By Mark Gutglueck
Chino City Clerk Natalie Gonzaga possesses highly prejudicial information regarding Ontario City Councilman Alan Wapner, individuals familiar with the circumstance at Ontario International Airport have reported to the Sentinel.
Neither Wapner nor Gonzaga responded to questions posed to them this week by the Sentinel. There remain conflicting reports as to whether Gonzaga’s departure from the top clerical position at the Ontario International Airport Authority more than two-and-a-half years ago was precipitated by Wapner’s demands of her that she take action she considered to be unlawful, including orders that she withhold from public scrutiny incriminating documents Wapner was intent on keeping under wraps. It is further unclear whether Gonzaga has spoken to federal investigators about her full range of knowledge with regard to events that transpired at the airport during her tenure there or provided to those authorities documents which were once entrusted to her custody.
A team of five auditors, reportedly connected with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service, arrived in Ontario within the last month and have since pored over the Ontario International Airport Authority’s books.
Since its inception in 2011, the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of Directors has been headed by Wapner, who has held the title of board president for 13 years. Wapner was rewarded with the presidency of the airport board because of the lead he had taken in an effort by the City of Ontario to recapture ownership and both control and management of Ontario Airport from the City of Los Angeles and its corporate entity, Los Angeles World Airports, which managed and operated Los Angeles International Airport, Burbank Airport and Ontario Airport for the Los Angeles Department of Airports. In 2015, following Ontario’s increasingly intense and bitter effort to wrest control of the airport from Los Angeles, which included Ontario suing Los Angeles over the matter in 2013, Los Angeles agreed to return the aerodrome to Ontario, which was effectuated officially on November 1, 2016.
At that point, the Ontario International Airport Authority, which had been created five years before as a joint powers authority between the City of Ontario and the County of San Bernardino in anticipation of the return of the airport to local autonomy, took on the role previously filled by Los Angeles World Airports and the Los Angeles Department of Airports, overseeing operations at Ontario Airport, including the aviation-related matters involving the airlines, the control tower, the runways, the taxiways, fueling of planes, coordinating maintenance activities and interaction with the FAA along with ground operations, extending to all activities within the terminal and outside of it, consisting of baggage handling, food and merchandise concessions, rental car, cab service and towing franchises and both custodial and maintenance of the grounds together with the use and leasing of the property around the facility. The airport authority served as the entity empowered with overseeing the financial affairs, coordinating the income derived from fees and other elements of the revenue stream at the airport to pay for all of the elements of the operation, including financing capital improvements.
In 2019, Gonzaga, who had formerly been employed by the Chino Basin Water Conservation District as an administrative analyst, landed a position with the Ontario International Airport Authority as a document management specialist. One of her duties in that capacity had been to produce documents and records requested by members of the public through the California Public Records Act. This put her at odds with Wapner, as at least some of those making public records requests of the airport authority were Wapner’s critics and rivals. As Wapner saw it, the production of those documents and records provided ammunition to his political enemies and he on one notable occasion confronted Gonzaga, berating her for having complied with the requests, according to individuals familiar with airport operations, telling her she should do better in finding some technical reason, pretext or excuse to not make the documents available.
By 2021, Gonzaga had promoted to the position of board clerk, that is, what was the executive secretary to the airport authority board, which consisted of Wapner and board members Jim Bowman, like Wapner an Ontario City Councilman; Curt Hagman, San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor, representing the communities and cities of Carbon Canyon, Chino Hills, Los Serranos, Chino, Ontario, Guasti, Montclair and southern Upland; former Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge, whose presence on the board is intended to give a voice to the Riverside County portion of the Inland Empire, and Julia Gouw, a banking executive who represents, more or less, that portion of the Inland Empire in Orange and Los Angeles Counties. Gonzaga, as board clerk, had a comprehensive view of the matters being considered by the board, as all items placed on the board’s agenda were prepared by the airport authority staff in coordination with her and all of those reports crossed her desk. As clerk, Gonzaga served at the pleasure of the board, which was dominated by Wapner. In 2021, Gonzaga had once more complied with the standards of the California Public Records Act by providing documents and materials to a member of the public who had requested it. Upon learning about what had occurred, Wapner had dressed Gonzaga down for having been too forthcoming with information Wapner deemed problematic and potentially embarrassing to him and the airport authority, feeling that she should have found some way to stonewall those information requests, particularly as they had come from individuals Wapner considered to be his political opposition.
It was conveyed to the Sentinel that Gonzaga mightily resented being put into a situation in which she was subject to the disapprobation of her political master for having performed her job and abiding by the letter of the law.
That holiday season, Gonzaga made a New Year’s resolution to make her exit from the Ontario International Airport Authority. Eighteen days into January 2022, she resigned from the Ontario International Airport Authority board clerk post to take a job as the deputy city clerk with the City of Chino she had lined up. At the time of her leaving, the Ontario International Airport Authority was providing her with $120,614.15 in total annual compensation, consisting of a salary of $89,907.67, another $1,026 in perquisites and pay add-ons and $29,680.48 in benefits. In leaving, she took a substantial pay cut, as the post in Chino offered a more modest compensation, roughly $83,847.95 in total annual compensation, consisting of $65,952 in salary, $5,893 in perquisites and pay ad-ons and $12,002.95 in benefits.
