We all know that Anaheim’s political swamp stinks. We’ve been saying it for years. This blog (sorta) predicted an FBI informant would expose the Cabal running the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce a decade ago. Obvious corruption in multi-million dollar gifts of public funds, illegal bond measures, and preferential access doled out by the city council all neatly follow campaign contributions and gifts from the Chamber. All you really had to do was look.
We weren’t alone in our warnings: The Voice of OC, the OC Weekly, the Anaheim Investigator, and even at times the OC Register all documented clearly questionable dealings between the Anaheim officials and the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. For years, the Chamber’s benefactors like Disney, like hotel developer Bill O’Connell, like Arte Moreno and the Angels, poured millions upon millions of dollars into swamp things– candidates, propogandist bloggers, and lobbyists– to ensure that when it was time to dole out tax dollars, they would be the first mouth at the table to be fed.
For years, voters bought all of it. Chamber-backed candidates have nearly a perfect election record. Employees of the Chamber sat on multiple commissions, including the powerful Charter Review Commission, enabling a culture of corruption that we’re finally seeing laid bare in multiple FBI affidavits and complaints. Millions of taxpayer dollars shuttled to the chamber lacked any public oversight. The lack of oversight made it easy for unscrupulous people like Todd Ament to, as the FBI alleges, move money between entities without any challenge whatsoever from the city, let alone the Chamber’s own accounting team. Even when caught red-handed spending taxpayer money on the Chamber’s political assets, city officials and employees looked the other way: “Just gadflies crying because they’re losers” they’d claim, never considering for a moment that the appearance of impropriety existed because of actual impropriety.
The real sin in all of this mess isn’t Harry Sidhu’s alleged tax evasion, his alleged betrayal of the public in exchange for campaign donations, or Todd Ament’s alleged pilfering of funds to buy a resort home in Big Bear. The real sin is tolerating a culture that for decades consistently allowed the Chamber of Commerce to control a majority vote of the Anaheim City Council. Without those reliable votes, the Chamber is really isn’t anything special. Those reliable votes attended Cabal-sponsored “retreats”, had direct access to Chamber-linked political operatives who told them how to rationalize any vote the Chamber ordered, had access to city staff orchestrating outcomes before a vote ever occurred, and had access to the city’s legal team to obscure public records from legitimate public requests.
There were hundreds of opportunities for employees at the Chamber, employees at the city, and even employees at the huge corporations funding the Chamber Cabal to intercede with a simple act of curiosity. In the last decade, only two city employees ever questioned any of the Chamber’s activity: City Attorney Christina Talley and City Manager Chris Zapata. Both were fired by the “reliable votes” of the Chamber almost instantly upon demand. During the same decade, zero employees at the Chamber of Commerce– including those with duties to oversee funds– blew a whistle. In the same decade, zero employees at Disney, zero employees at the Angels, and zero employees at any of the hotels benefiting from the Chamber’s Visit Anaheim subsidiary said anything to anyone about potential illegal activity. Hundreds and hundreds of people involved in dozens of projects said nothing. They just cashed their checks written by the taxpayer, went home to their pools and wine, and soaked up the California sun.
The FBI won’t get everyone who’s responsible for turning Anaheim into a fever swamp. Their resources aren’t infinite and the little fish have all scattered and shredded their trails as their bigger brethren wriggle and twist on the hook of justice. The future for the little fish is probably rosier than one might expect. After all, the corruption apparatus is really still there. They still have the votes. They still have plenty of money. Worse still, the public has an exceptionally short memory, so really . . . all those little fish have to do is wait for the next news cycle, after which everyone will forget.
Except us.
We’re still here, little fishies. And guess what?
We’re gonna name names.
Run and hide little fishy. Run and hide.
Ament, the Chamber, Anaheim Hill Community Council, Influence Church and of course the ever obnoxious Anahe(i’m First) brigade laundered public and private money and resources back and forth between each other for the past 10 years.
