By Mark Gutglueck
A confluence of events and circumstance has resulted in San Bernardino County’s top ranking staff member being placed on an involuntary extended vacation leave, by the end of which it is anticipated his not quite three-year reign as the chief executive in the largest geographical county in the lower 48 states will draw to a close.
San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez’s steep and dramatic rise from what originally seemed a studious librarian with relatively humble aspirations to what was arguably the county’s most domineering administrator in its 170-year history now appears to be on the brink of being matched with a no less dramatic and even more abrupt plunge into premature retirement.
Primary factors in the turnaround include Hernandez’s inability to put a cap on the forceful nature of his personality that at first had so impressed his political masters on the board of supervisors with his can-do attitude but which had more recently come to grate upon those around him and a classic entanglement with a femme fatale he unwisely welcomed into his administration.
In September 2020, Hernandez was promoted to assume the post of county chief executive officer and replace Gary McBride, his predecessor, the following month.
Hernandez, 45, has now spent a quarter of a century employed in government, having begun in 1998 at the age of 20 as a part-time library assistant at the Chino Branch Library while he was attending Cal State Fullerton as he was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in history. Upon graduating from college, he obtained a full-time position at the James S. Thalman Chino Hills Branch Library. He then earned his Master of Science degree in library science through Pennsylvania’s Clarion University’s online learning program and promoted into the position of the Fontana Branch Library manager within the San Bernardino County Library System. In 2008, he became the director of libraries with the City of Riverside, but in 2010, anticipating the retirement of San Bernardino County Librarian Ed Kieczykowski, returned to San Bernardino County. In 2011, upon Kieczykowski’s departure, Hernandez moved into the position of San Bernardino County librarian. In 2013, Hernandez was offered, while he was simultaneously serving in the librarian post, a secondary position as the director of the San Bernardino County Museum. Continue reading →

The San Bernardino County Department of Land Use Services has signaled that it will soon intensify its program aimed at the regulation of short-term rentals.
For more than a decade, various locations considered exotic in San Bernardino County, most notably in the desert and the mountains, have become popular weekend getaways for wealthy residents of San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and lower San Bernardino counties who are looking to tour Joshua Tree National Monument, engage in mountain trail hiking, boat on Lake Arrowhead or Big Bear Lake or enjoy a “white weekend” during December, January and February. Several locations in the desert have long been, and are becoming increasingly more, popular with tourists and so-called “snowbirds” fleeing harsh winter weather elsewhere in the country as well as Canada.
A previous county ordinance relating to short-term rentals in the mountains was instituted by the county in 2015. In late 2018 the county took up the issue once more with an eye to revamping and updating those regulations. A newly drafted form of the ordinance extending the regulations to the desert was considered in public hearings held by the San Bernardino County Planning Commission in August and September 2019 and was passed by the board of supervisors in November 2019.
The ordinance applied to short-term residential rentals and short-term accessory dwelling units, requiring owners of such properties to register at least once every two years any property being utilized for rentals on a less than continuous basis, meaning, in practical terms, for thirty days or less. The ordinance further required identification of and signatures from renters, the maintenance of records showing compliance with the county code, and gave the county the authority to revoke a short-term rental permit, based upon violations. A permit revocation recorded against an owner entails a follow-up application fee of twice that for a permit to undo the revocation. A violation of the ordinance committed by a short-term occupant of the property accrues to the detriment of the property owner, which county officials believed to be an incentive to have the owners ensure compliance with the rules by their tenants. Continue reading →

San Bernardino County will spend two-and-a-half million dollars over the next five years to divert roughly 50 juvenile offenders out of local detention facilities to an alternate academy in San Luis Obispo.
San Bernardino Chief Probation Officer Tracy Reece recommended and the board of supervisors approved entering into a nonstandard agreement with the County of San Luis Obispo for what were termed placement services at Coastal Valley Academy in the total amount of $2,555,000 for the period of August 9, 2023 through August 8, 2028.
According to its website, “Coastal Valley Academy is a custody commitment camp program in [San Luis Obispo County] Juvenile Hall for 14–17-year-old male and female youth who are moderate to high risk and in need of residential treatment. Youth are ordered to stay 6-12 months and receive intensive case management, treatment and educational services through collaboration with a local treatment provider, Family Care Network, and the [San Luis Obispo] County Office of Education.” Continue reading →

