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Sentinel 09-01-17

By Mark Gutglueck
Seven-and-a-half years after the California Attorney General’s Office and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office embarked on a prosecution growing out of what then-California Attorney General Jerry Brown called the “biggest corruption scandal in San Bernardino County, if not the state’s, history,” half of that prosecutorial effort ended in abject failure.
Just short of eight months into a repeatedly delayed trial in the Colonies Lawsuit Public Corruption Case, three of the six defendants charged in the matter, including the wealthy developer about whom practically all of the substantial original counts revolved, were found not guilty of all charges remaining against them.
Prior to the two juries hearing the case beginning deliberations last week, 18 of the original 29 counts and 24 of the 40 separate charges against defendants Jeff Burum, Paul Biane, Mark Kirk and Jim Erwin contained in the May 2011 indictment naming them had been thrown out or otherwise dismissed, so that the two juries were left to ruminate 11 counts and 16 charges.
One of those juries was consigned to consider the remaining charges remaining against Burum, Biane and Kirk. Burum remained accused of aiding and abetting former San Bernardino County Supervisor Bill Postmus under Penal Code Section 68 in receiving and agreeing to receive a bribe to influence a vote and alternately under Penal Code Section 165 of aiding and abetting Postmus in receiving, agreeing to receive or asking for a bribe to influence a vote and aiding and abetting former San Bernardino County Supervisor Paul Biane under Penal Code Section 68 in receiving and agreeing to receive a bribe to influence a vote and alternately under Penal Code Section 165 aiding and abetting Biane in receiving, agreeing to receive or asking for a bribe to influence a vote. Biane yet faced charges of receiving and agreeing to receive a bribe to influence a vote under Penal Code Section 68 and receiving, agreeing to receive and asking for a bribe to influence a vote under Penal Code Section 165, along with a violation of Government Code Section 1090, engaging in a conflict of interest. Kirk yet had to face down the allegation he had violated Government Code Section 9054, improperly influencing a public official, and a violation of Government Code Section 1090, engaging in a conflict of interest.
A second jury was tasked with considering against Erwin charges that he had aided and abetted Postmus under Penal Code Section 68 in receiving and agreeing to receive a bribe to influence a vote and alternately under Penal Code Section 165 aiding and abetting Postmus in receiving and agreeing to receive or asking for a bribe to influence a vote, along with aiding and abetting Biane under Penal Code Section 68 in receiving and agreeing to receive a bribe to influence a vote and alternately under Penal Code Section 165 aiding and abetting Biane in receiving and agreeing to receive or asking for a bribe to influence a vote, a violation of Revenue and Tax Code 19706 consisting of failure to file a tax return, and two counts of perjury for failing to disclose gifts or income he received from Burum.
The case involved charges that Burum had conspired with Erwin to threaten and blackmail Postmus and Biane into settling in 2006 a lawsuit his company, the Colonies Partners, had brought in 2002 against the County of San Bernardino and its flood control district over drainage issues at the Colonies at San Antonio residential and Colonies Crossroads commercial subdivisions in northeast Upland. Prosecutors alleged that Erwin at Burum’s behest prepared but ultimately withheld “hit piece” mailers that targeted both Postmus, who was then the board of supervisors chairman as well as the chairman of the Republican Central Committee, and Biane, then the vice chairman of the board of supervisors as well as the vice chairman of the Republican Central Committee. Those mailers, according to prosecutors, took as their subject matter Postmus’ homosexuality and methamphetamine addiction and Biane’s financial travails which had him on the brink of bankruptcy. On November 7, 2006, the 2006 general election was held, in which Measure P, an initiative sponsored by Biane which raised each supervisor’s annual salary from $99,000 to $151,000, passed and Postmus was elected county assessor. Three weeks following the election but prior to Postmus transferring to the assessor’s office, the board of supervisors voted 3-2 to confer a $102 million settlement on the Colonies Partners, bringing the four year-long lawsuit to a close.
That litigation had followed a roller-coasteresque and serpentine progression. Superior Court Judge Peter Norell early on made a ruling in favor of the Colonies Partners which held that the county’s flood control easements on the Colonies Partners’ property recorded in 1933, 1934, 1939 and 1962 had been abandoned. But the Fourth District Court of Appeal had overturned Norell, ruling that the county had unfettered easements on 31 acres and a right to utilize 30 further acres of land on the property in question for flood control purposes with the landowner’s consent pursuant to terms to be worked out between the two parties. When the matter went to trial before Judge Christopher Warner, he ruled against the county, this time asserting the easements had been extinguished because the county had surcharged, i.e., overused, them and that certain county officials had defrauded the Colonies Partners in the arrangements for the development of the property and the construction of flood control facilities there. It was in the aftermath of Warner’s ruling, as the county’s lawyers were advising the board of supervisors to appeal it to the Fourth Appellate District which had previously established the easements as being intact, that Postmus, Biane and then-supervisor Gary Ovitt voted to settle the case.
Following the settlement, between March 2007 and the end of June 2007, the Colonies Partners endowed Postmus, Biane, Erwin and Kirk with $100,000 each in the from of donations to political action committees the four controlled. In a 29-count indictment handed down in May 2011, in which Burum, Biane, Erwin and Kirk were named, it is alleged those $100,000 donations to Postmus and Biane were bribes provided in return for their votes in support of the settlement and that the $100,000 donation to Kirk’s political action committee was likewise a bribe made in exchange for his having delivered Ovitt’s vote in favor of the settlement. Kirk was Ovitt’s chief of staff and primary political advisor.
The indictment followed by less than three months Postmus pleading guilty to criminal charges lodged against him in 2010 relating to his settlement vote and his acceptance of the $100,000 provided by the Colonies Partners to two of his political action committees, which he acknowledged in his plea as a bribe.
Beginning on August 14 and concluding on August 24, prosecutor Melissa Mandel and the defense attorneys for Burum, Kirk, Biane and Erwin – Stephen Larson, Peter Scalisi, Mark McDonald and Raj Maline, respectively – made their closing arguments, punctuated by a rebuttal from Mandel. The jury for Burum, Biane and Kirk went into deliberations on August 23, with the jury for Erwin hearing a final set of arguments from Mandel and Maline on August 24, at which point that panel began its deliberations.
Midmorning on August 28, it was announced that the jury for Burum, Biane and Kirk had reached verdicts. The reading of those verdicts was set for 1:30 p.m., by which time the Department-1 courtroom on the second floor of the San Bernardino Justice Center – the largest courtroom in the building, which has the capacity to accommodate two jury boxes – was packed with Burum’s, Biane’s and Kirk’s family members, associates and supporters. Present in the courtroom was Judge Christopher Warner, the judge who had made the civil court ruling in favor of the Colonies Partners prior to the November 2006 settlement. On hand, as well, was Erwin. Present in the courtroom near the double-door entrance were three uniformed and armed sheriff’s deputies brought in to augment the two sheriff’s deputies who have served as bailiffs in the courtroom throughout the trial. Notably absent was San Bernardino County Supervising Deputy District Attorney Lewis Cope, who had prosecuted the case in tandem with Mandel. Cope was not present at his normal position at the prosecution table. In his stead was deputy district attorney Michael Abney.