An examination of the documents reposited into the airport authority’s files provide glimpses into the seedy world of Ontario politics, a window on graft and corruption and the corrosive nature of power involving elected officials in general and Wapner in particular, who has been steeped in a pay-to-play ethos for virtually the entirety of his now nearly 30-year-long political career.
Wapner was first elected to the council in 1994, a political venture that was remarkable for the bold foray he made, in conjunction with his fellow municipal employee and ultimately council colleague Jim Bowman in exploring the then-not-fully-settled legal question of whether a municipal employee could vie for an elected position overseeing the city for which he worked. Ultimately, that question would be settled with the principle established that while an incumbent politician could not become his or her own boss by being hired by the city or agency he or she oversaw in his or her elected capacity, an agency or city employee could become his or her own ultimate boss by running for office and winning, since, presumably, the voters know, or should know, whom they are voting for, and if they choose to fill a governmental decision-making post with an employee of that particular governmental entity, that is their option.
In his role as councilman over the next 29 plus years, Wapner has tested both the ethical and legal constraints applied to politicians. During his nearly three decades in office, he has collected $3.3 million in political contributions, which distinguishes him as the top collector of campaign funds among all municipal officeholders in San Bernardino County history, putting him well ahead of other prodigiously well financed city officeholders in the San Bernardino County political arena, such as Ontario Mayor Paul Leon, who despite his status as mayor has tallied contributions totals of roughly $2 million, less than two-thirds that of Wapner, and Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, who is recognized widely for her fundraising prowess.
As remarkable or even more so than the amount of money that Wapner has collected is the manner in which he goes about doing so.
Virtually all who know him describe him as an alpha type personality who cannot stand to have things go other than his own way, one who aggressively comes to dominate everything around him. This is evinced by his longevity in political office and the lead roles he has taken in a number of governmental actions and programs, including his leadership of the effort to return Ontario Airport to local control, his unbroken string since its founding as president of the Ontario International Airport Authority, his past chairmanship of the joint powers authority known as San Bernardino Associated Governments, which is now known by the more straightforward label of the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency, his former role as Southern California Association of Governments president, his previous chairmanship of the National League of Cities Public Safety Committee, his one-time chairmanship of the Omnitrans Board of Directors, his place at the head of a ruling coalition on the Ontario City Council that includes Councilman Jim Bowman and Councilwoman Deborah Porada, by which he has displaced Mayor Leon as the de facto leader of the city. All of this has been made possible by his accumulation of more money into his political war chest than any other local politician in the county, making it a virtual impossibility to remove him from office.
Wapner’s aggressive fundraising tactics involve approaches to as many of the Ontario community’s deep-pocketed and not-so-deep-pocketed business interests as he can chart. He in particular concentrates on ones who had or have sought, or are likely in the future to seek, approval from the city for their projects or proposals, city service providers or product vendors, as well as holders of or applicants for franchises granted by the city. Others he commonly taps, or attempts to tap, for campaign money are individuals or business owners in the city who are likely to be subject to regulation or enforcement on code issues. While he is careful while making these pitches for monetary support of his electioneering efforts to make no promise of anything in return for an addition to his political war chest and engages in no direct threats that the failure to come through with a donation to him will precipitate some punishment, Wapner does an extraordinary job of suggesting that things are likely to look up for those who have charity in their souls and that things might not go so well for those who make a practice of being stingy. Meanwhile it may merely be a coincidence or, quite possibly, an indication of how the world goes round that those who have successfully developed property within the city or who have established thriving businesses and others still who have landed fat contracts with the city and those given franchises to provide needed services to Ontario residents are prominent supporters of Alan Wapner’s re-election efforts.
Inevitably, a specter of pay-for-play has descended over Ontario throughout the Wapner era on the city council. By no means was Ontario the only community in California marred by such showings of graft or the corruptive influence of money, though it found itself to be a rather illustrative example of the phenomenon. In years past, the ethically questionable practice of business entities opening their checkbooks to accommodate the politicians they had to coexist with was commonplace throughout the Golden State. Over the years, multiple stabs at refining the governmental process and excluding from it the taint of influence peddling were made in California law, its government code and then through a major gesture in that direction, the Political Reform Act of 1974. None of those changes, however, prevented an elected official from taking money in the form of political contributions from a donor and then voting on a matter impacting that donor, such as the donor’s a project, proposal, contract or franchise. Like politicians up and down the state, Wapner as a city council member frequently voted to advance the interests of those who had heavily invested in advancing his political career.