Chris Carrillo, who in 2018 was dismissively passed over when the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors selected Dawn Rowe to replace James Ramos as Third District supervisor when he was obliged to vacate that position upon being elected to the California Assembly, has resolved to challenge Rowe at the ballot box next year.
Carrillo, who had been Ramos’s assistant chief of staff and a board member with the East Valley Water District, was among 48 residents of the Third Supervisorial District who applied to succeed Ramos.
Carrillo was familiar with district issues as one of Ramos’s top staff members. Ramos had been elected to the board by defeating incumbent Neil Derry in 2012 and was convincingly reelected in 2016 when he was opposed by the poorly-financed Donna Muñoz, a Morongo Valley resident. Upon being elected to the Assembly with two years remaining on his term as supervisor, Ramos made a recommendation to his board colleagues just before he resigned to head off to Sacramento that they appoint Carrillo as his board replacement. Nevertheless, the remaining members of the board of supervisors – Curt Hagman, Robert Lovingood, Josie Gonzales and Janice Rutherford – looked over the four dozen applicants and reduced the field to 13. Those 13 consisted of former Third District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, then-Barstow Mayor Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre, former Twentynine Palms Councilman James Bagsby, Loma Linda Councilman Ron Dailey and then-Loma Linda Mayor Rhodes Rigsby, former Chino Councilman/then-current Big Bear Councilman William Jahn, former Assemblyman/then-State Senator Bill Emmerson, Congressional Candidate Sean Flynn, Republican Central Committee Chairwoman Jan Leja, former San Bernardino Councilman Tobin Brinker, former Westlake Village Mayor Chris Mann, then-San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis and Rowe, who at that point was a former Yucca Valley Councilwoman and mayor and was working as a staff member of then-Congressman Paul Cook. The 13 were invited for an interview, one to be held publicly, as the next round of the process. Continue reading →

Internal Squabbling Among Local Republican Party Leaders Is Endangering Their Party’s Advantage & Former Ability To Outhustle The County’s More Numerous But Less Cohesive Democrats, Munson Says

By Matt Munson
A political party on auto pilot since the 2022 elections is not an effective political party. The San Bernardino County Republican Party is a deep disappointment. It is more of a monarchy that focuses on the interests of the chairman than the good of the organization. It started from the beginning when the chairman Phil Cothran Sr became finance director under former chair Jan Leija in 2020 saying that he would deliver the heavens to the organization, but we all fell flat on our feet. Even despite COVID he was still able to help raise funds for his compatriot now Supervisor Jesse Armendarez in his first run for supervisor in 2020. We had over 50k in debt due to the nonpayment of our executive director Regina Santamaria and we had one major fundraiser with Dinesh D’Souza to pay her off after Phil became chairman in 2021, but no big fundraisers aside from that. The irony is Orange, Riverside and San Diego County have regular fundraisers, but we are just stuck in a state of statis.
2022 came along and there was money for the organization, but it was diverted to Jesse instead of the body. Most of the big checks were earmarked for the supervisor campaign due to the favorable donation regulations political parties have compared to general political action committees. The only priority was to get Jesse elected over anything else. However, when the primary happened, it was a Republican versus Republican race, and the organization became even dirty. The zeal to get Armendarez elected reduced the enthusiasm of the grassroots to participate in the party where the nomination convention slash fundraiser in August ended up going under in debt where there is over 20,000 in unpaid bills owed to the chairman. I did ask personally if we are going to get these debts paid off, but the chair said this is none of your concern. However, despite his personality, we should do our best to get in the black where he should even be repaid. Continue reading →

Associated Chino Teachers, the union/bargaining unit for educators employed by the Chino Valley Unified School District, have lodged a dual protest/complaint with the California Public Employment Relations Board, contesting what the union said was a curtailment of its members’ free speech rights along with the district’s board vote on July 20 requiring that faculty inform parents if their children are reidentifying their gender.
On July 20, the board revisited a policy that was previewed on June 15, which essentially reproduced a requirement that had been embodied in Assembly Bill 1314, which was introduced in the California State Legislature in March by Assemblyman Bill Essayli. AB 1314 sought to impose statewide a requirement that school officials not keep information pertaining to the gender reidentification that students insist upon within a school setting from the parents of those children. Essayli’s bill failed when it failed to make it out of committee into consideration by the entire lower legislative house.
The district’s version of the mandate consists of a requirement that educators at the school where a child identifies as transgender or openly speaks about suicide notify his or her parents in writing within three days. The policy, in clarifying what constitutes gender reidentification, referenced a student seeking to change his/her name or pronouns or asking for access to gender-based sports, bathrooms or changing rooms that do not match his or her assigned gender at birth. Continue reading →

