“Anaheim is in a better place today.”
That’s what Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken said during the state of the city address in June years after a corruption scandal rocked city hall in 2022 and led her predecessor to resign and plead guilty to federal corruption charges – which also saw the collapse of the Angel Stadium sale.
That scandal led Aitken and city council members to adopt a series of reforms in the fall of 2023 including requiring council members to post their calendars online so residents can see who they’re meeting with – something Aitken had done before the policy went into effect.
[Read: Anaheim Officials to Publicly Post Online Who They Meet With]
“We are on the cutting edge of having the most transparent government in Orange County,” Aitken said during her address, pointing to changes like publicizing calendars.
Now after a year of city council members posting online who they are meeting with, officials are set to discuss at their 5 p.m. Tuesday meeting not requiring themselves to disclose non-scheduled meetings and impromptu phone calls about city business.
“Some public officials may voluntarily provide additional information that is not necessarily required by this policy,” reads a suggested change to the policy from top city executive staff.
“City officials are encouraged to report unscheduled calls and/or meetings of a material or significant nature relating to official city business.”
Jose Moreno, a former city council member who was critical of the secretive nature of the rushed Angel Stadium deal, said in a Monday phone interview that officials should always disclose whenever they discuss city business.
“If they are doing city business on behalf of the people, then I think that people should have access to who they were having conversations with, when they were having those conversations, who was present and what was the subject matter,” he said.
Aitken and the rest of the city council did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
To view their public calendars, click here.
Council members are also set to discuss creating more explicit exemptions for what meetings they have to disclose to residents.
The changes are on Tuesday’s consent calendar – a portion of the agenda city council members typically approve in a bloc vote without discussion, unless a council member pulls it for debate or questions.
The policy came after FBI agents in sworn affidavits and independent investigators, with decades of law enforcement experience, in a 353-page report concluded the same thing: Disneyland resort interests and lobbyists exert outsized influence over city hall.
Federal agents also say pay-to-play politics were involved in the now canned Angel Stadium land sale and have alleged former Mayor Harry Sidhu tried to get a $1 million in campaign support from the ball club to ram the deal through.
Sidhu pleaded guilty to corruption charges in 2023, including lying to federal investigators about trying to get campaign support from the stadium deal.
City leaders now say the one-year old policy needs more clarity a month after two newly elected members joined the city council – both of whom were heavily backed by resort interests.
[Read: Disney Spends Nearly $1 Million in Anaheim 2024 Election]
According to a staff report by City Manager Jim Vanderpool and City Attorney Rob Fabela, the changes to the policy are being suggested after Vanderpool’s office received questions on what events and interactions have to be reported.
“This policy is not intended to document every interaction public officials may have and some officials may voluntarily disclose additional details beyond what the policy requires,” reads the staff report.
“These amendments aim to balance transparency with practical reporting guidelines for officials.”
If approved, the changes to the public calendar policy explicitly state officials don’t need to note the location of a meeting.
It would also mandate officials to disclose public events they attended in their official capacity and introduce a host of new disclosure exemptions.
Moreno said the policy seems to emphasize officials reporting their attendance at public events like ribbon cutting ceremonies even though that wasn’t what sparked concerns from the public after the corruption scandal broke.
“The core concern was the private meetings with private interests that held undue influence and actually directed, in many ways, policies and budgets of our city out of the public eye,” he said.
The exemptions include not having to report campaign-related events, events attended for fun and not related to city business, and the use of a free ticket to attend a concert or sports game at city owned venues like Angel Stadium, which will be disclosed on a separate form.
Moreno said officials should still disclose their ticket usage and who they went with in their calendars.
He also said he’d like to see the policy strengthened by including in the calendar if officials are meeting with campaign donors, along with consequences for officials who aren’t reporting their meetings.
“That’s a critical piece of what we saw as part of the corruption,” Moreno said.
“The incentive for these city council members and the mayor to participate in these clandestine meetings of this shadow government of Anaheim that was occurring was basically campaign dollars and the promise of campaign dollars and promise of support for their electoral campaigns.”
The proposed exemptions also include unscheduled meetings or phone calls with a business owner where city business was “very briefly” discussed and the interaction was “not intended for that purpose.”
The change does not specifically define what constitutes a very brief discussion or how the intention of what the interaction is about would be established by officials.
Moreno said the vague nature of this exemption leaves disclosures up to the discretion of the official – something he is wary of in a city like Anaheim.
“If we’ve learned anything in Anaheim, it is if you leave it to the discretion of the official to report or not discussions with donors or special interests … the history in Anaheim suggests that it will not be reported.”
Editor’s note: Ashleigh Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.