Will you look at those two, chock-full of earnestness and enthusiasm – these are the leaders of your new, reformed Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. CEO Dara Maleki on the right, and his appointed Board Chair Mike Johnson on the left. I’d HEARD, like a month ago, that they were going to sue Visit Anaheim (our tourist agency) which sounded like big news, the two entities have been so close for decades – but then when it happened last week I was too busy to write about it, so you’ve probably already seen the Voice of OC and Register articles, and know the basics.

But just in case, here’s as basic as I can make it:

• Since 2010, the Chamber has come to be dependent on a stream of hotel-tax revenue they received from Visit Anaheim (VA) averaging around 900k a year, most of the Chamber’s income. (This was 3.5% of the $30 million a year VA gets from a hotel tax called ATID.)

• Then in the wake of the 2022 FBI scandals, the 2023 JL Report (a cornucopia of Chamber wrongdoing under CEO Todd Ament – esp. p. 157-233), and just before a critical 2024 state audit report was released which found that the subcontract between VA and the Chamber actually needed city approval, the very image-conscious VA unilaterally broke off that subcontract revenue stream last year two years ago, leaving the Chamber high and dry.

• The Chamber doesn’t think they should have done that, and is suing them for 7 million.

I’m exercising great restraint not listing all the ways these two entities hurt Anaheim during the AMENT YEARS (2004-21), as I’ve written about it plenty, and that’s not the purpose today. My wife and I used to sometimes go up to the 10th floor of that Orangewood building, just to rattle their chains and get glared at. That’s where both their offices were (along with Jeff Flint‘s FSB Consulting), and they had no doors separating them, and the walls were glass. If flatulence occurred in one office (pardon the vulgarity) it was detected in the other.

Yes, the Chamber and Visit Anaheim were inseparable, like the thorax and abdomen of Anaheim’s Kleptocracy. All this in mind, I was originally going to use this as the story’s “featured image”:

But, soft, what light from yonder window breaks? It is a new way of thinking about the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. Consider:

• A city needs a Chamber of Commerce, especially a city the size of Anaheim, which is home to 15,000 businesses.

• When one of the biggest criticisms of our city is that it is overly tourist-dependent, how sad would it be to have a huge Tourism Bureau and no Chamber of Commerce?

• The Anaheim Chamber has been around 130 years, since they first helped Anaheim’s grape farmers, bedeviled by Pierce’s Disease, transition to citrus fruits and ushered in the Sunkist Era – while meanwhile the Chamber’s Ament Era of Criminality and Running the Government was 17 years (a long time for those of us who lived through it, but it seems to be over.)

• Todd Ament, the Grand Architect of Chamber Corruption, left the Chamber quietly in 2021 while the FBI was breathing down his back, and (though it’s taken long) will be sentenced to prison in three weeks. The new reformed Chamber is suing Todd as well, for $1.2 million.

• You’ll say “Todd never coulda done the things he did by himself” – I have written that too. Well, his greedy sycophants and enablers are also gone: Jeff Flint ran off to Tennessee, I hear Todd’s legal sidekick Jeff Farano was thrown out on his ass, and… those types don’t stick around with what looks like the losing side right now.

I had no idea Visit Anaheim was so much bigger and wealthier than the Chamber. Like, about ten times? It’s not the impression you got with Todd everywhere at all times, running everything. But once that sunk in, I briefly considered using THIS image with Dara as David:

Ament was followed as CEO, first by Matt Cunningham’s unremarkable wife, then by a serious dude recruited from out of state named Jerry Jordan – Jerry did his level best getting the Chamber’s house in order, making cuts and paying off its debts. But once VA cut off that revenue stream – 80% of the Chamber’s income! – Jerry threw his hands up and decided it was over, time for the Chamber to close. There were even announcements and news stories put out about it.

But “Not so fast!” cried a few hardy souls, “Anaheim needs a Chamber!” And this is their story.

100 South Anaheim Boulevard

Did I mention the Chamber got evicted? After Visit Anaheim found out they were suing them. They just couldn’t look at them any more. Fine. A new location for a new Chamber will be perfect, and getting evicted is a real man-on-the-street experience to help the Chamber remember where they came from, the old grape farmers. They are just now setting up their new space in the “Partners!” Building near City Hall, where they were actually located a long long time ago. So that’s where I went to ask them some questions about their new, reformed…

1. What About Anaheim’s Small Businesses?

A big criticism of the Chamber under Ament was its solicitude to Anaheim’s very largest businesses and total neglect of the town’s thousands of small businesses. Our good friend Joanne Sosa (to the left, between Marisol & Mirvette), who worked as Ament’s Director of Membership Services, told the JL Group (p. 164-5), “Everything promised to small businesses that joined the Chamber never happened. They’d be promised ribbon-cuttings and similar events, but all of the Chamber’s attention was devoted to a select group of large businesses such as Disney, Yellow Cab and the Angels.” Some small businessmen even started an alternative Chamber called ASBO, now defunct. Well, question: How is this going to change, and how do we know?

I think the best answer is in this chart of “membership tiers,” along with this from Dara: “Disney is no longer a member; they don’t really need a Chamber of Commerce. Our largest members now are Kaiser Permanente, SA Recycling, the Angels and the Ducks, a lot of schools and nonprofits… but nobody pays more than what’s in this chart, so nobody is dominant like before. Disney could rejoin – they probably will, but when they do, we’re only going to be asking them for $1499 a year, not $42,000 like they were paying before.”