When the jury filed into the courtroom before the assembled multitude, none on the panel conveyed by their body language or demeanor an outward show of their verdict. Judge Michael A. Smith asked the group’s forewoman if verdicts had been reached. She said they had. Smith had her hand an envelope containing the written verdicts over to the court clerk who read them, charge by charge in a somewhat dramatic fashion. The verdicts for the defendants were read in alphabetic order, with Biane going first. To each of the three counts against him, a pronouncement of “not guilty” was made. Thereafter, the reading of the charges and verdicts against Burum was provided. Upon the first declaration of “not guilty” a chorus cheers erupted but immediately dimmed. Thereafter, the three further not guilty pronouncements relating to Burum were read, punctuated by a more extended clamor of exaltation by his supporters in general at his full acquittal, which none of the bailiffs attempted to quell. When the cacophony ended, the two counts against Kirk were read and met with “not guilty” pronouncements.
Both Burum and Kirk appeared lachrymal in the immediate aftermath of the acquittal announcements, while Biane, though clearly relieved, was less emotionally demonstrative.
An air of celebration momentarily descended over the courtroom as the voices of spectators acclaiming the acquittals resonated around the confines and members of the defense team shook hands, congratulated and in some cases embraced or steadied one another.
For Judge Smith an awkward moment ensued when he addressed the jury. “This finally concludes your service,” he said, and then, making reference to the uncommonly long duration of the trial, remarked, “Normally I’d just say ‘Thank you,’ but you deserve more than that. You went above and beyond the call of duty.” At that point, spontaneous applause from those in attendance in the courtroom broke out. Somewhat sheepishly, Smith sought to downplay the appearance that the crowd was expressing gratitude to the jury for its exoneration of the defendants. “That’s not for your verdict,” he asserted, somewhat unconvincingly. “That’s for your service. We knew this would be a long trial. We told you [it would end in] July; it’s now end of August. You stayed with it and we really appreciate it. We’ve had jurors have a birth in the family, a death in the family, a marriage; I hope no divorces, and if so, not because of this case.”
In off-the-cuff remarks before he left the courtroom, Burum told the press “I’m grateful to the jury. They are my new heroes. They gave up part of their careers and lives for eight months to hear this case. I’m grateful to my friends and family for sticking by me in the belief this would be over eventually. Nobody should have to go through seven years of waiting to defend themselves.” He added that the prosecutors had proceeded against him “without evidence” and had been “running roughshod” over his and his co-defendants rights throughout the case.
Later, in a less hurried and more contemplative circumstance, Burum said, “I believed from the beginning that justice would prevail, but I never thought it would take seven years. I am forever grateful to the jury for their sacrifice for all of the defendants and our families. My family, friends, and partners have believed in me from the outset, and now I just want to get back to being a father, husband, friend, and developer without this political persecution being used against me.”
Larson said, “This is a resounding but utterly predictable defeat for the district attorney of San Bernardino County. The trial revealed, as we said it would, that the investigators recklessly ignored exculpatory evidence, that the prosecutors misled the indicting grand jury, and that the government’s leading cooperator, Adam Aleman, and other former and present government officials lied in court. Millions of dollars have been misspent. The residents of this county know that the pursuit of justice can be perverted for the sake of a politically-motivated prosecution.”
Larson added, “The prosecution was an ill-advised effort to criminalize constitutionally-protected political activity, which the jury emphatically rejected by its decision.”
Biane said, “I knew the jury would get it right, but it was a surreal moment, knowing that it could have gone the other way. To hear those words, ‘not guilty,’ was amazing. I can finally move on and not have to worry about this every night. But I’m still angry and disappointed with the district attorney and county counsel for getting everything so wrong.”
Scalisi said, “I am happy for Mark Kirk that this long, unjust nightmare is over for him, and that the jury quickly and justly found him, and Jeff Burum, and Paul Biane not guilty.”
Kirk said, “Although this case has robbed me of six years of working in a profession I love, I’m grateful to the jury for their courage to do the right thing. It’s now more obvious than ever that this case shouldn’t have been brought to the grand jury. I’m grateful to my family, friends and church who got me through this long nightmare. My wife and I look forward to moving on and enjoying life with our two kids without a cloud hanging over us.”
Jerry Brown was California attorney general in February 2010, when a forerunner of the indictment, a criminal filing against Postmus and Erwin was filed in which Burum, Biane and Kirk, along with two others, Colonies Partners co-managing principal Dan Richards and Colonies Partners publicist Patrick O’Reilly, were identified as unnamed and uncharged co-conspirators. Brown at that time said the case represented the “biggest corruption scandal in San Bernardino County, if not the state’s, history.” Three days after Burum’s, Biane’s and Kirk’s acquittals, Brown had not responded to requests for comment on the outcome.
Similarly, Kamala Harris, who succeeded Brown as California Attorney General and kept the prosecution on track throughout her tenure as attorney general and was elected to the U.S. Senate representing California last November, has not weighed in on the verdicts.
Also caught up in the case was Dino DeFazio, who was one of Postmus’ business and political associates. He was accused of assisting Postmus in the creation of one of the political action committees through which prosecutors alleged the bribe to Postmus was laundered in the form of a political contribution. DeFazio has yet to go to trial.
Meanwhile, the jury that heard the case with respect to Erwin at press time was still in deliberations and had not reached a verdict after three-and-a-half days of considering the evidence and testimony. It was reported that jurors had asked some technical legal questions of Judge Smith, but had given no indication of how it is leaning verdict-wise. Those jurors ended deliberations yesterday at noon and will not deliberate today or over the three-day Labor Day Holiday. The panel is expected to again take up deliberations on Tuesday. The same day, a motion of unknown content from Erwin’s attorney, Raj Maline, is scheduled to be heard by Judge Smith. That motion might, it is speculated, ask for the dismissal of the two charges pertaining to Erwin having aided and abetted Biane in receiving a bribe, based on Biane’s acquittal on the bribe-related charges.

It appears that the transformation of 2,450-acre Tres Hermanos Ranch, which lies at the confluence of San Benrardino, Los Angeles and Orange counties, will not be converted into more than 15,000 homes. Rather, the sprawling property now appears to be slated to be developed as a solar farm.
The ranch lies within and abuts Tonner Canyon, consisting of oak woodlands, riparian habitat, rolling hillsides, canyon creeks, cattle pastures and grazing land for longhorn steers, chaparral that offers cover for bobcats, mountain lions, skunks and opossum, scattered black walnut trees and glades that hum with the buzz of honey bees at certain times of the year. It was purchased by the City of Industry’s Redevelopment Agency for $12.1 million in 1978 from the heirs of the three magnates who acquired the ranch and gave it its name – Oil baron Tom Scott; Harry Chandler, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times; and William Rowland, son of John Rowland, who led pioneers over the Santa Fe Trail to California and the San Gabriel Valley in the 1840s.
With the close-out of all redevelopment agencies up and down the state in 2011, the property passed into the hands of the successor agency to the City of Industry Redevelopment Agency. There has been growing speculation that the property would be spun off to the highest bidder, meaning an entity intent on wringing from the land the most profit, which at this juncture would mean having it developed into a high density residential subdivision.
The oversight board to the successor agency last week, however, in a narrow 4-3 vote, called for selling the property to the City of Industry for $41.65 million. That bypasses an offer from GH America Inc. and its partner, South Coast Communities of Irvine, to take the property off the successor agency’s hands for $101 million. If that sale had been made, inevitably the developers would have mounted an effort including political donations, lobbying, building entitlement applications and legal action to force the cities of Diamond Bar, Chino Hills, Brea and the counties of San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange to make way for intensive development of the property.
