Sixteen months into Kelly Frederick’s tenure as the chief executive officer at Ontario International Airport he has been forced out, felled by his resistance to the politically driven priorities of the airport authority’s board members.
In December 2015, the cities of Los Angeles and Ontario closed
a deal to return Ontario International Airport to what is essentially the control of Ontario after the megalopolis to the west had been managing the aerodrome for a half century and held title to it for more than three decades.
Roughly a month later, Ontario lured Fredericks, the president and CEO of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation and the de facto executive director of the T.F. Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island, to guide the city in its transition to ownership and operation of Ontario International. Fredericks officially began as Ontario Airport CEO in March 2016. He acknowledged he spent the first two months in Southern California getting oriented.
Beginning in 2011, Ontario’s civic leaders had launched what became an increasingly strident and acrimonious campaign to take the airport back from Los Angeles, a primary feature of which was a heavy personal attack on Gina Marie Lindsay, the executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, the corporate entity Los Angeles used to run its Department of Airports. Well prior to the City of Los Angeles capitulating and agreeing to return the airport to the city that bears its name, Ontario officials through a series of backroom maneuvers that were made public after the fact arranged for the creation of the Ontario International Airport Authority, which was meant to exist ostensibly as a regional joint powers authority but which in actuality is an extension of Ontario. Installed as two of its board members were Ontario City Council members Alan Wapner and Jim Bowman. A third member was Greg Devereaux, at that point San Bernardino County’s chief executive officer. Formerly, Devereaux had been Ontario city manager, and he maintained ties with the city.
In August, the Ontario International Authority board consented to hiring Mark Thorpe, who had previously worked on aviation service expansion at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and with Los Angeles World Airports, to serve as Ontario Airport’s chief development officer.
On November 2, 2016, the management switchover at Ontario International Airport from Los Angeles World Airports to the Ontario International Airport Authority was effectuated.
Fredericks was in some measure fixated upon transforming the airport into a truly international facility, and had made progress in expanding the number of flights to and from Mexico and establishing Ontario as a destination for Chinese commercial flights, having brokered a deal with a Chinese charter company to fly into the airport.
As Ontario International came to be fully under the control of Ontario and its political leaders, pressure escalated to free up the expanse of land surrounding the airport, which is considered to be a part of the airport’s footprint by virtue of ownership rights and control. At present, the lion’s share of that property is not being used for what is considered to be strictly-aviation related purposes but rather as a buffer. The elected officials on the board, as well as their elected colleagues, who are the recipients of largesse from developmental interests in terms of funding for their political campaigns, have been repeatedly importuned by those individuals and corporations bankrolling their political careers to free up the property so they can profiteer by acquiring it and converting it to either commercial or industrial use.
In their effort to please their campaign donors, the Ontario International Airport Authority’s board members have seized upon the representation that such development will represent economic growth.
Fredericks, however, considers the stampede to develop the property at the airport’s periphery a shortsighted stratagem that will perhaps provide an immediate shot in the arm for Ontario economically but which will be relatively short lived and will ultimately prove detrimental with regard to any future aviation-related expansion at the airport.
The differences between Fredericks and his political masters on the board were becoming increasingly evident as Fredericks dragged his feet in finalizing a master plan for the airport that would have included cataloging more than 200 acres in the immediate vicinity of the airport as surplus property to be actuated for sale in relatively short order.
Perceiving Fredericks as an obstructionist, the board as early as April began to send signals it was growing disenchanted with his leadership, while simultaneously waiting for him to conform his leadership with the board’s vision. When he did not, an effort to move him out as CEO began. One issue is his contract, a five-year compact guaranteeing him a minimal annual salary of $398,500.
On June 17, Frederick’s death knell sounded when the authority held a special closed door Saturday session, an almost unheard of event, in addition to its regularly scheduled meeting earlier that week at which the single, and signal, issue on the agenda to be addressed was Frederick’s performance evaluation.
This week, On July 5, the board held yet another closed-door session. Membership on the board has dwindled to four in the aftermath of Greg Devereaux’s exodus as the county chief executive officer four months ago. Emerging from that meeting of four, it was announced that Fredericks would no longer be running the airport, effective immediately. Wapner, as the president of the board, put out a prepared statement.
“Today Kelly J. Fredericks stepped down as the chief executive officer of the Ontario International Authority,” the statement attributed to Wapner said. “Both the commissioners and Kelly acknowledge that their approaches to the direction and management of Ontario International Airport Authority differ and that it would be mutually beneficial to part ways as Ontario International Airport Authority moves to the next phase of the airport’s development.
“On behalf of the OIAA, I commend Kelly for his leadership in successfully transitioning Ontario International Airport to local control,” Wapner continued. “During more than 16 months at the helm, Kelly and his team made significant progress in furthering our mission to make Ontario International Airport one of the most competitive, efficient, innovative and customer-friendly passenger, cargo and business airports in the United States. The airport is a key economic engine for the Inland Empire and Southern California, and plays a critical role in meeting the air transportation demands of one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. We thank Kelly for his service and wish him well in his future endeavors.”
With Devereaux’s conspicuous absence from the Ontario International Airport Authority Board and his departure as the county’s CEO, there have been recurrent hints that the board is considering hiring him to replace Fredericks.   –Mark Gutglueck

San Bernardino City Councilman John Valdivia announced Thursday what was already widely recognized in political circles: He is running for mayor.
In making his announcement, he furthered and made official his challenge of incumbent San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis, who announced in May that he is running for re-election in November 2018, which will be the first even-numbered year regular election for municipal office in San Bernardino since its original charter was approved in 1905.
That charter was supplanted by a new one approved by voters last year.
Both Valdivia and Davis stand ready to fight vigorously to stand at the top of the political heap in San Bernardino. While the mayoralty in the county seat and what still remains, though probably not for long, as the county’s most populous city was once considered a vaunted and enviable position, that is no longer the case. Over the last three decades, San Bernardino has earned a new reputation as one of the most dysfunctional municipalities in California and the nation. Consistently, San Bernardino has had a per capita murder rate that puts it at or near the top of any similarly sized city in the nation. And in 2012, it declared bankruptcy, making its exit from Chapter 9 protection just last month.
For Valdivia and Davis, their tenures in office have been overshadowed by the city’s challenges, negatives which both are seeking to transform into positive traction with voters. Davis, who has been given another year on his term as mayor as a consequence of the charter change, can make the claim that he guided the city during its extended exodus from bankruptcy, which was declared during the mayoralty of Patrick Morris, who preceded him in that position. In making his announcement, Valdivia used the J.C. Penney store in Inland Center Mall as the forum for kicking off the latest phase of his political career. The store reopened in 2016, an advance which Valdivia takes credit for. Since Norton Air Force Base was shuttered in 1994, San Bernardino has been on a downward economic spiral, with more and more businesses closing.
Valdivia holds himself out as the panacea to the city’s financial doldrums.
“San Bernardino needs new leadership with the capacity to unite our community, to engage our residents and attract employers, investors and resources that our community desperately seeks and deserves,” Valdivia said. “I want to serve as mayor to forge a path for success for the great community where I was born and raised. As a councilman, I fought hard to attract new jobs and improve city services in the 3rd Ward. As mayor, I will bring this same proven leadership to fight for all the residents of San Bernardino. There is no question that our senior citizens, our working families, our business community and those that have fallen on hard times need better city services. We need a mayor who is able to unite our community and engage residents to make San Bernardino the prosperous and safe city that it used to be.”
Supporting Valdivia in his bid are his council colleagues Benito Barrios, Henry Nickel and Bessine Richard.
An alliance between Nickel and Valdivia has been building for some time, though as recently as a year ago there was speculation that Nickel was also interested in running for mayor, which seemed to have the two on a trajectory towards rivalry. Richard was supported by Valdivia in her maiden council election bid in 2015, which resulted in a run-off between her and Roxanne Williams, which Richard won in February 2016. The longstanding alliance between Valdivia and Barrios has become something of a cliché in San Bernardino.