There was one outgrowth of the Political Reform Act of 1974, a refinement of the Government Code that took place in 1982 with the approval of the Levine Act, resulting in California Government Code Section 84308. In its original form, California Government Code Section 84308 was applicable to appointed officials or, variously, elected officials serving in an appointed capacity, prohibiting such an official from voting on a matter impacting a donor who provided the official with $250 or more.
Given that the Ontario International Airport Authority Board is composed of members who are not elected but appointed, i.e., designated to serve on the board, in this case through a nomination and appointing process involving the Ontario City Council, California Government Code Section 84308 is applicable to all of the board’s actions.
Throughout his time on the Ontario International Airport Authority Board, Wapner conducted himself in a fashion indistinguishable from his comportment on the city council, voting on virtually every issue that came before the board, including matters that had a direct impact on his donors.
It was widely recognized, from the inception of the Los Angeles International Airport Authority, that Wapner was the dominant member within that entity and on its board. From the outset, it was the expectation that members of the board, all of whom had been installed in their posts as a direct consequence of Wapner’s selection of them, were to vote in accordance with his wishes and direction. In the board’s first incarnation, involving Wapner, Bowman, San Bernardino Supervisor and former Ontario Mayor Gary Ovitt, Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge and Orange County Business Council Chief Executive Officer Lucy Dunn, and while the airport was yet under the ownership and management of Los Angeles/Los Angeles World Airports, this was absolutely true of Bowman and Ovitt and substantially true of Loveridge and Dunn, who regularly rubberstamped those initiatives brought forth by Wapner.
In 2015, Ovitt was supplanted as San Bernardino County’s Fourth District Supervisor by Curt Hagman. Thereafter, Hagman assumed Ovitt’s position as the county’s representative on the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of Directors. That year also brought a curious development when Hagman hired Wapner to fill a key role on his county staff, making the Ontario councilman/airport commission president the policy advisor for San Bernardino County’s Fourth District. This created a circumstance fraught with ethical and potentially even legal difficulty, as Hagman had become Wapner’s boss, while Wapner was in ascendancy on the airport board, on which Hagman held a role that was more or less subservient to Wapner.
Adding to the intrigue was that around this time, both Wapner and Hagman became abstracted into a focus on the People’s Republic of China and initiated a series of trips to that county. By elliptical suggestion rather than any straightforward declaration, it was suggested that both were opening, or attempting to open, a dialogue with the communist country’s captains of industry and the Chinese government officials overseeing state-owned capitalistic enterprises. It was not made clear whether Wapner’s efforts were being carried out on behalf of the city or the airport authority or whether Hagman was militating for the county or the airport authority.
Whether any worthwhile progress was made as a consequence of Wapner’s or Hagman’s travels, including efforts to convince Chinese airlines to fly into and out of Ontario International Airport, was difficult to determine. Neither ever made an accounting, through the City of Ontario or the County of San Bernardino or the Ontario International Airport Authority, with regard to their oversees lobbying or trade negotiations. Those memos relating to their efforts that were generated were placed in the airport authority’s confidential files, making them inaccessible to the public.
It was not until after the reacquisition of the airport by Ontario and the move to bring in Kelly 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 airport authority in its transition to Ontario’s ownership and operation of the airport that Wapner encountered anything in the way of significant opposition to his vision for the facility. Fredericks came to Ontario in March 2016, while the Los Angeles World Airports management team was yet in place. He remained engaged in phasing out multiple elements of the previous administration, persuading certain key employees to remain, replicating the function and capabilities of some staff, too consumed to butt heads with Wapner. Within two months after the November 1, 2016 ownership transition to Ontario, it was clear that Fredericks was on a collision course with the domineering Wapner, as employees at the airport from different perspectives saw the power struggle, in which Wapner held all the trump cards, playing out between the airport’s chief executive and its board president.
One issue was Fredericks’ position that none of the property that had been acquired by the airport authority in the areas adjacent to and immediately surrounding the airport could be considered surplus, as that land had conceivable and quite likely future aviation, aviation-related or augmentative use. This ran head-on into the designs that some of Wapner’s acquaintances and associates – that is, donors and political allies – had for the property, which they hoped to be able to acquire, at a discount rate, given that the land was to be defined by Wapner and the remainder of the board as “surplus” property with no foreseeable use to the entity that held it, the Ontario International Airport Authority. Wapner began pressuring Fredericks to carry out an inventory of all airport property, making determinations and designations as to which parcels were expendable as surplus land and which ones were not. When Fredericks began dragging his feet in carrying out that assignment, Wapner grew irate. The dilemma was that Wapner and others insisted that the airport was to be an “economic engine” of the Inland Empire. That being the case, Wapner and other responsible local officials needed to be able to agilely react when a major entity was willing to invest money, make improvements to bare or blighted or unproductive land to transform it into something dynamic, while paying for the construction of accompanying infrastructure. There was money to be made, and the expansion of the local economy was at hand, Wapner felt. Fredericks needed to quit shilly-shallying around and do as he was instructed.
