This week, a host of former city officials, elected leaders and Anaheim residents reacted to the California Auditor’s scathing report indicating the local tourism bureau improperly spent tax dollars – with most saying they’re not surprised by findings of loose oversight from city hall.
It comes after FBI agents and independent investigators detailed Disneyland resort interests’ mammoth influence on city policy making.
[Read: How Disneyland Resort Interests Planned to Withhold Tax Money from Anaheim’s Working Class]
David Duran, a longtime Anaheim resident and activist for homeless people, expressed concern there’s been no real consequences for the alleged corruption that’s taken place at city hall.
“The residents of the city really need some help because we can’t depend on the city council, can’t depend on the city attorney, we can’t depend on the district attorney – we really need the help of the state,” Duran said in a Wednesday phone interview.
He added that people “are stuck in a little dinghy in shark-infested waters. All we can do is support ourselves because the sharks aren’t going to do it.”
In an audit released Tuesday, state auditors found city officials failed to oversee spending by Visit Anaheim – the tourism bureau – and say some of that money went to the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, which was then used to influence unnamed elected officials.
[Read: CA Auditors Lambast Anaheim’s Tourism Bureau, Find Improper Tax Dollar Spending]
“By neglecting to ensure contractual agreements, the city allowed for bad actors to take advantage of public dollars at the expense of our residents,” said Assemblyman and former Anaheim City Councilman Avelino Valencia in a Tuesday text message.
Valencia, who spearheaded efforts to get a state audit, lambasted the two resort organizations.
“The unallowable use of District Assessment Funds by Visit Anaheim and the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce to engage in legislative and political activity is a direct threat to my hometown’s democracy,” he said.
Chamber officials have pushed back on the auditor’s assessment, and said meeting with elected officials wasn’t improper – but part of the routine tourism promotion in the city.
A Questionable Bailout
State auditors found Visit Anaheim improperly diverted $1.5 million of its $6.5 million COVID bailout from the city to an Anaheim Chamber of Commerce-controlled nonprofit. City officials initially used convention center reserves to fund the bailout and later backfilled it with federal relief money.
In a Wednesday letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Congressman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) called for a federal investigation to see if federal COVID bailout funds “were used for improper political activities.”
[Read: Will the U.S. Attorney General be Next in Line to Probe Anaheim?]
“I urgently request that you investigate whether any federal laws were broken by the City, Chamber, or Visit Anaheim,” wrote Correa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee that’s responsible for overseeing a wide swath of Department of Justice activities.
On Thursday, officials in Correa’s office said justice officials have already acknowledged the Congressman’s request for a federal investigation.
“Our office has received confirmation from the Department of Justice, FBI, and IRS that they have received Mr. Correa’s correspondence. We look forward to their future response,” said Correa’s spokesman, Adriano Pucci, in a Thursday text message.
U.S. Department of Justice officials have yet to respond to Voice of OC’s questions about the next steps in Correa’s request.
State Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), who also voted to initiate the state audit with Valencia, said “the audit reveals an embarrassment.”
“I spent a good chunk of my life working on corruption issues in Afghanistan,” said Umberg, a retired U.S. Army colonel and a former federal and military prosecutor.
“Wherever there’s not transparency or accountability, there will be corruption – whether it’s in Afghanistan, whether it’s in South America or whether it’s in Anaheim,” he said in a Wednesday phone interview.
A Checkered Record
It all comes after the city violated state law when it was trying to sell Angel Stadium in 2022, with state officials forcing the city to restructure the back end of the deal to build affordable housing throughout the city – a deal that would’ve seen the stadium and the 150 acres it sits on get sold for $150 million in cash.
The stadium deal imploded when FBI affidavits surfaced in May 2022, detailing how the disgraced former mayor tried ramming through the deal for $1 million in campaign support from team officials.
The audit also comes against the backdrop of the city commissioned independent investigation report that heavily details the undue influence Disneyland resort interests exert on city hall.
“We’ve discovered through the FBI, we’ve discovered through the independent report, we’ve discovered through this audit that residents’ concerns about transparency over and over and over are true,” said Jodi Balma, a local politics expert and political science professor at Fullerton College.
“Now, the question is what changes need to be made?” Balma said in a Tuesday phone interview.
An ‘Egregious Violation of Public Trust’
Marisol Ramirez, deputy director for Orange County Communities for Responsible Development, criticized the city council’s lack of public questions about the independent corruption probe and other issues.