Influence Church
Could there be a creepier name for a church? I’m sure that they are all big believers in the prosperity gospel…
That sentiment has indeed been expressed before.
Somewhere out there, Chris Zapata is smiling 🙂
..with a glass of really good wine….
In Sausalito if I’m not mistaken. *sigh….*
I am imagining this case came to the FBI’s attention through the helicopter instead of any local sources.
FBI Clerk 1: hey look at this one! The terrorism database just showed the Mayor of Disneyland registering his helicopter in AZ to avoid CA taxes!
FBI Clerk #2: Siddhartha? Sydney…hey, what kind of name is Sidhu? It sounds Muslim to me.
FBI Clerk 1: I don’t know, let’s ask our local field staff what’s up with this guy.
FBI Clerk 2: Hey, didn’t you get the memo? We do not investigate corruption unless there’s clear quid pro quo any more. Jeff Sessions doesn’t want anyone embarrassing Donald with any more investigations like that ever again…
Clerk 1: yeah, but this guy is the Mayor of Disneyland. He should have known trying to register aircraft in the wrong state would trigger a red flag. Didn’t he ever hear about the Patriot Act? How’d this guy get elected?
Clerk 2: who knows…look, I’ll put in a call to the Field and ask about this to see if they’re interested. Let’s be careful before putting this up the chain…can you imagine what would happen if this embarrasses the wrong uppity ups? Trump will have us fired…
Clerk 1: come on, everyone will think we are just looking into a scam to get Disneyland vacations. It’s fine…we’ll just do a quick courtesy call and see if field wants to pursue further action…maybe they’ve already got something running somewhere? Can’t hurt to ask…can it? Even if Trump complains, all we did was telephone our own guys…
Six months later
Bob Barr: Attention all DOJ staff. You misunderstood the last memo from my predecessor. Not only do we NOT investigate corruption without clear quid pro quo, all corruption investigations must get cleared by (my handpicked Trump-approved agent) before you put anyone in a wire…
I am laughing at the irony of Trump officials deciding that deep vetting meant going after Mayor Sidhu. Not everyone in the local GOP is a Trumpist – but since a solid majority most certainly is, they’ll have a tough time arguing that this was Sacramento or Biden’s doing if it goes back to 2018.
The finest scientific minds are currently at work to determine a way to blame it on Biden.
And, certainly, we Democrats have our share of complicity, while Republicans have had there share of honor. Politics ain’t merely partisan in Anaheim; it’s good vs. evil.
Of course they’ll blame Biden.
That might even be warranted. Biden’s DOJ/FBI helped cause the stadium deal to be blocked. Trump’s DOJ/FBI investigated this in 2018 – then sat on it for how long?
Makes you wonder if someone in the White House wanted to investigate but then pause releasing the data until he got a share for himself (or until he squeezed enough $ from Arte Moreno…).
The thing is, focusing on Trump’s Cabinet’s role in this undermines Sidhu, and some of Sidhu’s benefactors. And if they start distancing themselves from Sidhu, the question is how much backbone he has – and whether a day might come when he names names.
But all those are hypotheticals built on possibilities. For now, it’s enough to try to debate what Trump’s DOJ/FBI were up to simply to undermine the Sacramento/DC elites claims that these folks will crap out and sell as gospel truth to their faithful.
zero employees at the Angels
I hope we at least find out the identity of “Angels Representative #1” — the guy who had no compunction about accepting insider information on the stadium deal, and who asked Harry what he could do to help his re-election. Because if we get to shake the Etch-A-Sketch and completely redo the stadium deal, I don’t want this guy sitting across the table from Anaheim’s reps.
I do.
They took Anaheim’s name, they accepted confidential information handed over illegally, and they ripped off the public for a couple hundred million bucks.
I hope that same individual is across the table when Anaheim tells them to pound sand and move to Vegas.
Enough is enough.
That’s the dream, isn’t it?