In Chino Hills, the portion of Tres Hermanos Ranch within its boundaries is located on both sides of Grand Avenue in Chino Hills.
The oversight board is requiring the City of Industry to include a restrictive covenant that limits the use of the property to a renewable energy project, utility augmentation, open space, public use, and preservation.
According to Industry City Manager Paul Philips, the GH America/South Coast Communities offer entailed no such restrictive covenant. The lower cost will give the purchaser greater leeway toward developing the property into a renewable energy enterprise, Phillips said.
According to Industry officials, much of the acreage will remain undisturbed or will otherwise be committed toward recreational and open space purposes.
One impetus toward utilizing the property for a solar project is that there is solid opposition from nearby residents and local governments to developing the property residentially.
Under Chino Hills’ current general plan, the property on its side of the city limits could be developed to an intensity of no more 467 housing units. In Diamond Bar, the number of units there at present could not exceed 624. .But zoning and density restrictions can be changed through council action. Developmental interests, by providing money to the campaign funds of the decision-makers, could persuade them to significantly alter those standards and limitations.
Despite the words of comfort offered by City of Industry officials with regard to maintaining open space, there were no commitments within Industry’s documents to guaranteeing property within the confines of Tres Hermanos Ranch will be off limits for development once the conversion is under way. This has alarmed some Chino Hills residents.
Moreover, there are a number of residents in both Chino Hills, Diamond Bar and Orange County who are uncomfortable with constructing a solar farm on the property.
A common theme among many who attended the hearing in Industry last week was that the City of Industry, which has a considerable history of graft and corruption among its elected leadership, cannot be trusted. Industry officials, however, said that if the outlying communities are patient, they will be satisfied when the completed plans on the proposal are released.   –Mark Gutglueck

The short term victory opponents of the sale of medical marijuana in Upland registered in 2015 has redounded to what now appears to be their lasting detriment in the wake of a California Supreme Court ruling which will prevent those opponents from using that tactic ever again. Moreover, the decision has now opened the door for the city to, potentially, impose taxes on city residents unilaterally, bypassing the need for the city’s voters to approve the imposition of those taxes.
In October 2014, the California Cannabis Coalition began collecting signatures in Upland for a petition seeking to place a measure on the ballot calling for the city’s ban on medical marijuana dispensaries to be overturned. The measure specified locating the clinics in a relatively limited area along Foothill Boulevard on the far west end of the city, limited the number of operations allowed to sell marijuana to three, and imposed a $75,000 annual per-dispensary fee to pay for licensing and inspections of and regulation and enforcement at and around the establishments.
The petition gatherers went beyond the requirement of getting the signatures of ten percent of the number of registered voters who had voted in the previous election, which would have required that the vote be put on the ballot at the next regularly scheduled municipal election. They managed to collect 6,865 signatures, 5,736 of which were verified by the registrar of voters office as having been signed by registered voters in the city, a number of signatures equivalent to more than 15 percent of the voters participating in the previous election. This triggered a requirement that the ballot measure be placed before the voters in a more timely fashion, in a so-called special election to be held no more than 105 days after the city council accepted the city clerk’s verification of the petition signatures. Thus, the City of Upland appeared to be mandated to hold the election in either May or June of 2015.
A group of Upland residents, consistent with their social and fiscal conservatism, was miffed at the taxpayers having to hold and pay the cost of an off-year election. Even more, they were concerned that the backers of the initiative, who were well aware that on balance Upland’s residents were opposed to marijuana availability in their city, were pushing to have a referendum on the issue in the forum of a special election because of the advantage a special election would provide the initiative’s proponents. Special elections normally have poor voter turnout. In such an electoral forum, proponents would be able to conduct an aggressive and energetic social media and networking campaign among that portion of the city’s electorate most favorably inclined to the accessibility to medical marijuana and marijuana use in general, initiative opponents feared. If this effort to drive enough voters inclined to support dispensaries in Upland to the polls worked and a significant portion of the city population opposed to the concept of open access failed to participate, the initiative’s opponents reckoned the measure might prevail.
Seeking to head off such an eventuality, those adamantly opposed to marijuana availability in Upland convinced the three-member majority of the city council – then-Mayor Ray Musser, councilwoman Carol Timm and then-councilman Glenn Bozar, who were already philosophically opposed to Upland hosting such marijuana clinics – to assist them in stymieing the California Cannabis Coalition’s effort. City attorney Richard Adams, sensing the direction the council majority wanted to take, researched the issue and referenced Section 17.158.100 of the coalition sponsored initiative, Article XIII C Section 1(e) of the California Constitution and Proposition 26 approved by California’s voters in 2010 in propounding a theory that the initiative vote could be held off until the November 2016 general municipal election in Upland. The referenced section of the initiative calls for levying a $75,000 “fee” upon the applicants for a dispensary license. Adams said that the California Constitution and Proposition 26 required that any tax to be levied upon local residents by a municipality must be approved by voters at a general municipal election. The fee designated in the Upland marijuana dispensary initiative qualified as a tax, Adams reasoned, and this gave the council leeway to postpone the initiative election until the following year. The council took official action to do just that.
This was not the end of the matter, however, as the Cannabis Coalition, bankrolled by Randy Welty, the owner of the Tropical Lei strip club and a would-be operator of one of the marijuana clinics envisioned in the initiative, retained famed constitutional rights attorney Roger Diamond to file on behalf of the coalition as well as on behalf of the Upland voters who signed the voter petitions a legal petition for a writ of mandate with San Bernardino Superior Court. In that writ, Diamond stated the California Elections Code Section 9214 and Article 2, Section 11 of the California Constitution required that the city hold the special election that year and that Adams had misinterpreted Article 13c of the California Constitution as applying to a voter initiated initiative when it applies exclusively to an initiative sponsored by a public entity such as a city.
“By its conduct respondents [i.e., Upland city officials] are violating the California constitutional guarantee of the right of initiative and petitioners’ rights under Elections Code Section 9214. There is no conflict between Article 13c of the California Constitution and Elections Code Section 9214,” Diamond asserted in the filing for a writ of mandate.
Furthermore, according to Diamond, the city of Upland mislabeled the $75,000 fee specified in the initiative as a tax. “Petitioners’ proposed medical marijuana dispensary initiative ordinance does not impose any general tax,” Diamond’s filing stated. “Article 13c, Section 1 of the California Constitution defines a ‘general tax’ as ‘any tax imposed for general governmental purposes.’ Petitioners submitted evidence to respondents demonstrating conclusively that the $75,000.00 annual licensing and inspection fee established by proposed Section 17.158.100 of the proposed medical marijuana dispensary initiative petition would not be a general tax but rather a regulatory fee. Without any support in the record whatsoever, respondents have asserted and have allegedly based their position on the false claim that Section 17.158.100 is a general tax.”
