Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/bob-stern/)
Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do’s office spent over $240,000 in taxpayer money on a stream of mass mailers. Now it appears that many of the mailers were targeted based on powerful voter databases normally used by political campaigns.
County supervisors are increasingly taking advantage of a state law that allows lobbyists and wealthy contributors to give money and in-kind donations requested by elected officials for their favored charities or government-sponsored events.
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido has developed friendships, and possibly business connections, with men who have histories of drug arrests and revel in the Mexican narco culture.
Council members battled over whether they should release the city attorney’s legal opinion on Councilwoman Christina Shea’s controversial, and perhaps illegal, consulting work for KIA Motors America. The council ultimately chose not to release the opinion.
Councilman John Perry has been hailed for suing San Juan Capistrano over its water rates. But his vote to award hundreds of thousands of dollars to a law firm in the case that made payments to him may have crossed ethical and legal lines.
Councilwoman Christina Shea has built her political career on rooting out corruption surrounding the Great Park. But what she’s doing behind the scenes for a consulting client is also crossing ethical lines, a government ethics expert says.
Peter Hardash, the Rancho Santiago Community College District’s vice chancellor of business operations, has received thousands of dollars in golf trips from vendors who’ve been given millions in district contracts.
In recent years, officials have stayed at five diamond hotels, eaten expensive meals, and taken limo services while students have had to sell hotdogs to save a math class.
Open government advocates are trying to get a proposal on the November 2016 ballot that would make Californians the first in the nation with a constitutional right to know about the big money behind political campaigns.
Rancho Santiago Community College District Chancellor Raul Rodriguez says officials’ trips – paid for by a Saudi company – weren’t gifts and the foundation is going to pay the money back. The explanation doesn’t hold water with a good government expert.