For Fredericks, it was not quite that simple. The property in question had other potential uses than to serve as warehousing into which cargo could be offloaded before being distributed elsewhere or where freight was to be held until it was loaded onto planes to be flown to another airport. Certainly, there would be a short-term economic gain for someone who could acquire the land and construct facilities – most likely warehousing – there. But once that property was surrendered by the airport authority and built upon, there would be little prospect that the future managers or directors of the airport would be able to get that land back to use it for some aviation-related or other purpose that might be crucial to the aerodrome’s expansion or adaptation to other purposes. That was not to mention that warehouses in general were such an unimaginative use that even in the short-term, higher and better uses of the land might present themselves.
Moreover, Fredericks was sophisticated enough to realize, Wapner wasn’t talking about selling the airport property at what were essentially bargain-basement rates to just anyone but rather to entities with which he had an established relationship, ones who had invested in his political career by pouring thousands and thousands of dollars into his electioneering fund. In essence, Wapner was selling key portions of the airport property off to the highest bidder. And those bids weren’t being made in an openly competitive public process in which others had an opportunity to present alternative projects that might be compared and contrasted with what was being proposed, Fredericks realized, but rather in the form of checks handed to Wapner and deposited into his reelection fund.
By the late Spring of 2017, Wapner had enough of Fredericks’ stalling. Backed by Bowman, Hagman and Loveridge, he delivered Fredericks an ultimatum: leave or be fired. On July 5, 2017, 19 days after Dunn had resigned from the airport board, the four remaining board members held a closed session during which it accepted Frederick’s resignation. “Both the commissioners and Kelly acknowledge that their approaches to the direction and management of OIAA [the Ontario International Airport Authority] differ and that it would be mutually beneficial to part ways as OIAA moves to the next phase of the airport’s development,” Wapner said in a statement announcing Fredericks’ departure.
“On behalf of the OIAA, I commend Kelly for his leadership in successfully transitioning Ontario International Airport to local control,” Wapner said in the statement. “During more than 16 months at the helm, Kelly and his team made significant progress in furthering our mission to make ONT [Ontario International Airport] one of the most competitive, efficient, innovative and customer-friendly passenger, cargo and business airports in the United States. We thank Kelly for his service and wish him well in his future endeavors.”
Wapner, with the support of the remainder of the board, moved immediately to promote Mark Thorpe, who had been hired as the airport’s chief development officer in August 2016 as Los Angeles World Airport’s management of the airport was coming to a close, to serve as Frederick’s replacement.
An obscure element of Wapner’s role was his influence over the hiring of consultants, many of whom were provided with highly lucrative contracts with the airport authority. In some cases, the work carried out by those consultants was well defined and tangible. In others, there existed from the outset only the vaguest descriptions of what assignments were to be carried out. After the fact, in many instances, it is virtually impossible to ascertain what services were rendered by the consultants and how they related to any meaningful function at the airport.
A persistent report was that some of the consultants were individuals who had a history with Wapner through the City of Ontario in one way or another, and that by installing those individuals into the consultancies, Wapner was buying their silence with regard to their knowledge about actions or activities he had previously engaged in on the municipal side of his function. One observation was that the consultancies, in addition to the inexact definition of their purpose, were curiously for a uniform amount of money – just below a quarter of a million per year. Wapner’s failure to calibrate the remuneration these consultants were receiving to a precise or even less than precise metric of output, production or accomplishment contributed to the perception that he was using them as some form of illicit payoff to individuals with whom he had some form of inappropriate relationship. This was compounded by the consideration that at least one of the consultants had been for some time – and remains – one of Wapner’s more consistent campaign donors.
In 2017, three individuals and their companies – Greg Devereaux and his firm Worthington Partners, Chris Hughes and his firm Woodlawn Associates and Paul Haney and his company, Paul Haney and Associates – were provided with consultancy contracts with the airport authority, paying each of the principals $240,000 per year.
Devereaux was Ontario’s city manager from 1997 until 2010, at which point he was poached by the County of San Bernardino to serve as the county’s chief executive officer, a post he remained in until 2017. Hughes, who had been Ontario’s fire chief, was tapped by the city to replace Devereaux as city manager, a post he occupied until he retired in 2013. Haney, who had previously worked for American Airlines and the Lockheed Corporation, had been one of the deputy executive directors with Los Angeles World Airports from 2001 to 2008, while that entity had been overseeing Ontario International Airport.
On July 25, 2017, at the first meeting of the airport authority board of commissioners after Fredericks had been pushed out as the airport’s chief executive officer, the board gave approval to “a consultation agreement with Worthington Partners, LLC for consulting services relating to the general administration of [the] Ontario International Airport Authority. At the same meeting, the board approved “a consultation agreement with Woodlawn Consulting, LLC for consulting services relating to land development and other related proceedings of the Ontario International Airport Authority.” Both contracts were approved on a 3-to-1 vote, with Wapner, Bowman and Hagman prevailing and Loveridge dissenting.
