to Larry Agran, a Democrat and Irvine’s most powerful and devious politician, is getting $100,000-a-month for 20 months in a no-bid contract related to–no, not national security–but public relations.
Thanks to its close relationship with Agran, the firm has already taken at least $3.5 million
from public coffers for PR, according to the Reg columnist. “They get $100,000 (a month) no matter what they do,” he quotes a source. It’s an alarming situation that once again demonstrates that OC’s leading self-styled good government progressive and the man controlling construction of the Great Park is a fraud.
But, contrary to what Mickadeit implied about the Register owning this story, OC Weekly and Jean Pasco, then at the Los Angeles Times, also reported extensively on the Agran-Forde N Mollrich racket 53 months ago.
Indeed, in my report, “Agran Dispenses Great Park Pork,” I quoted a city official who then disgustingly noted that Agran had given his pals a “just breathe and get paid deal.”
It’s not just Agran’s sleaze. My reports also showed the complicity of city council member Beth Krom, an Agran puppet who is now challenging Republican John Campbell for an Irvine-based U.S. Congressional seat. Krom’s political career as an Agran soldier is notable for one reason: her willingness to angrily defend the indefensible.
Given the sorry state of the OC Republican Party, is it too much to ask OC Democrats to practice open, honest government?
–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.