The blatant attempt by a San Diego politician to undermine the findings of an independent audit of how the City of Irvine spent $250 million without building a single, major proposed feature at the Orange County Great Park might have concluded in failure.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez had asked the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to order the state auditor to audit the Great Park audit that documented how her fellow Democrats in Irvine grossly mismanaged the project, including giving lucrative contracts to one of her campaign contributors, Gafcon, Inc.
In April, Gonzalez’s rambling pleas couldn’t muster enough votes on the committee, which is comprised of senators and members of the assembly–to direct state auditors away from inspecting state agencies and instead set up camp at Irvine City Hall.
Gonzalez hoped JLAC would take a second vote during a June 17 session, but the item was deleted from the agenda prior to the meeting.
Ten members of Orange County’s legislative delegation in Sacramento sent a June 15 letter to the committee and called the Gonzalez request ill-advised for numerous reasons including that no state funds were used in the city’s audit.
“We believe no legitimate state purpose can be served” by “the proposed audit of the audit,” stated a letter signed by senators John Moorlach, Janet Nguyen, Bob Huff and Pat Bates as well as assembly members Travis Allen, Ling Ling Chang, Matthew Harper, Young Kim and Bill Brough.
Gonzalez (D-Chula Vista) has argued the audit exposing the shenanigans of Democrats Larry Agran and Beth Krom when they controlled the Irvine City Council and the Great Park was “partisan.”
Though Orange County residents of both major political parties have been concerned about officially resolving what caused huge delays and cost overruns at the park, Gonzalez wanted State Auditor Elaine M. Howle to declare the park audit (made public earlier this year) an outrageous abuse of power by local officials.
Agran and Krom have been hoping to convert Gonzalez’s shameless plot into a campaign tool to take back control of the city council in the 2016 elections.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Krom insists it’s unsupported “opinion” that the Great Park project encountered a long, embarrassing series of scandals because in her mind the $1.6 billion government park, which still has not been built after more than a decade of planning, is a model public project.
This week, the Orange County Register published an editorial applauding the city audit for giving residents “answers” about Agran/Krom mismanagement and implying that Gonzalez’s intentions don’t appear noble.
Go HERE to see prior coverage of the park scandal.
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Email: rs**********@oc******.com. Twitter: @RScottMoxley.
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.