On December 13, 2017, the airport authority board consented to entering into a contract with Paul Haney & Associates on the same terms as it had with Devereaux and Hughes. Haney was to, according to the item approved by the board on December 13, 2017, provide “consulting services relating to airport administration, operations, marketing, branding, development, financing, and public and communications relations of the Ontario International Airport Authority.” The vote to contract with Haney & Associates passed on a 4-to-0 vote, with Bowman, Hagman, Loveridge and Julia Gouw, who had replaced Dunn as an airport commissioner, unanimous in their approval. Wapner, citing a conflict of interest, abstained from voting.
All three of the consulting contracts – the one with Devereaux, Hughes and Haney – called for “a monthly retainer fee of twenty thousand dollars ($20,000.00) per month for a period of one (1) year from the effective date of the agreement with two one-year options, for a total amount of two hundred and forty thousand dollars ($240,000) per annum, or $720,000 if both options are exercised.” Thus, it appeared that those arrangement would come to a close, in the case of Devereaux and Hughes, in July 2020 and, in the case of Haney, in December 2020. All three contracts were extended beyond their 2020 window and all three remain in place.
The three contracts were among more than a score of consultancies that the airport authority has entered into over the years. Viewpoints and opinions range as to what the value of each of those various consultancy contracts has been. There are those who have pointed out specific advantages achieved by the airport with regard to the input some of those consultants provided.
The Devereaux, Hughes and Haney consultancies provide what is considered to be a microcosm of those consulting contracts.
With only a few exceptions, among airport and city employees and a cross section of those engaged in civic affairs on the West End of San Bernardino County, the consensus is that having Devereaux in place as a management consultant has been of anywhere from moderate to substantial value in overcoming span of control issues that have overwhelmed the airport authority’s executive suite from time to time. The airport is not the first institution to note Devereaux’ talent in handling and coordinating the unwieldy and disparate elements of a large organization. Even some of Wapner’s harshest critics are willing to credit him with having sound enough bureaucratic sense to have delegated correctly with the topflight apparatchik Devereaux.
The typical view of Hughes is less than sanguine, however. Outsiders are baffled at what value the fireman-turned-administrator brings to the table at the airport. His advance to city manager owed more to the timing of the county’s luring of Devereaux to San Bernardino than his administrative talent. Hughes’s strong suit was not his inherent ability to plan, organize, direct and control. There was no monumental urban planning or basic structural adjustments to the municipal institution during his tenure running the city. As someone who was once answerable to him at City Hall put it, “If a plane caught fire on the runway, Chris would be your guy, but that’s not what you have a consultant for.” Efforts by the Sentinel to obtain from Wapner or others at the airport authority a synopsis of Hughes’ duties and accomplishments went unanswered.
Of all the consultants at the airport, on paper Haney would seem to be the most impressive. Paradoxically, he seems to have no involvement whatsoever in those aspects of the airport’s operation about which he has the greatest expertise. As with Hughes, no one at the airport could cite a single accomplishment that might be attributed to him, despite his more than six-and-one-half year association with the facility. Though virtually everyone knew who he was, referring to him variously as Wapner’s “friend…” or “associate…” or “travel companion…,” no one seemed to know what he does and it was said he is present at the airport on only the rarest of occasions, despite having now been paid more than $1.54 million over that time.
It is with regard to Haney that one of the two or three strongest accusations of graft have been vectored at Wapner, extending to accusations that Haney has been kicking back to the board president in the form of political contributions. It is in this context that Government Code 84308 has relevance. It is no secret that it was Wapner who insisted upon Haney being given the consulting contract with the airport authority, arranging to have Mark Thorp extend the contract to him. Yet, while Wapner arranged for the consulting contract to be initiated and has seen to it that it has remained in place since 2017, he recused himself from the original approval of the consulting contract and each of its renewals/extensions. That appears to be in deference to the money – what some employees at the airport authority call kickbacks – that Haney has provided Wapner.
According to documentation obtained by the Sentinel, the firm of Englander Knabe & Allen, which has had Haney as an associate since he left Los Angeles World Airports in 2008, contributed $1,000 to Wapner’s electioneering fund on February 23, 2012; another S1,000 on April 1, 2013; another S1,000 on June 12, 2014; and another S1,000 on February 24, 2015. In addition, Englander Knabe & Allen contributed S1,000 to Jim Bowman’s campaign fund on November 28, 2013. Paul Harvey contributed $1,000 to Wapner on June 18, 2014; another S1,000 on February 15, 2016; another S1,000 on February 15, 2016; another S1,000 on January 27, 2017; another S1,000 on March 5, 2018; another $1,000 on February 7, 2020; another S1,000 on January 25, 2021; another S1,000 on March 1, 2022; and S2,000 on December 19, 2022. Susan Haney, Paul Haney’s wife, gave Wapner S1,000 on July 18, 2022. Paul Haney also provided S1,000 to Bowman on March 30, 2018.