A vague alliance between the other three members of the council – Jim Mulvihill, Fred Shorett and Virginia Marquez – and Davis exists. This week, on Wednesday evening lessthan 24 hours before Valdivia made his announcement, Davis used his veto power as mayor to prevent an item that Valdivia, Nickel, Barrios and Richard had supported and which Mulvihill, Shorett and Marquez opposed waiving of franchise fees tow companies must pay for their handling of stolen or abandoned vehicles.
Another interesting perspective on the Valdivia-Davis rivalry is that Valdivia’s support network is primarily composed of Republicans. Davis’ political team is largely Democratic, though he was at least formerly a registered Republican. Davis’ Democratic connections would ostensibly seem to favor Davis, as voter registration in San Bernardino overwhelmingly favors Democrats, with 41,992 or 47.2 percent of the city’s 89,030 voters registered as Democrats and 24,236 or 27.2 percent registered as Republicans. But voter turnout in San Bernardino is notoriously poor, and with Republicans showing up to vote in far greater numbers than Democrats, the registration advantage Democrats have over Republicans may be of no benefit to Davis.
Another paradoxical factor is that Valdivia came into office with the support of the city’s public employee unions after the incumbent he defeated, Tobin Brinker, made an issue of criticizing what he characterized as too-generous salaries and benefits being conferred upon the city’s employees. And while Democrats in general are considered the pro-labor party throughout the country, many Republicans have innovated, distinguishing public employee unions, particularly public safety employee unions, from private sector employee unions, and have advanced by using their access to those public employee union endorsements and the money the unions put up to further their candidacies. During the bankruptcy, Davis sought valiantly and failed to curtail the city’s substantial financial commitments to employees and former employees vis-à-vis guaranteed pension benefits by reducing those pensions. This puts Davis in the same camp with several Democratic politicians at the municipal level such as former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and Davis’ predecessor as San Bernardino mayor, Patrick Morris, who have built a following by taking a stand against automatic raises and benefit increases for municipal employees. Whether Davis is willing to antagonize city employees by appealing to voters by painting municipal employee salaries and benefits, which represent approaching 90 percent of the city’s expenditures, as an impediment in delivering service in an effort to demonstrate his dedication to improving city services in contrast to his opponent’s close ties to public employee unions remains to be seen. –Mark Gutglueck

The San Antonio Heights Association has filed suit against the San Bernardino Local Agency Commission, the County of San Bernardino and the City of Upland in an effort to contest the intended closure of the 111-year-old Upland municipal fire department and its replacement by the county fire division under an arrangement that imposes on Upland and neighboring San Antonio Heights an unwanted annexation into a distant district together with a special tax without a vote of the electorate, in violation of the California Constitution.
The City of Upland moved toward making that takeover last November with a unanimous vote by the city council to look into such an arrangement. On December 5, 2016, interim Upland City Manager Martin Thouvenell signed the documents with the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) to make that application. In March, over the substantial opposition of Upland residents and the even more substantial protest of San Antonio Heights residents, the LAFCO board approved a plan to combine San Antonio Heights, which was previously provided fire protection service by the county through its Valley Service Zone, with Upland and then place them in FP-5 [Fire Protection Zone 5], which was formed more than a decade ago to provide county fire service to the communities of Silverlakes and Helendale, which are located in the Mojave Desert, 64 miles driving distance or 49 miles as the crow flies from Upland.
Despite the fact that previously the fire protection provided to both Upland and San Antonio Heights was defrayed by the property tax residents in those communities pay, an assessment of $152.68 per year is to be levied on all property owners to cover a portion of the county fire district’s operations in Upland and San Antonio Heights going forward.
According to the suit, which was filed on behalf of the San Antonio Heights Association by attorneys Cory Briggs and Anthony Kim, “For all intents and purposes, the levy of the special tax has been authorized without a vote of the electorate and this lawsuit challenges any and all future levies of the special tax without a vote of the electorate. Plaintiff has no plain, speedy, adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law, since its members and other members of the public will suffer irreparable harm as a result of defendants’ violations of the law, as alleged in this pleading. The approval of the annexation and the special tax without a vote of the electorate also rests on defendants’ failure to satisfy a clear, present, ministerial duty to act in accordance with those laws. Even when defendants are permitted or required by law to exercise their discretion in approving matters under those laws, they remain under a clear, present, ministerial duty to exercise their discretion within the limits of and in a manner consistent with those laws. Defendants have had and continue to have the capacity and ability to approve the annexation and special tax within the limits of and in a manner consistent with those laws, but defendants have failed and refuse to do so and have exercised their discretion beyond the limits of and in a manner consistent with those laws.”
The plaintiffs allege that they have been disenfranchised and their right to vote on special taxes has been usurped by an illegal annexation of the territories of Upland and San Antonio Heights into a fire protection zone located in a remote, discontiguous area of the desert where only the zone’s original residents were provided the opportunity to vote. The complaint describes the action by the City of Upland, LAFCO and the county as an “illegal annexation,” which entailed violations of law that are “fraudulent and/or an abuse of discretion intended to impose a special tax on residents of the City of Upland and San Antonio Heights without a vote.
To seal the deal, the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission scheduled a “protest vote” confirmation of the annexation and the assessment district formation – a mere formality – consisting of the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission’s invitation of property owners and voters within each of the jurisdictions to lodge letters of protest against the annexation. Each protest letter received was to be counted as a single vote against the annexation. Any resident or voter not lodging a letter of protest was to be presumed to have voted to accept the annexation. Nothing approaching sufficient opposition appeared to be manifesting in Upland or in San Antonio Heights to achieve the 25 percent protest threshold, which would have triggered a traditional vote at Upland and San Antonio precincts on the annexation and the inclusion of the two communities into the assessment district, let alone the majority vote against the annexation which would have nixed it outright. The protest period began on May 12 and was previously set to conclude on June 14. Because the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission staff failed in the comprehensiveness of its noticing of the protest process to invite all of the property owners in Upland and San Antonio to lodge letters of protest, an attorney, Joseph D. Farrell, threatened the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission with legal action. The San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission capitulated and extended until July 11 the protest period for Upland and San Antonio Heights.
But that “protest vote” is not an actual vote, according to Briggs and Kim.
“The special tax is invalid because it is not first being voted on by the city’s and San Antonio Height’s registered voters,” the suit states. “The county is authorizing the levy of the special tax without first submitting the tax for a vote by the general electorate. To the extent the county is requiring the property owners to lodge a formal protest before exercising its right to the franchise, such requirement unlawfully abridges the electorate’s right to vote on the special tax.”
Further, according to the suit, a “zone” of a district or special district, such as FP-5 is expressly excluded from the definition of a district or special district into which a city can be annexed into as per Government Code Section 56036(b)(10). “LAFCO is attempting to annex the city and San Antonio Heights into a zone of a special district without any legal authority to do so. Government Code Section 56119 requires that ‘any territory annexed to a district shall be contiguous to the district…’ Government Code Section 56031(a) defines ‘contiguous’ as ‘territory adjacent to territory within the local agency.’ Neither the city nor San Antonio Heights is contiguous to the unincorporated community of Helendale, where the Valley Service Zone and Service Zone FP-5 originated,” according to the suit. “The protest notice issued by LAFCO is misleading because it falsely states that the annexation will result in the transfer of all city fire employees to the county fire department and/or its Valley Service Zone. This defect in notice is material and violates plaintiff’s, its members’, and the public’s right to due process.”
Thouvenell, in signing the assessment district formation application with the Local Agency Formation Commission in his capacity as city manager on December 5 represented himself as the “proponent.” In connection with the application he signed a document which states: “As the proponent, I acknowledge that annexation to the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District may result in the imposition of taxes, fees, and assessments existing within the city or district on the effective date of the change of organization. I hereby waive any rights I may have under Articles XIII C and XIII D of the state constitution (Proposition 218) to a hearing, assessment ballot processing or an election on those existing taxes, fees and assessments.”
Thus, Thouvenell, on behalf of the taxpayers of Upland, signed away the rights the residents of Upland are accorded under the California Constitution in those articles and he directly and indirectly assumed all liability for violations of the Constitution, even as, in his capacity as city manager, he is indemnified by the residents of the city under the terms of his contract. By his action in signing the waiver, Thouvenell preempted, or sought to preempt, forever the ability of Upland’s residents to assert those Constitutional rights.