But I fear that regulatory capture of Anaheim by the Angels has taken place to such an extent that even if Sidhu, Ament and everyone at the top layer is gone, there are so many lower-level City employees who’ve marinated in the idea that baseball is the highest and best use of the Stadium land (and remember Gene Autry? And when Reggie Jackson played for the Angels? etc etc ad infinitum) for so long that we can’t avoid doing something stupid.
So while I’ll be thrilled if this is our chance to burn down the house and rebuild it, the politics around ballparks in America, and the politics around this ballpark in particular, have me hoping we at least clear the bar of “least stupid”.
I think that people, donors included, will want to stay some distance from this magma-hot potato for a while. Except maybe Disney, which may think that it’s bigger than the FBI — and may be right!
Last I checked, we haven’t yet heard from the Baseball Commissioner yet, but when we do I suspect that he’ll be barred from the sport and the franchise will be sold to some famous sports figure like Shaquille O’Neal.
Biff, I think this mess has already shaken the etch-a-sketch. While the sale and the development agreements were approved… the SLA challenge pulled that apart. Last week’s Special Meeting where Mayor brought forward the settlement of SLA charges still left the deal hanging, as the City Attorney confirmed that the sale agreement and DDA had to be changed and publicly approved again, among other alterations.
Now that deal is on hold for 60 days thanks to court order…and do we think anyone on Council is going to bring the newly rewritten agreement up for final approval when it seemed to have been central to this mess? Is it even legal to bring the deal forward before the FBI finishes investigating who did what and with which motives?
I don’t know where the City is legally but I suspect if City doesn’t finalize the newly changed agreements reflecting the SLA settlement, the Angels may be left just playing out their days under the 1996 lease they renewed in Jan 2019.
Now the BIG question is….if Harry’s actions to bring that lease reinstatement to Council in Jan 2019 was possibly an act of fraud or part of an act of fraud, then was that lease reinstatement legally enforceable?
And if transactions between Angels and City were tainted by Harry’s actions, then was the last truly legal action between Anaheim and Angels the City’s acceptance of the Angels opt-out in October 2018, announcing the cancellation of their lease due October 2019?
Again, I am not a lawyer, not saying this is the case, just wondering at what point Harry’s action may have potentially nullified portions of these agreements or all of these agreements…or none….it’s gonna be interesting.
Your thinking is a reasonable possibility, but there’s many other possibilities. (I like the ‘shake an etch-a-sketch metaphor!)
The council might vote again and affirm the decision, just to maintain their claim that nothing happened, this is merely a holdup because outside meddlers who hate baseball raised some technicalities.
If I were them, I’d hire a ‘respected’ outside auditor to pretend to review and confirm the deal as the correct valuation (I hear Cyber Ninjas is hungry for work, and there could be other auditors in AZ, though none that the GOP trusted in 2020…). That might slow things down by another month, depending on how much rubber a rubber stamp ‘auditor’ needs to find to produce his report.
As far as the lease is concerned: Arte Moreno/Angels baseball may interpret things differently from Anaheim. A lawyer would need to review quite a bit to guess what the present situation is, but usually, a lawyer will figure out some way of interpreting the situation that is beneficial to that lawyer’s client. It is frustrating to think that Anaheim’s lawyers might collude with a local billionaire the same way Anaheim’s mayor might (particularly if the mayor had anything to do with their appointment…).
https://www.fppc.ca.gov/content/dam/fppc/documents/enf_letter/08-25-14/ENF100.pdf
Queue whiskey in the jar
https://www.totalwine.com/spirits/bourbon/malahat-straight-bourbon-whiskey/p/181616750?glia=true&s=1129&&pid=cpc:Core+Catalog+-+Shopping%2BUS%2BCALI%2BENG%2BSPART::google::&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvp_9hKvq9wIV5AN9Ch07wQWFEAQYASABEgJ9KfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
If that were all there were to find on Melahat, she’d be thrilled.