The matter came before Judge David Cohn in San Bernardino on Tuesday, May 19. 2015. After Cohn got Adams, assistant city attorney James Touchstone and Diamond to agree to have the matter adjudicated by motion, i.e., on the basis of his ruling rather than through a court trial, he angled most of his questions at Diamond, pressing him to controvert the city’s assertion that the $75,000 fee is a tax. Though Diamond asserted that the city had “artificially minimized” the cost of background checks, licensing processing, follow-up inspections and investigations to a maximum of $56,540 and had acted similarly in making a claim that enforcement and prosecutions of violations would run no more than another $10,000, Cohn asked Diamond to provide a more exact estimation of those costs. Cohn then seized upon Diamond’s statement that “You cannot come up with an exact mathematical figure when you are talking about a future event,” to assert that city had offered an exact figure consisting of total itemized costs of $66,540, which was under the $75,000 specified in the initiative. Cohn ruled in favor of the city. Undeterred, Diamond appealed the matter to the Fourth District Appellate Court, which reversed Cohn, ruling in favor of the California Cannabis Coalition. With the clock ticking toward the 2016 election, the city appealed the matter to the California Supreme Court, again delaying the election in a move widely seen as a stalling tactic. Indeed, the anti-marijuana availability forces prevailed, at least temporarily, claiming tactical victory when the initiative was ultimately placed on the November 2016 ballot with other general municipal election items regularly scheduled for that year, at which time the city’s voters soundly defeated the initiative, which had been given the nomenclature Measure U, with 64.38 percent voting against it and 35.62 percent voting in favor of it.
Despite the city’s show of force, it was having severe difficulty covering the legal fees to keep the California Cannabis Coalition and Diamond at bay. Significantly, the position the city had taken – that the fee was a tax – was at a variance from the position taken by practically every other city in the state, as governments in general are in favor of expanding their ability to raise revenues rather than curtail them. For that reason, in May 2016, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association jumped at the chance to come in and carry on the battle when it appeared the city was staggering under the financial weight of continuing.
With the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association representing the city at no cost, the matter remained before the California Supreme Court, even after the point of whether the actual initiative vote would take place before the 2016 election became moot. To the California Cannabis Coalition and Diamond, a determination as to whether the City of Upland had been justified under the California Constitution to deprive those who had qualified their petition for a vote lived on.
On Monday, August 28, the California Supreme Court ruled Upland officials overstepped their authority when they denied the initiative proponents the opportunity to have the matter voted upon in a special election after they secured the requisite number of signatures to do so.
The matter proved to be a highly complex one with a multitude of issues pivoting around the central gravitas of whether the voters’ rights to utilize the initiative process is compromised by the limits put into the State Constitution relating to the imposition of taxes.
In the Supreme Court’s majority opinion, authored by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, a clash between those two principles, an “interplay of two constitutional provisions” was acknowledged. Cuellar wrote that “multiple provisions of the State Constitution explicitly constrain the power of local governments to raise taxes.” Those, however, come up against, Cuellar noted, “the people’s initiative power.” In that context, he said, “We will not lightly apply such [taxing] restrictions on local governments to voter initiatives, ‘one of the most precious rights of our democratic process.’”
The City of Upland erred in its blurring of the distinction between a citizen-sponsored initiative and one put on the ballot by the city itself through the authority of its city council, Cuellar said.
Even the dissenting opinion, written by Justice Leondra Kruger, upheld the idea that the city should have put the measure on a special election ballot.
“I agree with the majority that the city council erred in refusing the request,” she stated, but said her reasoning was “narrow. The city council should have put the initiative on the special election ballot and left questions about the validity of the fee to be sorted out in the courts. That conclusion would suffice to dispose of this case, which, as the majority says, is now moot in any event. A tax passed by voter initiative, no less than a tax passed by vote of the city council, is a tax of the local government, to be collected by the local government, to raise revenue for the local government. None of this could have been lost on the electorate that, also by initiative, amended the California Constitution to set ground rules for voter approval of local taxes.”
An upshot of the entire case is that the previously assumed protection that taxpayers had which prevented local governments from imposing taxes on their constituents without getting those who are to pay the tax to approve it by a majority vote has been compromised. An option now open to those who want to levy a tax without such a vote is that they can have a group of citizens ostensibly independent of City Hall carry out a petition-gathering drive for an initiative containing a tax provision, get the requisite number of signatures on petitions to put the issue on the ballot and then present the initiative to the city council. At that point, under current California law, a city council has two options: it can place the initiative on the ballot or, on its own authority, adopt the initiative by a vote of the council. This offers a way of bypassing the voters in imposing a tax on them.
Diamond told the Sentinel that the Cannabis Coalition achieved victory with the Supreme Court ruling in that, “This sets a precedent so that those who are seeking to have an early election through the initiative process, in the form of a special election on any measure, even if that measure means a tax will be imposed, cannot be denied. The Supreme Court said the right to a speedy election trumps, if I can use that word, a different provision of the State Constitution guaranteeing that a vote on taxes will be held during a general election.”
Diamond said, “This was a very complicated case,” which led to an outcome at least some of those who had precipitated it did not intend. One of those unintended consequences includes removing the taxpayer protection provision that requires that a taxing initiative originating with the government for a specific purpose must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the voters. The Supreme Court ruling compromises that.
Of tremendous moment with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Diamond said, was that a ruling along the lines that Supreme Court made will open the flood gates for citizen initiatives entailing tax components that need only a majority vote to pass.
The anti-tax forces “really did screw themselves” in pursuing the case, Diamond said, explaining, “One of the arguments the attorneys for the Howard Jarvis Association were making was that if the appellate court’s decision was allowed to stand as the final decision, you are going to have the hypothetical problem created by the collusion of an unethical city council and mayor where they could have a citizens’ petition done by city employees who drafted it do the dirty work of a city council that wants to give those city employees raises and do all sorts of things bad politicians and corrupt city employees would want to do with that kind of tax money. So once the initiative got enough valid signatures, it would go before the city council and under the initiative petition process the city council would have the option of putting it on the ballot for a vote where people could vote for or against it or the council could just approve it on their own. This illicit collusion would be a way for unethical politicians to arrange it so there would not be a vote of the people. They could manipulate the initiative process to deprive the voters of their right to approve taxes. Once they have that, thereafter they would be able to bypass the electorate altogether and have the city council vote for it. And they are right, that could happen. But the court said that a lot of circumstances could happen and that if something like that comes up they would deal with it at that time, but that they would not rule against us on those grounds because those were extraordinary circumstances that might not occur.”
Within the realm of the intended rather than the unintended consequences, Diamond said, the city had fared no better.
“The city was trying to argue that the $75,000 wasn’t a fee and that it was a tax and that fees are exempt from certain restrictions whereas taxes are not,” Diamond said. “The city was making a legal argument that was the opposite of what they would normally argue. As it turned out, it didn’t matter because the Supreme Court ruled that whether it was fee or a tax, the petitioners were still entitled to a speedy election. The petitioners have the right to get an early election without having to sue the city in advance. The court favored letting the initiative go to the ballot. They [the city] can then sue if they think the provisions are invalid. The Supreme Court’s ruling shifts the burden to those who would challenge the constitutionality of an initiative. Under this ruling, the city cannot force the proponents of a measure to go to court prior to an election to get relief.”
A perhaps minor consideration is the monetary price the City of Upland will now have to bear because of the ploy it used in denying the petitioners their right to a speedy election. Diamond has yet to make a motion to recover his fees from the city, but that is anticipated. He said his application for reimbursement should come in under $100,000. “It will be for something less than that,” Diamond said. “I work very fast. The work in trial court went by very fast because we were trying to get to trial court as quickly as possible. I submitted documents, which mostly came from the city and I had arguments one day in court. There wasn’t a protracted trial. It was done by oral arguments and submissions. The work with the appellate court was just a writ and some arguments. I had to go to San Francisco [for the arguments before the Supreme Court]. It was complicated in terms of the implication for the city but not all that involved on my end. I haven’t totaled the hours at this point. I would say I’m probably beneath $100,000.”