According to Briggs and Kim, this was a gross overstepping of the city’s authority.
“To the extent Upland’s city manager attempted to waive the electorate’s constitutional right to vote on the special tax by substituting the certification with the city’s application to LAFCO, such act was ultra vires as the Constitution does not allow for a public official to waive the electorate’s right to vote on a tax,” suit states.
Ultra vires is a Latin phrase meaning “beyond the powers.”
Briggs and Kim then quote a ruling in the case of Bear River Sand & Gravel Corp. v. Placer County, which states, “No government, whether state or local, is bound to any extant by an officer acting in excess of his authority even though it has received substantial benefits deriving from the ultra vires act.”
The lawsuit seeks “a judgment determining or declaring that the special tax and assessment do not comply with all applicable laws in at some respect, rendering either or both of them null and void, invalid, or otherwise without legal effect,” as well as “a writ of mandate ordering the defendants to rescind all approvals made in violation of the applicable laws” and “injunctive relief prohibiting the defendants from taking any of the actions relating to imposing the special tax and /or annexing the city and San Antonio Heights until the defendants comply with all applicable legal requirements as determined by the court.”
In addition, Briggs and Kim applied for a restraining order calling for “preventing the defendants/respondents from taking any further action related to the implementation of a protest procedure as a prerequisite to the electorate’s right to vote on the proposed special tax.”
The hearing on the restraining order is set to be heard by Judge David Cohn in Department S-26 at the San Bernardino Justice Center at 247 West Third Street in San Bernardino at 8 a.m. Monday July 10. –Mark Gutglueck

During the extended break between the closing of the prosecution’s case last week and the presentation of evidence and testimony the defense will initiate on July 18, the judge in the Colonies Lawsuit Settlement Public Corruption Trial began winnowing the case this week.
Under Penal Code Section 1118.1, “In a case tried before a jury, the court on motion of the defendant or on its own motion, at the close of the evidence on either side and before the case is submitted to the jury for decision, shall order the entry of a judgment of acquittal of one or more of the offenses charged in the accusatory pleading if the evidence then before the court is insufficient to sustain a conviction of such offense or offenses on appeal.”
After the July 3 & 4 holiday concluded this week, attorneys for all four of the defendants were in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Michael Smith prepared to deliver a comprehensive set of Penal Code Section 1118.1 motions asking for the totality of the charges against the four to be thrown out, their collective theory being that the prosecution has not proven its case in whole nor in part. Their confident hope was that Judge Smith would hear all of the motions by today, Friday, at which point the case would draw to an end. But no hearing was held today, and by the close of Thursday’s court activity, the 1118.1 motions pertaining to only two of the defendants had been heard, and those not in their entirety, so that all four defendants remain on the court docket. The hearings on the remaining 1118.1 motions will resume Monday.
From the outset, the defense attorneys for defendants Jeff Burum, Paul Biane, Mark Kirk and Jim Erwin have uniformly maintained the charges laid out in the May 2011, 29-count indictment against their clients are without factual and legal justification. Indeed, in a series of pretrial demurrers and other motions that began as early as July 2011, those attorneys have sought to have all of those charges dismissed. They achieved some, but not total success in that regard, beginning with a ruling on the original round of motions by Superior Court Judge Brian McCarville in August 2011 which tossed out eight of the charges. Prosecutors appealed McCarville’s ruling to the 4th District Court of Appeal, triggering a cross-appeal from the defense, which called upon the appellate court to reconsider those elements of the case that McCarville left intact. Ultimately the 4th District reestablished some of the charges McCarville had thrown out but also dismissed several of the charges he had left in, so that on balance, the case against the defendants was in fact reduced further by the 4th District than it had been by McCarville. This triggered a further appeal to the California Supreme Court by the prosecution team, consisting of prosecutors with both the California Attorney General’s Office and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office. The California Supreme Court in December 2013 reestablished the essential elements of the case against the defendants. In the Summer of 2014, the judge who would eventually hear the case, Michael Smith, dismissed the conspiracy charge against each of the defendants contained in the indictment on statute of limitations grounds, rejecting the prosecution’s theory that a four-year rather than a three-year deadline on bringing a conspiracy charge involving governmental officials should apply. The prosecution appealed that to the 4th District Court of Appeal, which rejected it. That decision was then appealed to the California Supreme Court. In January 2016, the California Supreme Court denied the petition by prosecutors to reverse the lower courts.
Starting on January 4 of this year, the prosecution gamely pressed on with the case, taking it to trial despite the conspiracy charge lying at the heart of the matter and upon which the primary narrative propounded by prosecutors including 43 overt acts is hinged being no longer in play. For just under six months and ending last week, the prosecution’s version of events was provided, using 39 witnesses and countless documents, maps, recordings and transcripts, emails, texts, bills, receipts, invoices and photographs as exhibits. What was presented was a largely circumstantial case anchored by the dual extended rounds of testimony by former chairman of the board of supervisors and subsequently county assessor Bill Postmus and his protégé, man Friday and eventual betrayer Adam Aleman.
Postmus and Aleman essentially reiterated the allegations around which the 29-count indictment revolved, which propounds that that Colonies Partners principal Jeff Burum’s frustration after four years of litigation against the county and its flood control district over drainage issues at the Colonies at San Antonio residential and Colonies Crossroads commercial developments touched off a series of actions to force the county into a settlement that crossed the line into criminality. The indictment alleges that Burum worked with former sheriff’s deputies’ union president Jim Erwin to first extort Bill Postmus and Paul Biane, who in their roles as the chairman and vice chairman of the board supervisors were the two highest ranking county officials at that time, to vote in favor of a settlement on terms that were highly favorable to the Colonies Partners. After Postmus and Biane in November 2006 acceded to that extortion in the form of blackmail, intimidation and threats to reveal untoward aspects of their personal lives to the public and voted with their board colleague Gary Ovitt to settle that lawsuit for $102 million, the indictment maintains, the Colonies Partners over the course of the seven months following the settlement kicked back separate $100,000 bribes to Postmus and Biane, disguised in the form of contributions to political action committees over which they or their political associates had control. And during that same seven month period, political action committees set up by both Erwin and Ovitt’s chief of staff, Mark Kirk, were likewise recipients of $100,000 donations from the Colonies Partners. The indictment characterizes the payments to Kirk and Erwin, the latter of whom had been hired as assistant county assessor by the time the $100,000 donation to his political action committee was made, as bribes as well.
The original indictment alleged conspiracy, bribery and fraud against all four defendants, extortion against Burum and Erwin, misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest violations against Biane and Kirk, and failure to report income, reporting violations, and perjury against Erwin.
Postmus, who in 2010 had been charged along with Erwin on a host of crimes growing out of the circumstances of the county’s settlement of the lawsuit with the Colonies Partners and in 2011 entered guilty pleas on all of those charges and agreed to turn state’s evidence, under direct examination by Supervising San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Lewis Cope in May recounted his efforts in support of the settlement in 2005 and 2006. He said he had first familiarized himself with Burum during a trade mission to China in September 2005 during which Burum befriended him and then lobbied him to settle the lawsuit. Postmus confirmed the previous testimony by numerous witnesses who said that after his return from China he essentially commandeered from Paul Biane the role of the major champion for forging a settlement of the civil suit. Burum provided him with an assurance of future financial support in his political endeavors, Postmus testified, as well as in any business ventures he might undertake if he left political life, and he said that they discussed Burum putting him on the board of a nonprofit corporation Burum had founded, but only if the litigation was settled first. Postmus testified that in the latter half of 2006, Erwin, working on behalf of Burum, had threatened to expose his homosexuality and Paul Biane’s financial travails to get them to support the settlement. Postmus said he considered the $102 million paid out to the Colonies Partners to be “ridiculously more” than the development company was due as a consequence of the litigation, but that the threats and promises of reward and the desire to put the whole thing behind him pushed him into the settlement.
After the settlement was effectuated, Postmus testified, the Colonies Partners came through with two separate $50,000 donations to the political action committees he had control over, the Inland Empire PAC and Conservatives for a Republican Majority PAC.