That makes sense – big fees paid equals “outsized influence,” to use a Voice of OC cliche.

Relatedly, another criticism of the 2004-21 Chamber is all their attention went to businesses in the Disney Resort area. Well, that makes good sense when we realize that 1) 80% of the Chamber’s income came as ATID funds from Visit Anaheim, and 2) that money was RESTRICTED to being used only in the Resort District. So although the loss of that money is regretted, is is also FREEING, as Dara and Mike enthuse about being much more active in State College’s “Tile Mile,” newly-designated Little Arabia, and the renewed Beach Boulevard. And everywhere else in this great city.

By the way, did someone say “no ribbon cuttings for small businesses?” Well, can you pick out Dara, Councilwoman Kristen Maahs, and the author, at last month’s grand opening of Liz Gracian’s Untold Story Bookstore and Cafe?

2. Will You Stay the Hell out of our Politics & Elections?

The Ament Chamber ran this town, ran our elections, picked and funded Council candidates 80% of whom won. Just down the hall from Todd was the spooky Jeff Flint, running multiple PACs and writing attack pieces against any independent candidates. They, literally, called themselves the CABAL. They held secret retreats for trusted councilmembers where they plotted to divvy up any expected revenue. The state audit caught them illegally using ATID money (not to mention diverted COVID money) to lobby elected officials AND fund campaigns. Todd’s crowning achievement was the election of pay-to-play Mayor Harry Sidhu, under whom he functioned for three years as de facto Chief of Staff and Gatekeeper.

So, let’s have no more of that, yes? Dara dissolved the Chamber’s PAC, saying he’d rather focus on advocating for businesses than trying to choose our Mayor and Council. He says the Chamber should be a go-between for businesses and government, and that the City needs a Chamber to challenge them when their policies are unhelpful. As it has since 1895.

3. Open Books?

Ament’s Chamber was secretive because it was criminal. When the JL Group tried to investigate them, Ament’s successor Laura Cunningham stonewalled them via feigned daffiness and wouldn’t share any kind of records with them… and JL had not been given any subpoena power by the Council (who probably DIDN’T want to unearth too many skeletons!)

But… “What are all those books?” I asked.

And they told me “these are all our records, and anyone can look at them.”

Really, ALL all the records? “I’ll let people know!”

“Wait… yes, but… please have people call first, we don’t want some kind of free-for-all in here.”

“But we don’t have any secrets.”

So, this is just one of the bookshelves full of records (to the left.)

Could be a treasure-trove for someone more patient and inquisitive than I.

Like maybe Cynthia Ward, or Georgia Price, or Duane Roberts?

(I see an “Anaheim First” folder there!)

4. Tell Us More!

• First thing Dara did when he took over the Chamber was to “bring in” a Chief Restructuring Officer, name of Robert Statham.
• Although it was a big blow to lose that ATID money, don’t be TOO sad, membership in the Chamber HAS INCREASED since Dara took over, from 240 to 300. And they have 250k in the bank right now.
• The account that Todd called sometimes the “Anaheim Economic Development Corporation” or sometimes “The Foundation,” which he used to sneak around funds, has been renamed “Anaheim Business Fund” and now has 25k in there for grants and micro-loans.
• Dara and Mike, although they opposed district elections back in the day, now think they were a great thing, with different areas of the city all getting the attention they need.

“Tell him about our three new projects,” urged Mike. “Okay.”

1. The “Bid Local” Program. Dara has been on the Housing and Development Commission for a few years and now he’s the chair. And they use “scorecards” to decide what developments are better than others. His idea now is to add a category for developers to get at least 25% of their materials and labor locally. This should particularly help the denizens of “Tile Mile.”

2. “Aprons to Hard Hats” – a program to transition restaurant workers into union apprenticeships and eventually much higher paying jobs.

“But wait, that’s only two.”

“Oh yeah. #3 is bringing back the Restaurant Alliance.“

There’s always a critic…

…but when your critic is a longtime Kleptocrat Lobbyist, former Pringle acolyte, and intimate of Jeff Flint named TODD PRIEST… you just might be doing something right. Actually a whole lot of Anaheim’s establishment are furious at Maleki’s Chamber for suing Visit Anaheim – Visit Anaheim is where their heart, their treasure is. So Todd Priest’s commentary on Facebook last week is typical of that old aristocracy:

That is some righteous BS right there. The Chamber is not asking for any taxpayer money. They are not attacking the City OR the business community. You see how these people think their little world is the whole fucking world? Todd Priest just happens, right now, to be the consultant for the Anaheim Transportation Network, which is going broke and wants public money itself, so maybe he’s projecting. And right after posting this he demanded the Chamber take the ATN off their website, even though they are all paid up with their dues.

(Flint and Priest are also mad that Johnson and Maleki supported Kristen Maahs in District 5 last year over THEIR bizarre choice, the unhinged carpetbagger Andrew Sarega.) And just as I publish this, pinche Priest is at it AGAIN!

Mind-numbing nonsense. “Carrying Sidhu’s and Ament’s water?” That’s as hard to figure out as something Trump might say. I could say a lot about Todd Priest, but one thing’s for sure – he should have been a better friend to Jordan Brandman.

And now I will stop. GO CHAMBER!

The old aristocracy.