At the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association they are ruing the day they took up the Upland case.
“They were very upset with the decision,” said Diamond.
Based upon the language in the decision, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association must be more vigilant than ever in monitoring local governments and the support networks they have which will use the precedent set in the Upland case to place before voters initiatives that have taxes layered into them and which can now be approved by a simple majority vote rather than the two-thirds threshold previously needed.   -Mark Gutglueck

Mike Gallagher, one of the more successful developers in the High Desert for well over three decades, a major contributor to political candidates and a would-be office holder himself whose foray into politics ended disastrously, has died.
Friendly and earnest, Gallagher built homes in the county area that would later be incorporated to become the City of Hesperia. Gallagher took pride in constructing high-quality single family homes. He later moved into the arena of commercial projects. Perhaps his most intensive mark on the landscape is the development  near the confluence of Ranchero Road and Interstate 15, including that within the Hesperia City Limits and in the unincorporated area of Oak Hills. While most builders working in the High Desert sought to construct homes that were more affordable as a consequence of the lower land prices in the desert and Gallagher took advantage of the low land acquisition costs the High Desert provided, he did not hesitate to experiment with building high end custom homes on large lots that sold for prices approaching $1 million, a first in the High Desert. That bold move redounded not only to his benefit but that of many of the homeowners in the area who saw an escalation in their home equity.
Gallagher was an unabashed advocate of pro-growth politicians at both the city and county level in San Bernardino County’s High Desert. In 1992, when a sufficiently aggressive advocate for the development community failed to emerge to challenge then-incumbent First District supervisor Marsha Turoci, Gallagher allowed himself to be talked into throwing his hat into the ring. He put on a spirited campaign which was largely self-funded. Along the way he paid a woman, Victorville printing business owner Jan Early, to provide his campaign with signs, brochures, door hangers and flyers and mailers.
The team that materialized around Gallagher that year had little experience and even less expertise in running political campaigns. Despite that, Gallagher made a strong showing, almost preventing Turoci from gathering the needed majority vote in the June primary to force a runoff. As it turned out, those challenging Turoci fell just short, gathering collectively 24,208 votes to Turcoci’s 24,358. Gallagher garnered 17,197 votes or roughly 35 percent; Richard D. Hall polled 4,411 or 9 percent and Paul Sheriff, Jr. claimed 2,600 votes or roughly 5 percent. Thus Turoci claimed 50.1544 percent of the vote, narrowly avoiding a showdown against Gallagher that November.
Gallagher moved back into private life, continuing to build, albeit at a less feverish pace as a consequence of the 1992 recession. A whole year went by and then in March 1994, seemingly from out of nowhere and with Turoci in ascendancy and moving toward becoming the chairwoman of the board of supervisors, Gallagher was blindsided when then-district attorney Dennis Kottmeier charged Gallagher and Early with campaign fund laundering.
On May 29, 1992, just a few days before the primary election, Gallagher wrote two checks totaling $10,758.25 to Early.
Early, donated $10,000 to the Non-Partisan Public Policy Advocates of Tustin, an arm of Ellis/Hart Associates, Inc., a political consulting firm that had done work on the Gallagher campaign.
The district attorney’s office alleged that this constituted an effort by Gallagher, who was then 44, to launder the money that had originated with himself through Early, which was then passed on to Non-Partisan Public Policy Advocates, then Ellis/Hart Associates and finally to his own campaign.
Gallagher, having lost his stomach for being a political candidate himself, rather than allowing his political associates and friends to suffer over the matter or squandering a significant amount of money on mounting a defense, pleaded out to a reduced charge.
But he immediately returned to being a campaign bankroller rather than a candidate, doing so with a vengeance. Later that year, money Gallagher put up for Dennis Stout in his challenge of Kottmeier for district attorney convinced Kottmeier to not seek reelection. In 1996, with substantial monetary assistance from Gallagher, then-Apple Valley Mayor Kathy Davis challenged and defeated Turoci. One of the issues used against Turoci in that election was the manner in which what many considered to be a below-the-belt prosecution of Gallagher had been orchestrated by Kottmeier, one of Turoci’s political allies.
Throughout the remainder of his life, Gallagher continued to be a major political campaign donor, particularly in those city and county races in the arena within which his development efforts took place. Gallagher threw himself into the development trade and was particularly active and influential in and around Hesperia.
Gallagher died a week ago, felled by a massive heart attack. He had multiple projects in the works at the time of his death.
A devout Catholic, Gallagher is survived by his wife and two children. His passing deprives him of seeing the completion of the Ranchero Road Interchange, a project furthered and made necessary by his development activity in that district.

Construction of the Big Lots distribution center in Apple Valley that has been put on hold since spring will now likely move ahead with the settling of three lawsuits against the town over its decision not to require an environmental impact report for the project.
Two environmental organizations – the Sierra Club and the Golden State Environmental Justice Alliance (GSEJA) – along with a labor union, the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), moved to block the project in March with three separate suits.
A primary issue raised by the three plaintiffs was that the town had entered what is referred to as a mitigated negative declaration in approving the project. Many or most projects of large scope entail as part of the approval process an environmental impact report which puts on the record ahead of time the anticipated impacts that the project will have on the area immediately surrounding the project, including traffic, water use, drainage, air quality, sound, potential generation of hazards, etc. Those reports can outline measures to be taken to offset those impacts. In the approval process, the responsible entity – such as the town council – can mandate that those impacts be redressed. The decision-making body also has the leeway to declare that the benefits of the project outrun any negative consequences and approve it on that basis.
Another option is to declare, after sizing up the project, that there is no substantial evidence that the project or any of its aspects could result in significant adverse impacts. This is called a negative declaration. Similarly, a mitigated negative declaration certifies that any elements of the project that may potentially have a significant effect on
the environment were identified but that the project incorporates measures or elements to reduce those impacts to a less-than-significant level. A negative declaration or mitigated negative declaration mimics in abbreviated form an environmental impact report in that it offers a short description of the proposed project, presents findings related to environmental conditions, includes a copy of the initial study which documents the reasons to support the findings, and includes mitigation measures, if any, included in the project to avoid potentially significant effects.
In 2006, the Town of Apple Valley approved the North Apple Valley Industrial Specific Plan, which applies to 6,600 acres. From the outset of the proposal to build the $120 million Big Lots distribution facility in 2014, the town sought to have it considered as a subproject within the specific plan, such that it would not require its own environmental impact report.
After the town council allowed the application to proceed without a full environmental impact report and instead made a mitigated negative declaration that made reference to the North Apple Valley Industrial Specific Plan, the plaintiffs, citing violations of the California Environmental Quality Act, filed suit.
Within the last week, however, the litigation was settled short of trial and now work on the 1.3-million-square-foot warehousing and distribution facility located north of the Apple Valley Airport near Navajo Road and LaFayette Street, can proceed. According to the city, it will be “one of only five existing Big Lots distribution centers in North America.” The Apple Valley Big Lots Distribution Center will replace the company’s current facility in Rancho Cucamonga. The other four distribution centers are located in Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.