Under cross examination, defense attorneys were able to establish that a decade of increasingly heavy methamphetamine use had left Postmus’ memory spotty and rendered him into a highly suggestible state in which he was prone to accepting the representations of those he was engaged with at any given time, such that he would in large measure provide a version of events that adhered as much to the promptings of his questioner as the actual circumstance and activity he was being called upon to recollect.
Prosecutors called Aleman to the witness stand immediately after Postmus concluded his testimony. Aleman, under direct examination by California Supervising Deputy Attorney General Melissa Mandel, reinforced all of the issues explored by his one-time mentor and boss pertinent to the charges against Burum and Erwin in particular and to a lesser extent those against Kirk and Biane. He depicted Postmus as being under severe pressure from Burum and Erwin to settle the litigation and he delineated the alleged blackmail used against Postmus and Biane, which he said consisted of “hit piece” political mailers targeting the two politicians that were on hand to be sent but were ultimately withheld during the 2006 political season while Postmus was running for assessor and Biane was sponsoring a measure to increase the annual salary of supervisors from $99,000 to $151,000. Moreover, Aleman was a font of knowledge with regard to both the $400,000 in donations the Colonies Partners made in the course of the seven months following the settlement and the political action committees connected with Postmus, Biane, Erwin and Kirk that those donations were made to, illustrating for the two juries hearing the case the prosecution’s contention that the political contributions were laundered bribes. Before Aleman left the witness stand, he was subjected to vicious cross examination by the attorneys for the defendants, who highlighted that he had himself turned state’s evidence only after he was criminally charged for a host of acts he had perpetrated after he was elevated to the position of assistant assessor by Postmus when Postmus assumed that office in 2007. Aleman was subsequently convicted of those crimes, including falsification of public documents and knowingly false utterances before a grand jury. The defense attorneys depicted Aleman’s testimony implicating their clients as a pack of lies he fabricated in an effort to garner leniency from prosecutors who were looking to fry bigger fish than him.
The rubber hit the road this week with Judge Michael Smith hearing the 1118.1 motions against both Kirk and Erwin beginning on Wednesday. Initially, it had been projected that Smith would run through the 1118.1 motions lodged by all of the defendants by Friday. However, Judge Smith and the attorneys spent a considerable amount of time going over a portion of the jury instructions on Wednesday, delaying into the afternoon the discussion of the 1118.1 motion made on Kirk’s behalf by his attorney, Peter Scalisi. It was decided on Thursday that court would not be in session today, Friday.
Throughout the trial, Kirk has faced four charges, delineated as counts 3, 9, 10 and 12 in the indictment, Penal Code Section 68: receiving, agreeing to receive, and/or asking for a bribe to influence a vote; Government Code Section 9054: improper influencing of a public official; Government Code Section 1090: a government official engaging in a conflict of interest; and Penal Code Section 424: aiding and abetting [in this case Postmus and Biane] in the misappropriation of public funds.
On Wednesday afternoon there was considerable discussion with regard to Scalisi’s 1118.1 motion on behalf of Kirk.
In making his pitch to have Smith throw the charges against his client out, Scalisi said the evidence presented thus far indicated Ovitt was purposed to vote for the settlement in any case and Kirk had no impact on steering the supervisor in a direction he was already headed. Scalisi said the dismissal of all four charges was appropriate. “We’re asking the court, essentially, to enter a judgment of acquittal for lack of sufficient evidence,” Scalisi said.
Ovitt, who had been called by the prosecution as its witness, Scalisi said, served as Kirk’s “defense witness,” offering testimony that Scalisi said exonerated his client. In the effort to establish Kirk’s innocence, Scalisi said, “the most compelling evidence” was “the testimony of Gary Ovitt,” who “came across as an honest, forthright, good witness who was just here to tell the truth, no matter who questioned him.”
In February, Ovitt testified that the vote in favor of the settlement “was my decision and mine alone.”
Mandel in response said that Ovitt’s overarching or underlying attitude in favor of the settlement was irrelevant to Kirk’s guilt, since Kirk was officially bound to “make an objective decision on appropriate factors” and that Kirk was throughout the critical months of 2006 while the discussions pertaining to the lawsuit settlement were ongoing conniving to “influence” the eventual vote and “insert himself into discussions of the Colonies.” This was supported, Mandel maintained, by Kirk’s involvement in meeting with Burum’s public relations team, and his regular communications with Burum which intensified, she said, around the time of the settlement, as well as his communications with Postmus in the same time frame. Mandel also said that with regard to the decision on the lawsuit settlement, “Mr. Kirk told Mr. Reitz [i.e., then county counsel Ronald Reitz] early on ‘This is a political issue and should be handled as a political issue.’” Furthermore, she said, Kirk had sought to have Postmus inform Burum that he had played a part in ensuring that Ovitt voted for the settlement.
Beyond that, Mandel asserted, Kirk was militating to achieve the settlement in favor of the Colonies Partners. “All those acts were to get the settlement done,” she asserted. “It wasn’t just about influencing Mr. Ovitt.” And Mandel said, Kirk evinced “corrupt intent” by his willingness to receive the money from the Colonies Partners while engaging in discussions with Ovitt pertaining to effectuating a settlement that was ultimately in the Colonies Partners’ interest.
Scalisi said that obfuscated the issue and Ovitt had been “crystal clear” that he had come to the determination to approve the lawsuit settlement on his own, having been persuaded very early on that settling the lawsuit was appropriate during a briefing the county’s lawyers had provided him and supervisor Josie Gonzales on the Colonies case after their 2004 election. “Jeff Burum already knows he’s got Gary Ovitt’s vote,” Scalisi said, speaking in the present tense with regard to 2006, making it impossible, Scalisi insisted, that Kirk had “unduly influenced Ovitt’s vote.”
Judge Smith threw out the Penal Code Section 68 charge based on the reasoning that Kirk did not seek the bribe, as his boss, Gary Ovitt, was predisposed to vote for the settlement. If indeed, Smith reasoned, there was discussion between Burum and Kirk about Kirk being rewarded for delivering Ovitt’s vote, that is a moot consideration since Kirk did not have to act to make sure Ovitt’s vote was delivered.
Smith turned down Scalisi’s motion to dismiss the Government Code Section 9054 charge of improperly influencing a public official and the Government Code Section 1090 charge of engaging in a conflict of interest. Smith held in abeyance making a decision, until Tuesday of next week, on the Penal Code Section 424 aiding and abetting in the misappropriation of public funds charge pertaining to Kirk, saying that the issues attending that charge also pertain to charges against the other defendants.
Throughout all of the trial and as of Thursday morning, Erwin faced more counts than any of the other defendants, remaining under the onus of ten charges, which had started off as 12 in January before two were thrown out in May. All told, as of yesterday Erwin was charged with two counts of violating Penal Code Section 165: aiding and abetting an official [in these two cases Postmus and Biane] in receiving or agreeing to receive a bribe; two violations of Penal Code Section 86: aiding and abetting Postmus and Biane in receiving, agreeing to receive or asking for a bribe to influence a vote; a violation of Penal Code Section 424: aiding and abetting Postmus and Biane in the misappropriation of public funds; a violation of Penal Code Section 470: forgery; a violation of Revenue and Tax Code 19706: failure to file a tax return; and three violations of Penal Code Section 118: Perjury, pertaining to his filing of his 2007/2008 State Form 700 relating to his economic interests, failure to disclose the true value of gifts on his Form 700, and failure to disclose receiving $7,500.00 in gifts or income on his Form 700.
In the hearing for the 1118.1 motion brought on Erwin’s behalf by his attorney Raj Maline, there was some discussion about how Erwin had hidden his involvement with his political action committee, Committee for Effective Government, to which the Colonies Partners had made the $100,000 donation the prosecution has branded a bribe. While the committee was Erwin’s creation and he served as its treasurer, Mandel said it was significant that Erwin attempted to hide that he had that control by having Steve Hauer, who had unwittingly been established by Erwin as the committee’s executive director, authorize a $5,000 consulting fee Erwin received from the committee in 2008. The prosecution maintains, and Erwin has not effectively disputed, that he forged Hauer’s signature on that authorization. Maline said the note was of no legal significance, since Erwin submitted an invoice with his own signature and the authorization to the accountant, Betty Presley, who oversaw the committee’s accounts and signed the check with the knowledge that Erwin had control of the political action committee.