Actually, Eric, it occurs to me now that Farrah’s cozying up to Turkey might have been part of an agreement to allow her to flee the country and avoid extradition, although I’m certainly not asserting that that’s true….
Wordsmith has “penned” two posts about the Sidhu/Chamber scandal. And not a single word about Todd Ament, the Chamber or Jeff Flint & Co.
Let me guess: he cast himself as comic relief?
He is unmoored and clueless. I don’t believe Todd and Jeff are telling him what to write any more. Those are just like reflexive press releases.
If I were being cruel, I might postulate that he may be trying to decide whether to protect his wife or flip on her. (Although I don’t know how involved she’s been in in anything preceding her advent to this job. How she must rue *that* day!)
Nah, the cabal has probably told Matty that Sidhu is toast, so writing toward that is ok.
Who do you think is left in the cabal? You’d think they’d be a little out-of-commission with Sidhu, Ament and Flint disabled, and for a certain time they’d seem to be running around like headless chickens.
City Employee 1
Political Consultant 2
Political Consultant 3
Chamber Employee (not Ament) 1
Company A Employee 1
And more importantly, their predecessors. This did not get started in 2018.
Where is Carrie Nocella these days? If, as I think I recall, she has left, when was that — and who has replaced her?
I’m really wondering whether the FBI has (or even wants!) the Disney aspect of this story.
It’s easy to confuse her with SOAR’s Jill Kanzler, who did leave, soon after Mike Robbins told the world she lived in Balboa and she had a cussing and screaming fit.
SHe was replaced by the smoother and younger Amelia Castro.
The curly blonde in some photos we’ve recently seen? WOW!
Well, a Latina with curly “blonde” hair which means dyed.
Dyed … but not gone to heaven.
Yeah but even if they’re there, they must be feeling their style cramped right around now.
Welcome, Gustavo. I know that you have “Anacrime,” but “Anaheist” is ours! One of us (not me) already owns the URL. But you’re welcome to borrow it if OJB is credited.
P.S.: Do you happen to know how to apply for a Pulitzer?
Apparently, the cabal (well, what’s left of it) wants to protect the Chamber, somehow.
They really want to shield their various grifts – SOAR, streetcar, gate taxes, raises for the cops, hotel subsidies, etc. I don’t think any of that is going to happen now.
Yo Gustavo, I liked your canto re Armenian beat down. Thanks for standing up for your colleague Alene Tchekmedyian over Villanueva threatening to scalp her.
Odd that no local Armenian organizations publicly defended her.
No, he’s trying to leave his usual slime trail along a very narrow via media in which somehow the Chamber, as an institution remains untarnished. So Sidhu is tossed overboard and the man that picked Mrs. Jerbal to keep the wheels on the scam mobile vanishes.
The funny thing is that Ament KNEW the shit was going to hit the fan when Ms. Cunningham got her brass ring: here’s a bag filled with lotsa nice stuff. Can you hold it for awhile?
*The Anaheim Colonists? Yeah, Mickey Flynn broke our Fullerton Indian hearts in 1959 with that great kick-off runback at Anaheim High School Stadium. Not to worry folks…..The Angels wlll live through this and no matter who is in charge…….MLB will still have a great season. Otani is so cool….how could not like the Angels?
How about our Yanks? Will probably do the Manila Folder at the end like they have for
the last five years …eh? The Angels? Could win it all?
Folks really think the cabal’s heads were Ament and Flint? Come, now. They had a seat at the table, maybe near the head—but we haven’t found out who were the representatives of all the Anacrime “families” at those retreats. And you KNOW they were there…
You bet.
We get one shot at this. Better make it count.
Exactly. Flint Ament are just low-level turds. But then again the players are so stupid that it doesn’t take a genius to pull the strings. Pringle is the guy who started all the hundred million grifts. All roads lead to Rome.
Dude, you have Adam and GSR?
Damn. Don’t even know why I’m here!