“The latest project developments are good news for jobseekers in the High Desert as the project will serve as a catalyst in attracting continued economic and industrial growth, not only to Apple Valley but the entire High Desert,” said Orlando Acevedo, Apple Valley’s assistant director of economic development and housing, “It’s good to see the project moving forward.”
Acevedo was unwilling to say how the dispute over the need for the environmental impact report was resolved. Nor would he clarify whether future projects falling within the boundaries of the North Apple Valley Industrial Specific Plan might be subject to challenges similar to that which the Big Lots warehouse endured.
“Apple Valley is ripe to capture Southern California’s next wave of economic growth,” said Apple Valley Mayor, Scott Nassif. “We offer a cost-competitive alternative to the rising costs and shrinking space for large scale industrial projects in the Inland Empire, which is one of the nation’s hottest industrial markets.”
We are excited to see another transportation option for our residents,” said councilwoman Barb Stanton. with regard to a bus route extension to north Apple Valley. “This new route will provide workers from across the high desert the opportunity to work right here in Apple Valley.” -Mark Gutglueck

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
My recent exchange with my friend, John Kalita, a professor of history, has me fearing for the impoverishment of the American educational system. John has an undergraduate degree in history from Fullerton University, an M.A. at Fullerton and a Ph.D. from Claremont. He has taught at 25 different colleges, U.C.L.A., Dominguez Hills, Cal Poly, Fullerton and Long Beach among them, and 17 community colleges. He told me a bevy of horror stories about the diminution in academic standards. I have space here only for a few, which I pass along with the hope that they might resonate with some salutary effect…
He tells me that he was teaching a course at L.A. City College – European History through 1789. Some 60 students signed up for the class and showed up for the first class. Upon hearing that there was going to be written work as part of the coursework, something like a dozen dropped the class on the spot. After three-and-a-half months, 16 students were left. Six showed up for the final. The ten who missed the final also failed to turn in term papers. All six who showed up for the final passed, with a collective average of about 80 percent. John felt compelled to flunk the ten who failed to take the final or do the term paper. John is now on the verge of losing his teaching position because he had the temerity of flunking those who would not perform academically…
Another one of John’s students, a young lady in another class, came to him in a panic as the semester was nearing an end. It seems, she was aware she was on the verge of flunking because she had not completed a book report. John gave her a break and let here turn in the work late. When she did so, John flunked her. He was summoned into the the dean’ of students office. The dean was rather upset. She wanted to know why John had flunked the young lady. After all, the dean said, the student had completed the book report and now she was threatening both suicide and a lawsuit. John told me he told the dean that the problem was that the book report consisted of a word-for-word reproduction of the narrative contained on the book’s dust jacket. The dean said that John had to be understanding because this was simply an act of “inadvertent plagiarism….”
One further example he gave pertained to several members of an athletic team who were taking the same class. They turned in the same term paper. When asked why, they said, “We’re on the football team and as teammates we have synchronized thoughts. We all thought the same words at the same time…”
John says he now routinely tells his students that the first tip on not getting a flunking grade is to not turn in a paper that concludes “copyright Wikipedia 2017…”
“Students today are not in school to get the most they can out of taking the class,” John said. “They are interested only in trying to see how much work they can get out of while taking the class…”

By Mark Gutglueck
There is less than perfect agreement among historians with regard to the year of Don Antonio Maria Lugo’s birth. Multiple sources say he was born in 1775. Another dates his birth as occurring in 1778. There is a further discrepancy with regard to whether he was born in the New or Old World. The City of San Bernardino’s website states that he was born in Spain. H. D. Barrows, who knew him and interviewed him extensively in 1856, which was some four years before Lugo’s death, in 1896 wrote Lugo “was born at the Mission of San Antonio de Padua, of Alta California.” Mission San Antonio de Padua was located in what is present day Jolon, California, which at that time was within New Spain. It is perhaps because California was at that time land under the crown of Spain that the confusion as to Lugo’s birthplace exists. There is no dispute that he was the seventh son of Francisco Salvador Lugo or that he became one of the largest land-owners and stock raisers outside of the missionary establishments in California.
In 1795, Don Antonio married Dolores Ruis, by whom he had ten children. After her death, he married as his second wife Maria Antonia German, by whom he had several children.
As a young man, he served for 17 years as a soldier of the king of Spain in the garrison at the Presidio of Santa Barbara.
Sometime around 1807, he took a few head of horses and cattle south to Los Angeles, and engaged in a small way, as his service as a soldier had not yet ended, in the business of stock-raising along the banks of the Los Angeles River. In 1810, Corporal Lugo received his discharge and settled with his family in the Pueblo de Los Angeles and was given a grant title to settle on seven leagues of land, or 30,998.8 acres, what became known as the Rancho de San Antonio. In 1813, the same year his son José del Carmen Lugo was born, he constructed a hacienda on that property near the present City of Compton. The rancho stretched from the Dominguez or San Pedro Rancho, one of the four most ancient grants in Alta California, nearly to the low range of hills separating it from the San Gabriel Valley, and from the eastern boundary of the Pueblo Ranch to the San Gabriel River, according to Barrows. It was considered one of the finest cattle ranges in the territory, with an abundance of water on it and on both sides of it, as the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers had not yet been converted for irrigation purposes, and there were lines of live willows extending along their banks nearly to the sea.
He served as Alcalde or Mayor of Los Angeles from 1816 to 1819.
In 1818, according to an account by Stephen C. Foster, “the pirate Bouchard had alarmed the inhabitants of this coast, and Corporal Antonio Maria Lugo received orders to proceed to Santa Barbara with all the force the little town could spare.” Lugo, expecting the pirates would land at or near the Ortega Ranch, descended upon them rapidly and unexpectedly there, taking several of crew members captive, including one named Joseph Chapman and another described by Foster as “a negro named Fisher, the only one of the rogues who showed fight.” Lugo employed one of his men, a Corporal Ruis, to lasso Fisher, who was “brought head over heels, sword and all” and bound to Santa Barbara, where he was left in the custody of those there. Both Chapman and Fisher spoke English.
Some two weeks later, Lugo started with Chapman for Los Angeles, where according to Foster, “Dona Dolores Lugo, (wife of Don Antonio,) who, with other wives, was anxiously waiting, as she stood after nightfall in the door of her house, heard the welcome sound of cavalry and the jingle of their spurs as they defiled along the path north of Fort Hill. They proceeded to the guard house, which then stood on the north side of the Plaza across upper Main Street. She heard the orders given, for the citizens still kept watch and ward; and presently she saw two horsemen mounted on one horse, advancing across the plaza toward the house, and heard the stern but welcome greeting, ‘Ave Maria Purlsima,’ upon which the children hurried to the door and kneeling, with clasped hands, uttered their childish welcome, and received their father’s benediction. The two men dismounted. The one who rode the saddle was a man fully six feet high, of a spare but sinewy form, which indicated great strength and activity. He was then forty-three years of age. His black hair, sprinkled with gray, and bound with a black handkerchief, reached to his shoulders. The square-cut features of his closely shaven face indicated character and decision, and their naturally stern expression was relieved by an appearance of grim humor — a purely Spanish face. He was in the uniform of a cavalry soldier of that time, the cura blanca, a loose fitting surtout [a frock coat, of the kind worn by cavalry officers over their uniforms in the 18th and early 19th centuries], reaching to below the knees, made of buckskin, doubled and quilted so as to be arrowproof; on his left arm he carried an adargi, an oval shield of bull’s hide, and his right hand held a lance, while a high-crowned, heavy vicuna hat surmounted his head. Suspended from his saddle were a carbine and a long straight sword. The other was a man about twenty-five years of age, perhaps a trifle taller than the first. His light hair and blue eyes indicating a different race, and he wore the garb of a sailor. The expression of his countenance seemed to say, ‘I am in a bad scrape; but I reckon I’ll work out somehow.’ The senora politely addressed the stranger, who replied in an unknown tongue. Her curiosity made her forget her feelings of hospitality, and she turned to her husband for an explanation. ‘Whom have you here, viejito (old man)?’