Mandel said Erwin’s use of an authorizing note with the forged signature was a clear effort to defraud. Smith, however, said it did not appear to him Erwin had any reason to disguise himself when he signed Hauer’s name authorizing the $5,000 payment to himself, since he effectively controlled the Committee for Effective Government. “I see no evidence that Mr. Erwin could not have gotten the money on his own,” Smith said during Thursday’s proceedings. “I find there is no evidence to support the intent requirement of the forgery charge.”
With that, Smith dismissed the count of forgery against Erwin.
Smith was less kind to Erwin with regard to two of the three perjury charges. Those pertained to Erwin’s failure to report income and gifts he received on his statement of economic interest forms required of all government officials in a decision-making capacity.
At one point, Smith seemed on the verge of throwing out the third perjury charge, which Maline said the prosecution had gratuitously brought after Erwin in 2009 filed an amended statement of economic interest to report receiving a watch worth $12,765 he had received from Burum in 2007. Maline effectively argued, citing the Form 700 amendment instructions, that an amendment need address only the specific item left off or overlooked in an original Form 700 filing. But Mandel asserted that the court was on the verge of blurring the distinction between the noun amendment and the adjective amended, and Smith agreed to defer his decision until next week.
Smith’s ruling on the remainder of the charges taken up in Maline’s 1118.1 motion will be completed on Monday, at which time the 1118.1 motions for Biane and Burum will also be heard.
This week’s proceedings, all of which took place outside the presence of both juries – one of which is hearing the case against Burum, Biane and Kirk and the other of which is to decide Erwin’s fate – were noteworthy for the presence of deputy district attorney Michael Abney, who until this week was a relatively obscure member of the prosecution team. Abney was present and engaged with Judge Smith in depth with regard to several aspects of the language of the jury instructions which are to be provided after the defense concludes its case and closing arguments are made but before the juries begin their deliberations. Abney’s input marked his most extensive participation in the trial so far.
In January, the opening statements for Kirk and Biane were deferred or postponed by Scalisi and Biane’s attorney, Mark McDonald. They now have the option of making those opening statements when the defense begins to put on its case. That was scheduled for July 12. An issue with regard to the presence of one of the jurors, however, has pushed the trial resumption date to July 17. –Mark Gutglueck

In a rare development, a Superior Court Judge has set aside a $450,000 judgment a San Bernardino jury awarded a Yucca Valley woman after she prevailed at trial in a suit she filed over her false arrest and incarceration during the Christmas 2014 holidays. Her arrest was brought on by a dispute she had with a former business partner with connections to the sheriff’s department.
Lucinda Cox sued both San Bernardino County and her former business partner Hollis Griffin in 2015. On February 6, 2017 the matter between Cox and Griffin went to trial before Superior Court Judge Janet Frangie. On February 9, 2017 the jury entered a verdict in favor of Cox 10-2, finding that Griffin had made a falsified police report accusing Cox of forging a check from their joint signature account and that the sheriff’s department had falsely arrested Cox on the basis of that false report. After Cox prevailed against Griffin at trial, the county settled with Cox for an undisclosed amount subject to a confidentiality agreement.
On April 9, the jury entered a judgment of $450,000 in favor of Cox and against Griffin, made enforceable by Judge Frangie’s confirmation on May 5.
On May 4, Griffin, represented by attorney John Kremer, made a motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict and a motion for a new trial, citing the rationale that communication with a peace officer is privileged under California Civil Code Section 47(b). After the motion was filed, Frangie took the matter under submission and on June 5, 2017 set aside the jury verdict and entered a judgment notwithstanding the verdict in favor of Hollis, citing Section 47 (b) of the Civil Code, concluding an individual can make misrepresentations to police and that even if the false report is done maliciously it is privileged.
Cox’s unfortunate experience devolved out of the business relationship Cox once had with Holly Griffin, with whom she co-owned Elite Cosmetology, a cosmetology school, licensed by the state of California, to teach cosmetology. In February 2012 Cox and Griffin sold Elite Cosmetology School to M.N.R.J.M., LLC, a Florida limited liability corporation and during the last week of March 2012 the escrow closed and ownership of the school was transferred to M.N.R.J.M., LLC. Thereafter, Cox and Griffin commenced the process of winding down their operation of Elite and completing their obligations regarding the payment of all outstanding debts, the collection of all remaining tuitions and the filing of the appropriate state and federal tax returns for 2010, 2011 in 2012. Cox, on behalf of Elite, hired accountants and attorneys to assist in completing the winding up of Elite, reviewing the accounting, and preparing the necessary tax returns.
According to Cox’s lawsuit, “The accountants retained by plaintiff reported to her that the tax returns for 2010, 2011 and 2012 appeared to be inaccurate and inconsistent with the accounting records that they had reviewed. As a result they advised that amended returns needed to be prepared for all three tax years. In an attempt to prevent plaintiff from filing amended returns, in October 2013, Ms. Griffin filed a report with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department alleging that plaintiff had forged a check from a joint signature account. Plaintiff is informed and believes that prior to the police report being filed by Ms. Griffin, Heidi Hague was employed by the sheriff; was a personal friend of Ms. Griffin; was a personal friend of Ms. Griffin’s husband, Robert Griffin, who was employed by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office as an investigator; and [that Heidi Hague] was the sheriff’s detective in charge of the investigation of plaintiff.”
The lawsuit continues, “Hague received and reviewed the report filed by Ms. Griffin. She then subpoenaed selective records from Pacific Western Bank and selective records from Wells Fargo Bank. Hague attempted to talk to plaintiff who declined to talk to her outside the presence of an attorney. By her own admission and sworn testimony, she did no other investigation. Hague made no attempt to investigate any of the accusations made in Ms. Griffin’s police report. Had she done so she would have learned that almost all of the relevant facts alleged in that report were false. Had she asked for the complete records at the relevant banks she would have immediately become aware that all of the relevant and important dates contained in the report were false including but not limited to the source of funds in each of the accounts, the dates that the accounts were opened, the dates that the accounts were closed, the amount of money in the accounts, the ownership of the funds in the accounts, and most importantly the timing of when she became aware that the money had been transferred to pay creditors of Elite. When Hague received a copy of the alleged forged check she made no attempt to have the check examined to determine if it was in fact a forgery. When the check was finally sent to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department document examiner, it was determined that the check was not a forgery and that Ms. Griffin’s signature was authentic. Sometime after October 2013 Hague, without any further investigation, forwarded the report and the selective documents to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office for prosecution. Plaintiff is informed and believes that Hague recommended the filing of a complaint against plaintiff, knowing that she had ignored evidence, intentionally evaded collecting relevant evidence and that there was no probable cause for a complaint to issue. On May 9, 2014, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office filed a felony complaint alleging grand theft of personal property in the amount of $52,335 (Penal Code section 487 (a), forgery (Penal Code section 479(a) and embezzlement. On May 13, 2014, the district attorney sought and received an ex parte order under Penal Code section 1275.1, preventing plaintiff from posting bail without a hearing on the source of funds used for the bail and persuaded the court to set bail in the amount of $250,000, $225,000 in excess of the bail schedule set by the court. The court file contains no declaration supporting either the excessive bail or the Penal Code Section 1275.1 ex parte motion.”
A bail schedule from 2013 for San Bernardino County shows bail for a charge of grand theft was set at $50,000, forgery was $25,000 and embezzlement was $25,000. Any single one of those could have been set against Cox. Had they been combined, they would have been no more than $100,000.
Inexplicably, no effort to arrest Cox was made for more than seven months after the criminal complaint against her was issued. On December 23, 2014, two days before Christmas, sheriff’s deputies arrested her while she was at the home of two of her cosmetology clients, a man and wife.