In recusing himself with regard to the votes on approving Haney’s contract and contract extensions, Wapner acknowledged that he had a conflict of interest relating to Haney, presumably growing out of the prohibition contained in Government Code Section 84308 against voting on any matter impacting a donor, considered in conjunction with the money he has received from Haney in the form of political contributions. Nevertheless, Wapner consistently voted to approve on a monthly basis the Airport Authority’s payment of its bills and payroll, which contained the $20,000 payment to Haney & Associates. Since Government Code Section 84308 prohibits an official from accepting, soliciting, or directing a contribution exceeding $250 from a party or participant in either the 12 months preceding or the 12 months after a vote, it appears that with regard to Paul Haney alone, Wapner has violated Government Code Section 84308 73 times, as there have 79 votes to approve Haney’s monthly $20,000 payment since January 2018.
Wapner was absent from the Ontario International Airport Authority board meetings on January 23, 2020; November 17, 2022; May 25, 2023; August 24, 2023; and February 22, 2024, and thus did not vote with regard to approving the previous month’s payroll on those occasions. In addition, on June 23, 2022, Wapner and the rest of the board made a single vote in approving the airport’s payroll for both April and May of 2022 because all of the meetings in May were canceled or not held because of the lack of a quorum.
Uncelebrated at the time of Fredericks’ departure was that Wapner had gotten Bowman, Hagman and Loveridge to agree that the airport authority would abide by its original contract with Fredericks, meaning that the authority would confer upon Fredericks the balance of the amount of money he was due under the contract – the slightly more than 43 months of pay he was due after having been in place as executive director for 16.7 months, totaling $1,437,920.83. Part of Fredericks’ severance agreement was a confidentiality clause, one by which the airport authority, the board and all authority employees were prohibited from speaking ill of Fredericks and he was likewise constrained from making any disclosure of what he had come to learn about the board and the way the airport authority conducted business. All lips were sealed.
As far as Wapner was concerned, the more than $1.4 million to be done with Fredericks was well-spent money. Within two months of Thorpe having replaced Fredericks in the interim executive director’s post, the airport landed two new carriers, Frontier Airlines and China Airlines. After a mere three months in the interim capacity, Thorpe was promoted, at Wapner’s prompting, to the post of the airport’s executive director, dropping the qualifier “interim” from his title.
Wapner confidently declared, “Mark is committed to transforming ONT into a magnet for economic development in the Inland Empire.”
That was indeed Thorp’s intention. Yet, when he closely examined the course Wapner and the board wanted the airport to take, Thorpe, like his predecessor, had come to the same conclusion: Selling off the airport property would be a mistake. Once the land was developed and in the hands of private owners and companies, it would be virtually impossible to reclaim for airport use, based upon its value and the building that would take place on it.
Thorpe began looking at the prospect of not selling the property, but rather leasing it. A 25-year lease would encumber the property and render it unusable for aviation purposes for a quarter century. That might preclude expansion of the airport, though not indefinitely. If such a lease could be effectuated and timed correctly, the airport and airport authority might have the best of both worlds, generating income off of the airport’s dormant property, yet preserving the possibility of utilizing the property for airport expansion at some designated point decades hence.
Thorpe managed to put Wapner and his board colleagues off longer than Fredericks had, doing so for more than three years after he had succeeded Fredericks, which was more than twice as long as Fredericks had been able to remain as executive director.
Wapner was growing increasingly agitated. Private entities were interested in something approaching 200 acres mostly east of the airport, Wapner said, and it was high time one or more of them had a go at getting it. Foremost among those was Sares-Regis Group and Lee and Associates. By that point, it was a given among some airport personnel that one or both would soon have the property at the periphery tied up. Momentum was building in their favor, as it was no secret that both companies had been kind to the airport authority’s board president. Beginning in the 1990s, both companies had made an investment in Wapner’s political career.
Documentation obtained by the Sentinel shows that beginning in April of 1998 and running up to the present, Sares-Regis has provided Wapner with at least $123,444 in political donations, including money coming directly from the company as well as its principals John Hagestad and Peter Rooney as well as its corporate officers Larry Lukanish, Kenneth Coatsworth, Patrick Russell, Vincent Ciavarella and William Thormahlen. Similarly, since December of 1999, Joe McKay, Mike Wolfe and Carol Plowman of Lee & Associates have supplied Wapner with $95,596.07 in campaign funding.
By Spring 2020, Wapner and Thorpe were on a collision course. The tension between the two whenever they were in each other’s presence was palpable. Some airport and airport authority employees knew what the issue was. Others did not. What was clear was that Wapner, who was backed to the hilt by Hagman and Bowman and nearly as solidly by Loveridge and Gouw, wasn’t getting what he wanted from Thorpe. More and more, Atif Elkadi, who had come to occupy the assistant executive director’s position that Thorpe had held under Fredericks, was designated, or simply by default came, to deal with Wapner.