“There’s this evident culture that exists that just does not ask further questions,” Ramirez said in a Tuesday phone interview. “It took the state to demand these receipts.”
“We have council members who campaigned on government transparency and wanted to clean up past mistakes of the city. It’s really in their lap now to make these changes – but we haven’t seen progress,” she said.
State auditors are recommending city officials tighten up their contract oversight, including creating an advisory committee to monitor Visit Anaheim spending.
Former City Councilman Jose Moreno said city officials should repercussions, but expressed doubt it would happen.
“There doesn’t seem to be any appetite to explore some consequences for the egregious violation of public trust – none,” Moreno said in a Tuesday phone interview.
In a Tuesday news release, Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and Councilwoman Norma Campos Kurtz said officials will move to restore public trust.
“Oversight and accountability are vital to public trust, and we should always be expanding and improving,” Aitken said.
“Oversight of public money is a top priority for me and our entire City Council,” Kurtz said in the news release.
While city council members have yet to publicly discuss the independent investigation – except to say it contains errors without offering specifics – state auditors used it as a starting point.
Yet city officials resisted calls from many residents to audit Visit Anaheim in August and instead waited for the state auditor’s report.
[Read: Anaheim Officials Refuse To Audit Tourism Bureau’s Alleged Illegal Diversion of COVID Funds]
Umberg also said while an oversight committee is a good step, there needs to be accountability.
“If you are in government, there needs to be one person – for sure one entity – that has responsibility for the operation, the accountability and the transparency,” he said. “You need one person who gets fired if there’s a screw up.”
Former Councilwoman Denise Barnes said the city needs to reexamine its relationship with resort interests.
“I really think what we need to do is distance ourselves from the chamber, they have really just been so corrosive in our politics,” Barnes said in a Wednesday voicemail. “It’s just very startling that we’ve not been able to overcome this.”
Like others in the city, Moreno said the audit didn’t surprise him.
“It’s pretty clear up to this point that our current mayor and city council have shown little to no interest or appetite to dig deeper on how our city has – internally – been impacted or to bring any charges to violations of local ordinances and laws we already have,” he said.
Longtime activist with the People’s Homeless Task Force and Anaheim resident Jeanine Robbins said city officials should also audit Visit Anaheim and the Chamber of Commerce.
“I don’t think they will do anything towards auditing what happened with the resident’s money,” Robbins said in a Wednesday phone interview. “That $6.5 million in the middle of COVID could’ve gone a tremendous way to help make residents’ lives a little easier.”
After Anaheim officials authorized the $6.5 million bailout to Visit Anaheim in March 2020, many Anaheim neighborhoods grappled with some of the highest COVID case rates, hospitalizations and deaths in Orange County.
‘I Don’t Have Much Hope For Anything Changing’
After a series of FBI affidavits and an independent corruption report over the last two years detailing Disneyland resort interests’ outsized influence on City Hall, some activists and residents say the new audit likely won’t change anything.
“It’s the same group of people that are players in everything that’s going on – that’s corrupting the city. And yet nothing, there’s silence,” said Duran, a member of the People’s Homeless Task Force.
Ramirez also questions if anyone will be held accountable for Visit Anaheim’s alleged improper spending of COVID bailout money and tourism dollars – on top of the resort’s outsized influence on city policy making.
“It’s concerning when council meetings occur and we don’t have a mayor and council members who are asking these questions – they’re either very much afraid or don’t care to address the elephant in the room,” she said.
Robbins said while people like disgraced Mayor Harry Sidhu and former Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Ament have pleaded guilty to federal charges, the situation remains the same.
“I don’t have much hope for anything changing unless people are arrested – literally dragged out of city hall as an example for the rest of the corruption.”
Ament and Sidhu have yet to be sentenced.
Balma, the Fullerton College professor and local politics expert, also said real consequences need to happen.
“It seems like all of this has a slap on the wrist and there are no real consequences,” she said. “Until there are real consequences, we will not get change.”
Moreno, a former councilman who opposed sending Visit Anaheim bailout money, raised questions on what’s been happening as state auditors examined the spending.
[Read: Anaheim Council Funds $6.5 Million Bailout To Advertise Disneyland Resort Area]
“While this state audit has been occurring, who knows how many more dollars have been spent. The chamber’s been operating as business as usual as it appears,” Moreno said. “This is a culture that has thoroughly corrupted the ability of city hall to be independent.
Editor’s note: Ashleigh Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.
Spencer Custodio is the civic editor. You can reach him at scustodio@voiceofoc.org. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio.
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