“Due to the excessive bail and the ex parte order under Penal Code section 1275.1 plaintiff was held in custody in general population at the West Valley Detention Center for seven days,” according to the suit. “During that time, she was in constant fear for her life, was unable to eat, was threatened by other inmates, was unable to sleep, witnessed violence between other inmates and as a result has suffered and continues to suffer from severe post traumatic stress syndrome. On July 10, 2015 the case was dismissed for lack of probable cause, lack of evidence and failure to investigate. After the hearing on July 10, 2015 the San Bernardino County District Attorney provided plaintiff with the results of the handwriting analysis establishing her innocence. This document was withheld until after the court had dismissed the case.”
Cox was represented by attorney Keith Bardellini, who filed separate actions against both Griffin and San Bernardino County/the sheriff’s department/Hague. Bardellini took the separate civil case against Holly Griffin to trial in February, prevailing and obtaining the $450,000 judgment. Bardellini effectively argued that Griffin had orchestrated Cox’s false arrest out of malice over the potential legal difficulties Griffin faced as a result of Cox’s tax filings, and that Griffin was able to manipulate events because of her connections to the sheriff’s office.
Bardellini propounded Cox had been arrested without probable cause on charges that were neither thoroughly nor competently investigated and that she was subjected to abuse and mistreatment for seven days while jailed at West Valley Detention Center, where her bail had been improperly set at a quarter of a million dollars.
Based on Griffin’s falsifications, Bardellini argued that Hague, with whom Griffin had close personal ties, either deliberately and maliciously or incompetently, carried out a criminal investigation that erroneously and falsely concluded Cox had engaged in forgery, a direct consequence of which was that Cox was subjected to the false arrest.
The jury found 10-2 that the preponderance of evidence was in Cox’s favor and awarded her the sum of $450,000. Afterwards, the county elected to settle the suit Cox had filed against it.
Judge Frangie did not dispute or controvert that Griffin had furnished false information to the sheriff’s department and she initially confirmed the jury’s verdict and the $450,000 judgment. Nonetheless, after attorney John Kremer made a motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict and a motion for a new trial, Frangie found that state law holds that an informant’s statements to the police are privileged. As such, Frangie ruled that, since Cox prevailed in the suit on the basis of the jury’s finding that Griffin’s statements to the sheriff’s department were false, the basis for the jury’s determination had to be vacated. Thus, Frangie reversed the jury’s verdict.
Bardellini is now in the process of appealing Frangie’s ruling to the 4th District Court of Appeal.
“The judge ruled that the statement the defendant in this case, Holly Griffin, made to the sheriff’s detective was privileged,” said Bardellini. “That is the law in a situation where the information provided to a peace officer is true and accurate. In this case I respectfully disagree with the judge and I don’t believe that information that is given to a law enforcement officer to intentionally mislead the investigator qualifies as privileged communication. I do not believe that was the legislature’s intent with this law. There is no case that I know of that says you can make a knowingly false misrepresentation to a member of law enforcement and be privileged in doing so. I believe, and so do several other attorneys that I have spoken with, that the question of privilege with regard to making an intentionally false statement to law enforcement remains an open legal question. There is something wrong here. Deliberately providing false statements to weaponize the police department against one’s enemies should not be permissible and in my opinion is not permissible. In this case, we had a 61-year-old woman who until that point had been a model citizen spend a week in jail fearing for her life because of just such false statements. I don’t believe the people of California believe it is okay to lie to law enforcement to get officers to do bad things to people. The last chapter on this case hasn’t been written yet.” –Mark Gutglueck

In an extension of its discretion, the 4th District Court of Appeal has consented to make a review of the contentious closure of Oxford Preparatory Academy.
Last month, the permanent shuttering of the school as of last Friday seemed a virtual certainty. With the appellate court having inserted itself in the matter, the hopes of Oxford students and their parents that the legendary institution of primary education might yet remain in place have been revived. The appellate court on June 29 consented to reviewing a finding made the previous week by San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge David Cohn that the school board for the Chino Valley Unified School District acted within its legal authority and had not violated state law when it twice voted against renewing Oxford’s charter in 2016.
It is not the academic performance of its student body or the quality of education Oxford offered that consigned it to the scholastic gallows. Rather, it was, as has often proved to be the case with charter schools in California in general and San Bernardino County in particular, the degree to which the founder and operator of Oxford used her position of trust and authority with the academy to enrich herself, her family and her associates while running the non-profit elementary school level public educational institution.
According to a state audit, over a slightly-less-than-four-year period, Sue Roche, who in 2009 had obtained $3 million in backing from the district to create Oxford as an intensive learning environment, used two for-profit companies she created, Yorba Linda-based Edlighten Learning Solutions and Nevada-based Educational Excellence, to fleece Oxford of $5.3 million.
Oxford had an excellent academic track record, with students there outperforming all other students at the Kindergarten through 8th grade level throughout San Bernardino County, thanks in no small measure to Roche’s applied scholastic formula which she had developed when she was the principal at Rhodes Elementary School, which was consistently the highest-performing school in the Chino Valley Unified School District when she was there in the early 2000s. After Chino Valley Unified School District Superintendent Wayne Joseph discovered the questionable expenditures by Oxford in early 2006, he recommended against renewing Oxford’s charter, which was due to elapse as of June 30 this year. In March 2016, the Chino Valley Unified School District Board followed Joseph’s recommendation and declined to renew the charter. Oxford ended its relationship with Roche at that point and appealed the district ruling to San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Ted Alejandre, who used the removal of Roche to assert that the appeal could not proceed because the management model that Chino Unified rejected no longer existed following Roche’s departure, and he refused to consider it. Simultaneously, he called in the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Team to carry out an audit of the school. That audit was in the pipeline in November when Chino Valley Unified took up the reapplication Oxford made and again rejected it. The Fiscal Crisis and Management Team confirmed the misspending of the $5.3 million in December. The increasingly panicked and desperate Oxford leadership sought a hearing from the California Board of Education. Meanwhile, Chino Valley Unified carried out an audit of its own, requisitioned by Oxford, determining Edlighten still controlled $900,000 that had not been used. Oxford sued Roche for the return of that money and intensified its efforts to garner rechartering. But Chino Valley Unified held fast and when a hearing on its appeal to the California Board of Education was held in Sacramento in May, Oxford’s proponents showed up en masse to assert that it had done penance for the sins of Roche, had made corrections and that it was unconscionable to shutter a school that had proven itself academically over and over and over again. But district officials were on hand to oppose that move. Though the rechartering was not opposed by a majority of the California Board of Education, the supermajority of the state board needed to sustain Oxford’s charter was not forthcoming and it appeared Oxford’s prospects of continuing to exist had been fully dashed.
Undaunted, the Oxford board and its management, administration and senior faculty lodged the petition with the Superior Court, which ended in the above reference ruling by Cohn. But Cohn, recognizing the passion of Oxford’s defenders, invited them to appeal his ruling. That they did and now the 4th Court of Appeal in Riverside will hear the same argument that Oxford propounded to Cohn, that “Increases in pupil academic achievement for all groups of pupils served by the charter school constitute the most important factor in determining whether to grant a charter renewal.” Chino Unified failed to recognize that, Oxford maintains. Cohn did not dispute that, per se, in his ruling, but held that other factors taken together outweighed the academic performance as the desired saving grace for the school.
On June 29, right up against the deadline for the closure of the school, Oxford’s attorneys filed papers with the appellate court, which granted an immediate order against the school being shut down as of the following day, subject to a “determination of the petition on its merits or until further order of the court.” Lawyers for the district were given until July 13 to file a written answer to Oxford’s petition.
The Chino Valley Unified school board, which intends to use the Oxford campus at the former El Rancho Elementary School located at the corner of C Street and Oaks Avenue in Chino, held a closed doors meeting that night, at which it gave direction to its legal team to prepare a comprehensive argument as to why the restraining order should be vacated and the closure of Oxford lifted so its closure can proceed.    –Mark Gutglueck

Because of persistent and seemingly insoluble problems with providing patients at the emergency rooms in the High Desert’s various hospitals in a timely manner, the San Bernardino County Civil Grand Jury has suggested that what is ultimately called for is the construction of a publicly-run regional trauma center north of the Cajon Pass.
The Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, which was completed and opened in 1998, is the main campus of the county hospital. But San Bernardino County, at 20,105 square miles is larger than Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut and New Jersey combined. The driving time to Arrowhead Regional from various spots in San Bernardino County’s tremendous outback – the Mojave Desert – can be as long as four hours at some times, contingent upon traffic conditions.
According to the grand jury report, for desert residents, the availability of timely emergency care is exacerbated by the phenomenon of hospital bed delay — the lag between an incoming patient’s arrival at an emergency room either by ambulance or walking in and the time he or she is actually admitted to, or received into, the facility.
Backlogs of patients in the waiting rooms at the High Deserts are so extensive that waits of several hours have now become commonplace.
According to the grand jury report, waiting times have become so long that “The first 25 minutes after arrival to the hospital are excluded from the bed delay calculation.”
The report states, “bed delay contributing factors are the result of several issues,” including “only three High Desert [have] an emergency department, none of which have trauma centers; a lack of ambulances at peak times; the misuse by the public of the emergency departments; and the overuse of 9-1-1 calls for non-emergencies. Other contributions are a lack of interest of private hospitals to expand or build new services which leads to a shortage of beds. Only three hospitals have emergency departments that can receive patients via ambulances. There are a high number of Medicare and Medi-Cal clients in the High Desert. These factors put a strain on the use of resources between San Bernardino County Fire Department and American Medical Response [the county’s franchised ambulance company in the High Desert. The nearest trauma centers for the High Desert are Loma Linda University Medical Center and Arrowhead Regional Medical Center.”
With regard to the cities of Adelanto, Apple Valley, Victorville, Hesperia, and Victor Valley, the report says, “Current trends and changes in the healthcare delivery system suggest that a greater impact on the medical system and higher demand on emergency medical services will continue into the foreseeable future.”
In rendering its report, the grand jury relied upon a document generated by the Inland Counties Emergency Medical Agency, a joint powers authority for San Bernardino, Inyo, and Mono counties which oversees standards and protocols for pre-hospital and trauma care, ambulance and emergency medical transport including ambulance response time monitoring, performance based contracts, and medical disaster preparedness, including hospital preparedness programs, as well as certification of emergency medical technicians, paramedics, and mobile intensive care nurses. All five San Bernardino County supervisors are governing board members of the Inland Counties Emergency Medical Agency, which is known by its acronym, ICEMA. The document referenced in the grand jury report is titled “Centralized Medical Control Proposal.”
The grand jury report quotes the ICEMA document: “Ambulance patient offload delays not only impact the transfer of care of patients, they delay the return of ambulances to respond to other calls for emergency services. The downstream effect of ambulance patient offload delays is that first responders, including fire service and law enforcement personnel, must remain on scene longer than necessary thus delaying responses to a variety of emergencies including medical, fire, hazardous materials and crime related incidents.”
The grand jury report says that the consensus of medical professionals is that an overarching system that monitors and tracks the whereabouts of ambulances and has responsibility for dispatching them is called for.
“In bed delay task force discussions, the Hospital Association of Southern California and the 18 CEOs of San Bernardino County hospitals proposed exploring the creation of a centralized medical control and transportation hub to better address and implement solutions,” the grand jury report states.
American Medical Response is the ambulance company operating under an exclusive operating arrangement conferred upon it by the county in the Victor Valley.
According to the grand jury report, the “San Bernardino County Fire Department mentioned one solution to the bed delay issue is the communication with American Medical Response ambulances. A single source communication system does not exist as the San Bernardino County Fire Department and American Medical Response are not on the same radio frequency. Other solutions include an increase in hospital staff and open bidding on the emergency transportation contract. Finally, the public needs to be educated on appropriate 9-1-1 usage.”
According to the report, a potential solution to addressing bed delays consists of “Implementation and adoption of emerging technologies to assist the EMS personnel in the triage of both 9-1-1 patient responses and in the evolving community paramedicine models, including post discharge patient encounters.” Another solution, the report states, includes “Implementation on pre-hospital triage strategies, such as 9-1-1 call screening and increased utilization of existing nurse advice lines designed to identify patients that do not require the historical emergency medical service response or an emergency department to provide care for the patient’s medical complaint.”
The report defines bed delay as “the inability to move patients from ambulance gurney to emergency department beds or chairs due to emergency department [or hospital] overcrowding.”
Once the ambulance is within 250 feet of one of the three hospitals, the responsibility of care transfers to the hospital and the two ambulance personnel are considered defacto employees of the hospital. Last year, American Medical Response lost 72,000 personnel hours due to bed delay while Riverside County lost 24,000 personnel hours. San Bernardino County had 36,000 hours of bed delay compared to Riverside County that had 12,000 hours of bed delay
According to statistics cited by the grand jury, 20% of the calls coming into American Medical Response in the desert area are initially cataloged as requesting non-life threatening basic life support that fall safely within the non-emergency category. Another 22% of the calls are for what is initially listed as of a slightly higher priority, involving possibly life threatening basic life support, characterized as an emergency. Some 24% of the calls coming into the ambulance company pertain to what is reckoned to be a life threatening advanced life support scenario, considered an emergency. An even higher 32% of the calls to American Medical Response relate to what is at once categorized as a serious life threat requiring advanced life support, considered an emergency. A relatively limited 2% of the calls American Medical Response must deal with are dire emergencies, where the continuing life status of the individual to be transported is in question and the standing policy is that the closest available ambulance should respond, even if committed or called to another pending transport.
According to the report the average number of daily medical responses within the Victor Valley exclusive operating area is 100 to 110. “The High Desert may have as many as 15 American Medical Response ambulances during peak deployment and as few as six during low peak hours,” according to the report. “Exclusive operating areas are designated areas within the county by which ICEMA ensures the effectiveness and success of a medical transportation system. Those ambulance services awarded an exclusive operating area are under contract to ICEMA and San Bernardino County.”
American Medical Response, one of the major donors to the campaign funds of the members of the board of supervisors, is contracted to operate 12 of the 27 exclusive operating areas in San Bernardino County.
According to the grand jury report, the San Bernardino County Fire Department has 16 county-owned ambulances assigned to the High Desert. Ten are assigned in Apple Valley and Victorville; six ambulances are assigned to all the other areas in the High Desert. The San Bernardino County Fire Department and American Medical Response operate on different radio frequencies. The San Bernardino County Fire Department receives all 9-1-1 calls based on the exclusive operating area arrangement and they may be relayed to American Medical Response. “This results in time delays when the San Bernardino County Fire Department units are closer to an American Medical Response call and the response could be handled quicker,” the report states. “The opposite situation may also occur. The San Bernardino County Fire Department covers for American Medical Response when ambulances are not available. In the last calendar year, the San Bernardino County Fire Department took 1,396 calls for American Medical Response and American Medical Response took 300 calls for the San Bernardino County Fire Department. “
There are three hospitals in the Victor Valley, Desert Valley Hospital Center, Saint Mary Medical Center, and Victor Valley Global Medical Center, which operate emergency departments.
“There is no coordination between the three High Desert hospitals when a bed shortage leads to ambulance delays,” according to the grand jury report. “Riverside County does not have the same number of bed delays because there is cooperation between hospitals and their systems utilize an emergency medical dispatch. The clock for response time starts for American Medical Response once the call or relay to American Medical Response is made. American Medical Response has a 9 minute 59 second response time in urban areas. The county and city fire departments do not have any response time expectations because they are not under contract with ICEMA. The San Bernardino County Fire Department tracks and maintains the statistical data of the emergency response time of their ambulances. The San Bernardino County Fire Department starts their tracking from the time they receive the call to the time they arrive at the location. Each ambulance for American Medical Response and the San Bernardino County Fire Department must have, at a minimum, one emergency medical technician and a paramedic. The cost is $1 million to maintain one ambulance on the street for 24 hours for one year. This includes all costs including vehicle cost and maintenance plus staffing. American Medical Response ambulance staff turnover is an issue due to San Bernardino County Fire Department offering benefits and career growth opportunities that are better than what American Medical Response offers.”
At Desert Valley Hospital Center 62.7 percent of patients in need of emergency care experience bed delay. At Saint Mary Medical Center 57.4 percent of patients seeking emergency care experience bed delay. At Victor Valley Global Medical Center, 58 percent of emergency patients needing beds are delayed. Overall, the percentage of emergency patients delayed in being fully admitted is 59.5 percent.