On the table was a $101 million offer for the purchase of 198 acres Wapner was now insisting was “surplus” airport property, an offer which had reportedly originated with Sares-Regis/Lee & Associates, working as a team. There were other overtures from other entities for property at the airport, but those had not come from entities who were as well-wired politically with Wapner, and Thorpe did not feel himself under the gun to respond to those as he did to the Sares-Regis/Lee & Associates proposal.
Thrown into the mix was a report that agents of the Chinese government, perceiving that obtaining a substantial piece of the action at Ontario International Airport was in the long-term strategic interest of their nation, were behind a move to purchase all, some or as much of the property in question as could be had. Thus, it was reported, the leadership of the airport authority – the commission and senior staff, were entertaining an offer, involving an undisclosed amount of cash, from a group of “Orange County” investors, with Orange County being a euphemism for Beijing.
The tension between Wapner and Thorpe whenever they were in each other’s presence was excruciating, to both and anyone else in the room. Elkadi’s role grew. Thorpe receded. He remained in place as the airport authority’s titular executive director, functioning in the day-to-day role as the chief-executive at the airport, but he avoided, to the degree possible, coming into direct contact with Wapner.
Simultaneously, Thorpe was looking for some practical way to prevent the sale of the roughly 200 acres of airport property on the $101 million terms that Wapner was dictating, including cataloging leasing options.
In good conscience, Thorpe simply could not go along with the $101 million offer for the 198 acres. Remaining within the pressure cooker environment of the Ontario International Airport Authority was for him an increasingly untenable position. He began looking at the possibility of returning to Los Angeles World Airports, where he could perhaps fit in with the administration of Los Angeles International Airport or Van Nuys Airport or he might oversee the aviation-related property LAWA controls in the Palmdale area. Such a move meant that he would need to take a cut – and perhaps a substantial cut – in the $435,388 in total annual compensation he was bringing in as the head staff honcho at Ontario International Airport, but he was convinced it would be worth it, given all considerations.
By Summer 2021, Thorpe was the Ontario International Airport’s chief executive in absentia. Beginning in July, he was no longer in attendance at the Ontario International Airport Authority board meetings, with his second-in-command, Elkadi, filling in for him. While the airport authority’s documents and construction, service provision and vendor contracts continued to be drafted with him being listed as the authority’s chief executive, Elkadi signed virtually all of those on his behalf during that time period.
Meanwhile, there were unmistakable signals that Wapner and the board were looking to pull the plug on him. On August 12, August 26, September 13 and October 28 of 2021, the airport authority board, carried out closed session reviews of Thorpe’s performance.
Thorpe, who was walking on eggshells with Wapner and other members of the board already, got the message. When he learned that the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority Board was looking to fill the chief executive officer position at Orlando International Airport, he applied for the post.
The following month, there was a major breakthrough, one by which Thorpe’s dilemma over the surplus land sale was resolved in his rather than Wapner’s favor. On December 23, 2021, the Ontario International Airport Authority Commission, including Wapner, Bowman, Hagman, Loveridge and Gouw unanimously voted to authorize a development and entitlement agreement that cleared the way for the airport authority to lease for 55 years 198 acres of so-called surplus property at the airport to CanAm Ontario LLC, a venture formed by San Antonio, Texas-based USAA Real Estate Company and McDonald Property Group of Newport Beach, for $625 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, CanAm Ontario made a non-refundable $10 million deposit with the airport authority, after which CanAm Ontario was to be given time to obtain local jurisdictional entitlement and environmental approvals to construct buildings and improvements on the property. In the first five years, CanAm Ontario is to pay the airport authority $25 million per year and in the second five years, $30 million per year, such that at the end of the first ten years, the airport authority will have received $275 million. Over the remaining 35 years of the lease, CanAm will pay the authority an average of $10 million per year.
Either coincidentally or not, Thorpe’s departure as the airport authority’s executive director corresponded, roughly, with Gonzaga’s exit. In the months just prior to both leaving, a number of Ontario residents, either alerted to or observant of what was going on within the airport authority, began inquiries, including utilizing the California Public Records Act to force officials there to produce documents and information relating to what were rumored to be irregularities in the airport authority’s dealings with entities making overtures to variously, purchase “surplus” airport property, provide services which ranged from indispensable to important to necessary to useful to redundant, marginally relevant to unnecessary to outright wasteful; secure vending franchises on the airport grounds; and promote the airport. Word spread that members of the city council had for years been receiving kickbacks from basic service providers and franchise holders at the airport, including those doing custodial work, building maintenance, parking lot/roadway upkeep, tarmac reconditioning, heating, ventilating and air conditioning service in the terminal, taxi franchisees and tow service providers. Reportedly, Thorp had made a number of “memos to file” cataloging his misgivings about both the directions he was being given by the board pursuant to votes and orders coming from Wapner that were not ratified first by the other commissioners. When efforts by the public to obtain documents pertaining to all order of the airport’s operation intensified in late 2021 and Wapner learned that Gonzaga had begun to comply with them, the board chairman went ballistic. He made clear that he wanted to be informed of any such requests, and he forbade Gonzaga from responding to the requests in her capacity as board clerk. Rather, Wapner insisted, public records requests going forward were to be routed through attorney Kevin Sullivan, who was with the airport authority’s designated legal counsel, the firm of Gatzke Dillon & Ballance, with Wapner’s expectation that if there was even the slightest or slimmest of grounds to reject those requests, the documents in question should not be provided.