The San Bernardino County Department of Public Works is seeking a $30 million grant to assist it in the rehabilitation of 27 timber bridges that were constructed prior to or in the early stage of the completion of Route 66 through the Mojave Desert.
Department of Public Works Director Brendon Biggs this week was given clearance by the county board of supervisors to make a digital submission of a grant application to the United States Department of Transportation’s Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant Program.
If successful, the county’s reception of the money would require that it venture at least 20 percent of the estimated $79 million cost toward completing the project.
The 27 timber bridges, all of which are of a length of no more than 20 feet, are located at various spots on the National Trails Highway, between Daggett/Yermo Road and Amboy Road.
The National Trails Highway, also known as the National Old Trails Road or as the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, was established in 1912. At 3,096 miles, it stretched from Baltimore to California. In the Southwest, it traced much of the old National Road and the Santa Fe Trail. Much of the road, from Colorado west became Route 66 in 1926 and from Colorado east became U.S. Route 40 in 1926.
Route 66 for nearly 60 years was a primary travel route from Los Angeles to Chicago. In 1985, it was decertified as a national highway and has been supplanted in large measure by Route 40. Continue reading →

A confluence of events and circumstance has resulted in San Bernardino County’s top ranking staff member being placed on an involuntary extended vacation leave, by the end of which it is anticipated his not quite three-year reign as the chief executive in the largest geographical county in the lower 48 states will draw to a close.
San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez’s steep and dramatic rise from what originally seemed a studious librarian with relatively humble aspirations to what was arguably the county’s most domineering administrator in its 170 year history now appears to be on the brink of being matched with a no less dramatic and even more abrupt plunge into premature retirement.
Primary factors in the turnaround include his inability to put a cap on the forceful nature of his personality that at first had so impressed his political masters on the board of supervisors with his can-do attitude and a classic entanglement with a femme fatale he unwisely welcomed into his administration.
In September 2020, Hernandez was promoted to assume the post of county chief executive officer and replace Gary McBride, his predecessor, the following month.
Hernandez, 45, has now spent a quarter of a century employed in government, having begun in 1998 at the age of 20 as a part-time library assistant at the Chino Branch Library while he was attending Cal State Fullerton while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in history. Upon graduating from college, he obtained a full-time position at the James S. Thalman Chino Hills Branch Library. He then earned his Master of Science degree in library science through Pennsylvania’s Clarion University’s online learning program and promoted into the position of the Fontana Branch Library manager within the San Bernardino County Library System. In 2008, he became the director of libraries with City of Riverside, but in 2010, anticipating the retirement of San Bernardino County Librarian Ed Kieczykowski, returned to San Bernardino County. In 2011, upon Kieczykowski’s departure, Hernandez moved into the position of San Bernardino County librarian. Continue reading →

A confluence of events and circumstance has resulted in San Bernardino County’s top ranking staff member being placed on an involuntary extended vacation leave, by the end of which it is anticipated his not quite three-year reign as the chief executive in the largest geographical county in the lower 48 states will draw to a close.
San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez’s steep and dramatic rise from what originally seemed a studious librarian with relatively humble aspirations to what was arguably the county’s most domineering administrator in its 170 year history now appears to be on the brink of being matched with a no less dramatic and even more abrupt plunge into premature retirement.
Primary factors in the turnaround include his inability to put a cap on the forceful nature of his personality that at first had so impressed his political masters on the board of supervisors with his can-do attitude and a classic entanglement with a femme fatale he unwisely welcomed into his administration.
In September 2020, Hernandez was promoted to assume the post of county chief executive officer and replace Gary McBride, his predecessor, the following month.
Hernandez, 45, has now spent a quarter of a century employed in government, having begun in 1998 at the age of 20 as a part-time library assistant at the Chino Branch Library while he was attending Cal State Fullerton while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in history. Upon graduating from college, he obtained a full-time position at the James S. Thalman Chino Hills Branch Library. He then earned his Master of Science degree in library science through Pennsylvania’s Clarion University’s online learning program and promoted into the position of the Fontana Branch Library manager within the San Bernardino County Library System. In 2008, he became the director of libraries with City of Riverside, but in 2010, anticipating the retirement of San Bernardino County Librarian Ed Kieczykowski, returned to San Bernardino County. In 2011, upon Kieczykowski’s departure, Hernandez moved into the position of San Bernardino County librarian. Continue reading →