According to the grand jury report, “The contributing factors to the [delays] are an increase in the number of newly insured patients as a result of healthcare reform placing higher demands on already strained, over-crowded emergency departments; further pressure on a county where the demand for inpatient beds is already significantly greater than the supply; a disproportionately low number of local primary and specialty care physicians; an aging population with additional medical needs, and the evolving role of emergency medical service in healthcare systems, e.g., community paramedicine.”
The grand jury concluded that “Demands on the 9-1-1 system are influencing the need for a reevaluation of the emergency medical service system. It was designed ‘to provide better management of resources, real-time exchange of medical information, and improvement in the delivery of appropriate, safe, cost effective, and quality healthcare.’ Bed delay directly affects the safety of patients and the general public who experience emergencies. A shortage of emergency department beds and the lack of a trauma center exist in the High Desert. This shortage leads to hospital and emergency department overcrowding resulting in bed delays. The misuse of the 9-1-1 system on a regular basis overloads dispatch and decreases the availability of ambulances. There is a lack of coordination occurs among the three high desert hospitals, American Medical Response, and the San Bernardino County Fire Department regarding overcrowding. Communication problems result from American Medical Response and the San Bernardino County Fire Department not operating on the same radio frequency. Enhanced call screening data is collected but not utilized. No effective action has taken place to begin implementation of the ICEMA ‘Centralized Medical Control Proposal.’
Accordingly, the grand jury called for the implementation of that proposal and that county officials undertake to educate the general public on the correct use of the 9-1-1 system.” Moreover the grand jury said an effort should be made to “implement and utilize enhanced 9-1-1 call screening of pre-hospital triage strategies” and “include utilization of existing nurse advice lines designed to identify patients who do not require the traditional emergency medical services response or an emergency department to provide care for the patient’s medical complaint.”
The grand jury said it would “track dispatches between American Medical Response and San Bernardino County Fire Department to determine the number of patients each hospital can serve based on the availability of beds to ease the number of bed delays.”
The public and private sectors should also, the grand jury said, “create a process to facilitate access to a common radio frequency between American Medical Response and San Bernardino Fire Department that will aid in the real time monitoring of their ambulances.”
The ultimate solution, the grand jury said would be to “build a new San Bernardino County hospital in the High Desert similar to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center that includes a trauma center.”     -Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
Andrew Joseph Crevolin was at one time a highly celebrated native son of Ontario, a successful businessman who was even more successful as a California thoroughbred racehorse owner.
Born on December 22, 1905, Crevolin graduated from Chaffey High School in 1924. By the mid-1930s, he was a successful Chrysler-Plymouth car dealer for eastern and northern Los Angeles, and his holdings included the Chrysler dealership at Main Street and Bushnell Street in Alhambra.
As his automobile business prospered, he invested in various enterprises, including water resource companies, real estate, and horses.
In the 1940s, he established in Alhambra one of California’s most impressive stables of thoroughbreds, located south of Poplar Boulevard at the bottom of the hill between Main Street and Fremont Avenue.
Early on, Crevolin employed Frank Childs as a trainer. In 1948 his filly, Flying Rhythm, trained by Childs, won the Hollywood Oaks. Subsequently he employed George Mayberry as a trainer. The Mayberry-trained Be Fleet won the San Juan Capistrano Handicap in 1951 and achieved a three-length win over the great Citation in the Argonaut Handicap. In 1953, Bill Molter succeeded Mayberry as Crevolin’s lead trainer.
In 1954, Andrew Crevolin’s four-year-old Imbros won multiple stakes, in doing so setting a new world record for seven furlongs in winning the 1954 Malibu Sequet Stakes at Santa Anita Park and equaled the world record for eight and a half furlongs in winning the 1954 Californian Stakes at Hollywood Park Racetrack. In addition to setting new track records at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, Imbros also twice equaled the Santa Anita Park track record for six furlongs. He then set two new track records for eight and nine furlongs at Bay Meadows Racetrack.
Imbros, however, was Crevolin’s second most successfully horse in 1954.
In 1951, the grand-daughter of Seabiscuit, owned by breeder Dr. Eslie Asbury, had a foal, Determine. In 1952, Asbury sought to sell Determine, at the Keeneland Summer Sale. As a gray, uncommonly small colt, Determine was overlooked, despite its lineage, by most bidders. Crevolin, for just $12,000, snatched the horse up.
Determine reached a height of fifteen hands, well below the sixteen to seventeen hands of a typical race horse, and weighed in at just 900 pounds, significantly below the 1,000 to 1,100 pounds of most race horses.
Shortly after the purchase, Asbury offered to buy Determine back since the colt lacked the size most owners were looking for in a racehorse. But Crevolin declined to return the horse. Instead Molter set about training the horse in earnest.
As a two-year-old, Determine demonstrated real promise, winning the Santa Anita Derby and some other significant West Coast races. A debate between Andy Crevolin and Willie Molter ensued over whether to enter Determine into the Kentucky Derby as a three-year-old. Crevolin pushed the idea, though Molter felt the colt was too small. Crevolin prevailed, and Determine was flown to Kentucky in the spring of 1954 to run in the Derby’s qualifying races. On April 17, 1954 Determine finished second to Hasty Road in the Kentucky Derby Trial, losing to the much larger horse by a head in a classic side by side race in the stretch. At the May 1, 1954 Kentucky Derby, both despite and because of his diminutive size, the betting odds on Determine were impressive, as some saw the horse’s demonstrated ability to squeeze through small holes when boxed in by larger horses and his light weight and nimble acceleration in cramped situations as a potential advantage in that day’s field.
Almost immediately out of the gate, Determine was roughed up so badly in a jam caused by Hasty Road and Timely Tip that he nearly lost his jockey, Ray York. York stayed in the saddle and by the middle of the race Determine had positioned himself into third place. Hasty Road, the largest horse in the race, was clearly in the lead. In the final turn, Determine did not fade, moving into a neck and neck battle in the final stretch with Hasty Road. At the finish, Determine had moved ahead of Hasty Road to win by a length and a half, the first “gray” to win the Kentucky Derby.
Also on May 1, Imbros won the William P. Kyne Handicap, making Andrew Crevolin the first person in the United States to ever win two $100,000 races on the same day.
In 1950, Andrew Crevolin had been appointed a member of the board of directors of the Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Institute and would become chairman of its Southern California Chapter’s fund drive committee for expansion of the Sister Kenny Memorial Hospital in El Monte, California.
Andrew Crevolin was the owner of the San Dimas Land & Water Company in San Dimas, California where he owned a home and had substantial land holdings, some of which he would develop for residential housing. In December 1964 he was appointed a member at large on the Los Angeles Watershed Board for the First Supervisorial District.
Divorced in February 1962 from his third wife, Jane Anne, on September 24, 1966, Andrew Crevolin married Tony Award-winning actress Dolores Gray. They made their home at his Oak Ridge Ranch near San Dimas in the East San Gabriel Valley.
Crevolin remained in racing for a several more years. By 1961 his trainer was Edward A. Neloy who conditioned Mighty Fair to a win in the Ladies Handicap at New York’s Aqueduct Racetrack.
Andrew Crevolin was living in Pasadena at the time of his death in 1992.

Summer is here and it feels like a burning tornado in sunny California. The different colors of summer are everywhere and everyone is adding them to their wardrobe, be it through a dress, blouse, or shorts. A typical day in California brings a whole revival of summer clothes and undecorated huge hats. These hats are a big thing for this summer. It’s just an old fashioned hat to keep the sun out of the way! Also, seeing young people in shorts, dresses, capris, and booming the large hats really shows the Dog Days are upon us.  And, then there’s men’s wear and some guys aren’t just in t-shirts and jeans. Some are looking pretty classy in summer suits and they look splendid. When summer arrives, fashion takes an interesting twist because the heat is on and we Californians must find creative ways to stay cool when we’re not at the beach. Stay cool and have fun during the summer heat.

“To keep your skin looking healthy and young, wear a hat.” – Mia Sara