– ‘He is a prisoner we took from that buccaneer — may the devil sink her — scaring the whole coast, and taking holiest men away from their homes and business. I have gone his security.’
-‘And what is his name and country?’
-‘None of us understand his lingo, and he don’t understand ours. All I can find out is, his name is Jose and he speaks a language they call English.’
-‘Is he a Christian or a heretic?’
-‘I neither know nor care. He is a man and a prisoner in my charge, and I have given the word of a Spaniard and a soldier, to my old comandante for his safe keeping and good treatment. I have brought him fifty leagues, on the crupper behind me, for he can’t ride without something to hold to. He knows no more about a horse than I do about a ship, and be sure and give him the softest bed. He has the face of an honest man, if we did catch him among a set of thieves, and he is a likely looking young fellow. If he behaves himself we will look him up a wife among our pretty girls, and then, as to his religion the good Padre will settle all that. And now, esposita mia (good wife), I have told you all I know, for you women must know everything, but we have had nothing to eat since morning; so hurry and give us the best you have.’”
According to Foster, Lugo’s decision to treat his Yankee prisoner, Joseph Chapman, humanely turned out to be a propitious one. Chapman became the first English speaking settler in Los Angeles. He assisted Lugo in bringing timber down from the mountains, with which a a church was constructed. Within a few years he was able to speak Spanish to the point of being understood. Having mastered horsemanship, Chapman accompanied Lugo to Santa Barbara, where an introduction was made to Sergeant Ortega and Chapman then took as his wife Sergeant Ortega’s daughter, Senorita Guadalupe Ortega. Lugo stood as sponsor at the wedding; Lugo then set out with the newly-nuptialed Mr. and Mrs. Chapman on horseback on the long road from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. Chapman and his bride rode the same horse.
In 1821, Mexico obtained independence from Spain. All the territories of New Spain, including California, fell under the dominion of the new country and became subject to Mexican rule.
In 1833 and 1834, Lugo served as the juez del campo, or judge of the plains, for the Southern California region. In this office he was called upon to settle differences between rancheros relating to conflicts over boundaries, the ownership of cattle, and the like. His power of adjudication was absolute; there was no appeal from his decisions. His appointment as judge was a remarkable one in that Lugo could neither read nor write.
With three of his sons, Don Antonio Lugo purchased for $800 in hides and tallow the Rancho San Bernardino from the Mexican Government in 1842. Rancho San Bernardino consisted of Colton, San Bernardino, Highland, Loma Linda, Redlands and Yucaipa. Lugo was able to close the dealt because the Mexican government wanted to secure the land from outside encroachers and hostile Indians. Selling it to Lugo, who intended to use it for cattle raising and other agricultural purposes, suited the government’s goals.
An assistencia – an extension of the San Gabriel Mission – had been established near what is the present day boundary between Redlands and Loma Linda by Spanish priests in 1819. It was called the San Bernardino de Sena Estancia. But the Mexican Government had forced the Spanish missionaries out of the missions and the assistencia in the 1820s. When Lugo became interested in the San Bernardino Valley, he had both altruistic and selfish concerns with regard to the abandonment of the assistencia. The indigenous population was subsisting on the grounds of the assitencia, in dire poverty and in danger of perishing. Lugo was conscious, as well, of the tendency of some native tribal members to engage in marauding of the cattle herds. Shortly after he bought the Rancho, Don Antonio appealed to the governor to assign Father Jose Zalvidea, formerly of the San Gabriel Mission, to set up an operation at the assistencia, and in so doing alleviate the suffering of the Indians.The text of his letter, which he dictated but which was written down by a scribe, provides an insight into Lugo’s character, his regard for the physical well-being and souls of the Indians intermixed with his effort to ensure that a church and armed parish priest with a flock of Christian devotees might stand as a bulwark against hostile Indians and make sure his livestock were safeguarded. The governor never responded to that request, and so his son made his home at the assistencia, where he offered employment and protection to the Indians there.
At the San Bernardino Rancho, the numbers of cattle grew as they had at the San Antonio Rancho.
During his life, Lugo lived under Spanish rule, then Mexican rule and then American rule. In his orientation, and throughout his life, he remained, according to H.D. Barrows, “in most respects as thoroughly a Spaniard as if he had been born and reared in Spain.” Though he functioned as a member of both the Spanish and Mexican establishments, he bridled though did not rebel under the dictates and impositions of the Mexican governmental authority. After Mexican American War and the Bear Flag Revolt placed California in the hands of the Americans, he remarked “‘So the Mexicans have sold California to the Americans for $15,000,000, and thrown us natives into the bargain? I don’t understand how they could sell what they never had, for since the time of the king, we sent back every governor they ever sent here. With the last they sent 300 soldiers to keep us in order, but we sent him with his ragamuffins back too. However, you Americans have got the country; and must have a government of your own, for the laws under which we have lived will not suit you.”
According to Barrows, “He looked upon the coming of the Americans as the incursion of an alien element, bringing with them as they did, alien manners and customs, and a language of which he knew next to nothing, and desired to know less. With ‘Los Yankees,’’ as a race, he, and the old Californians generally, had little sympathy, although individual members of that race whom from long association he came to know intimately, and who spoke his language, he learned to esteem and respect most highly, as they in turn, learned most highly to esteem and respect him, albeit, his civilization differed in some respects radically from theirs.”
Barrows said, “He retained to the last the essential characteristics which he inherited from his Spanish ancestors; and although he had as was very natural no liking for Americans themselves, as a rule, or for their ways, nevertheless, he and all of the better class of native Californians of the older generations did have a genial liking for individual Americans and other foreigners, who, in long and intimate, social and business intercourse, proved themselves worthy of their friendship and confidence. His daughter,Maria Merced Lugo, married Stephan C. Foster, an American who served in the California Constitutional Convention in 1849, and was elected to the State Senate and was elected as the first mayor of Los Angeles in 1856 under United States military rule, and was later elected for four terms to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Lugo remained engaged as a California cattle baron, living primarily in San Bernardino, When the Mormons arrived in California in 1850, he entered into negotiations with them and in 1851 Sold Rancho San Bernardino to them for $77,000.
After the sale of San Bernardino, the Lugos returned to Los Angeles. In 1860, Don Antonio Maria Lugo died at his hacienda on Rancho San Antonio near present day Compton.

Early this year, the City of Upland’s move to divest itself of its municipal fire department and annex the entirety of the city into a county fire service assessment zone to allow the county fire department to assume fire protection duty in Upland precipitated controversy. When Councilwoman Janice Elliott, who had initially lined up with her council colleagues in supporting the annexation, began indulging the questions and protests of her constituents who opposed the fire protection service change, the other members of the council became increasingly dismayed at her action. At the April 24, 2017 and May 8, 2017 Upland City Council meetings, the council adjourned itself into a closed session, during which the discussion went beyond the scope of subjects – potential or ongoing lawsuits, real estate transactions, contract negotiations, employee discipline or firing, and employee public union collective bargaining – that a public governing board can discuss outside the scrutiny of the public according to the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law.

Above is the third page of Exhibit A in the Sid Robinson investigation file, the minutes for the April 24 meeting of the Upland City Council, which show that the council selected Sid Robinson to act as the city’s representative at the May 4 meeting of the Southern California Association of Governments General Assembly.

Present during both the April 24 and May 8 closed door sessions was Steve Lambert of the 20/20 Network, the city’s public relations consultant. Shortly thereafter, Elliott approached the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office with concerns that the council had engage in violations of the Brown Act. The district attorney’s office launched a routine and low key investigation into the matter. When city officials learned of Elliott’s action, her already compromised position on the city council deteriorated even further and she became a de facto persona non grata on that panel. .An object demonstration of the low esteem in which Elliott was newly held came at the June 12 city council meeting when all four of her council colleagues voted to strip her of three of her most prestigious adjunct committee assignments. That move was widely seen as retaliation against her for having brought the district attorney’s office’s attention to the alleged Brown Act violations. The action against her did not escape the attention of the district attorney’s office, which intensified its investigation into the Upland situation. In short order, investigators, either through their own initiative or by tips provided by members of the Upland community, learned that councilman Sid Robinson was or once was a professional affiliate of both the 20/20 Network and Steve Lambert. Cross referencing Lambert’s presence at both the April 24 and May 8 city council meetings, where the Brown Act violations were alleged to have occurred, with his relationship with Robinson, investigators further learned that Robinson, since coming into office, had voted numerous times to approve the city’s payments to the 20/20 Network. Both Robinson and Lambert maintain that there is no conflict in the circumstance of the 20/20 Network performing contract work for the city and Robinson’s council service, since the contract was in place before Robinson acceded to the city council, Robinson has made no votes to alter or increase the contract and Robinson ended his affiliation with the 20/20 Network before he joined the city council.

This press release was prepared for the California Association of Governments by Steve Lambert of the 20/20 Network. Lambert and Upland City Councilman Sid Robinson maintain that Robinson ended his professional affiliation with the 20/20 Network in December 2016.

As chance would have it, at the April 21 meeting of the city council, the council appointed Sid Robinson to represent the city at the Southern California Association of Governments General Assembly Meeting on May 4, 2017. Lambert and the 20/20 Network have a contract to do public relations work with the Southern California Association of Governments. That, too, did not escape the investigators’ attention.
On July 21, the Sentinel published an article that reported on the investigations, both the original one into the alleged Brown Act violation and the one relating to Robinson and the 20/20 Network that ensued from it, and the issues being focused upon. Steve Lambert, Sid Robinson and Upland City Manager Martin Thouvenell took exception to the Sentinel’s report, and in short order lodged demands for retraction from the Sentinel. Lambert characterized the Sentinel’s journalistic coverage of the investigation as irresponsible, misleading, false, damaging to his company’s reputation, defamatory and libelous, as well as “wildly speculative and conspiratorial.” Robinson called the article “potentially libelous.” Thouvenell said the article contains “malicious and inaccurate statements.”
Beginning with the July 28 edition, the Sentinel has been publishing the documents and materials upon which the research for the July 21 article was based, providing in serial format exhibits within the district attorney’s office’s case file on the investigation into the Brown Act violation and Sid Robinson’s relationship with the 20/20 Network. The Sentinel is doing this so its readership can ascertain for itself whether the July 21 article was in any way unfair to Mr. Lambert, Mr. Robinson or Mr. Thouvenell and if the reporting went beyond the facts contained in the documentation the Sentinel relied upon in its research of the issues relating to the investigation. This week the Sentinel is publishing page three of Exhibit A, the minutes of the April 24 Upland City Council meeting at which councilman Robinson was designated the city’s representative at the May 4 Southern California Association of Governments General Assembly Meeting and the first page of Exhibit J, a February 2, 2017 Southern California Association of Governments press release prepared by Steve Lambert and the 20/20 Network.
While examining the individual investigative file exhibits piecemeal or in installments may provide the casual reader with insufficient context upon which to make any type of judgment, the reader should be able to orient him or herself to the germane issues by finding a copy of the July 21 Sentinel and reading the article “Robinson Denies Upland’s Contract With His Affiliate Constitutes A Conflict” and the July 28, August 4, August 11, August 18 and August 25 editions of Sentinel which included Sid Robinson investigative file exhibits showing how the original Brown Act investigation evolved to the point that the circumstance involving councilman Sid Robinson and his relationship to the 20/20 Network came into focus for the investigators.

The Utah serviceberry, amelanchier utahensis, is a xeric native deciduous shrub, a spreading plant which grows in the form of both a shrub or small tree to 16 feet in height. The serviceberry grows in varied habitats, from scrubby open slopes to woodlands and forests, and in drier areas on rimrock valleys, gullies and hillsides from sagebrush desert to middle elevations in mountains. It flowers from April to May and offers an edible fruit, summer ripening purple-black berries. It has brilliant yellow fall foliage.
Its flowers cluster on short racemes; the leaves are elliptical to oval, toothed above the middle in general so that the toothed grooves are visible only toward the top of the leaf. The Utah serviceberry blooms in short inflorescences of white flowers, each with five widely spaced narrow petals. The fruits are pomes.
It is browsed by desert bighorns, elk, and mule deer, as well as many birds and domesticated livestock.
This drought resistant/drought tolerant plant produces a sturdy, heavy and hard wood, though the trees are rarely large enough for commercial use. The hardness of the wood makes it suitable for use as the spindle of a fire drill and basket rims.
In San Bernardino County, these plants grow in the mid-to-eastern Mojave Desert and the eastern portion of the San Bernardino Mountains.
Because they are drought tolerant, these plants make excellent xeriscaping elements. The seeds are best harvested “green,” while the seed is fully formed but before the seed coat has hardened. The seeds should then be sown immediately in pots outdoors or in a cold frame. Stored seeds obtained early enough in the autumn can be given four weeks warm stratification before being left out in the winter to germinate in the spring. Otherwise the seeds are likely to be tardy in germinating, perhaps taking 18 months or more. When large enough to handle, prick the seedlings out into individual pots and grow them in a sheltered outdoor position, planting them out once they are eight inches or more tall. If there is sufficient seed, it is best to sow it thinly in an outdoor seedbed. Grow the seedlings for two years in the seedbed before planting them out into their permanent positions during the winter. Layering begun in the spring takes 18 months. Suckers should be divided in late winter. The suckers need to have been growing for 2 years before you dig them up, otherwise they will have insufficient roots. They then can be planted into their permanent positions.
The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked, or dried as a raisin substitute. The fruit is rich in iron and copper. It is produced in small clusters and is about one third of an inch in diameter.
By the end of June or a few weeks into July the berries ripen and come in various colors. The dark blue or black berries are plucked for jamming and are interchangeable for blueberries, with a similar but lighter taste than blueberries, and they work well in jellies, jams and pies.
Indians dried the berries and ate them all year long and used them to complement food.