To ensure Thorp’s silence, Wapner arranged, as he had with Fredericks before him, to provide him with a severance package, one which involved a nondisclosure clause that was binding on both the airport authority and Thorp, such that no one with the airport could malign Thorp and he was enjoined from speaking openly about the airport commission or the airport authority in general or specific and was similarly prohibited from discussing what he had come to learn about the airport’s operations while he was in the capacities of airport’s chief development officer or its executive director.
The small coalition of Ontario residents who had been seeking accountability with regard to the city takeover of ownership and management at the airport who had scored a few successes in that regard as the relationship between Wapner and Thorp deteriorated, felt themselves being thrown into the dark again upon Wapner reading the riot act to Gonzaga, Sullivan being made into the designated roadblock to public records requests and Thorp making his departure. Those residents approached first the Ontario Police Department and then the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office to see if either entity might be persuaded to use its investigative authority to access the documentation that they believed would show a provable nexus between the money freely flowing into Wapner’s campaign treasure chest, potentially into his own pocket and both domestic and offshore bank accounts he had set up or which were set up in his name and the numerous entities which were making money hand over fist at the airport, through the airport authority or vis-à-vis airport operations.
It became immediately apparent that no one at the police department – from the police chief, captains, lieutenants and sergeants down to the level of the detectives who would have to carry out such an operation to the patrolmen on the streets – was interested in turning over any such rocks. First off, Wapner was one of the department’s own, having been employed there for 17 years, including three years he was on the city council. Second, the sworn officers and unsworn employees with the Ontario Police Department were the highest paid law enforcement personnel among all of San Bernardino County’s peace officers. As a member of the city’s fiscal management advisory team/city council subcommittee involved in the collective bargaining process with the police department, Wapner was critical in the ultimate decision-making process to ratify a succession of contracts that conferred those enviable salaries and benefits upon the members of the police department. Accordingly, no one in the department was then or is now willing to initiate any sort of action, investigative or otherwise, that is going to challenge him, embarrass him, make him look bad, compromise him, bring him into disrepute or undercut his authority, electability or the hold he has on his office.
Though Wapner’s tie-in to the district attorney’s office, i.e., the district attorney, was slightly more obscure, that institution is similarly disinclined to investigate or involve itself in action relating to the Ontario Airport Commission president.
In November 2004, Jason Anderson was elected to the Ontario City Council, and he would serve in that position until 2008. Things had remained unsettled on the council for several months after Anderson’s election into 2005, because the same November 2, 2004 balloting that brought Anderson into office had also featured a special contest for San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor in which then-Ontario Mayor Gary Ovitt was a candidate, ultimately, it turned out, the victorious one. Ovitt resigned as mayor the following month to become supervisor, creating a mayoral void on the council, which was ultimately filled in a June 7, 2005 special election in which Councilman Paul Leon, who like Anderson was a successful candidate in the November 2004 election, ultimately won. This had created yet another void on the council, that being the council seat held by Leon, who vacated that spot to become mayor. Ultimately, the council filled that spot by appointing then-Ontario Planning Commissioner Sheila Mautz to the council.
Though not immediately, over the course of the first six to eight months that Mautz was on the council, Leon, Anderson and Mautz evolved into a relatively consistent ruling coalition, which on certain issues of substance or significance was opposed by the council’s minority dissenters, Wapner and Councilman Jim Bowman. Despite that 3-to-2 council split, which manifested only occasionally, the vast majority of issues dealt with by the Leon/Wapner/Bowman/Anderson/Mautz city council were noncontroversial or non-contentious ones and an analysis of the votes made by Wapner and Anderson during the four years that they were council colleagues indicates they voted identically more than 97 percent of the time.
Professionally, Anderson was a lawyer who spent much of his career as a deputy prosecutor in the district attorney’s office. Several years after his 2008 defeat for reelection as city councilman by Debra Dorst-Porada, he left the district attorney’s office and went into private legal practice.
In 2014, Wapner embroiled himself in a series of controversies in the run-up to his reelection in that year’s November election.
A private residence security camera in place at a home within Wapner’s neighborhood in the area of East Hazeltine and South Pleasant Avenue captured footage of Wapner beating his daughter after she had left their home in the midst of a heated argument. Footage from that video was posted to the internet, whereupon Wapner, in an adroit political move, diverted attention from the video’s contents to accusations about who was responsible for posting the video on the internet. Wapner accused Ruben Valencia, an unsuccessful candidate for city council in 2012 who in 2014 was again running for council in a race that also featured incumbents Wapner and Bowman; along with J. Steve Garcia, a member of the Ontario-Montclair School District Board who was running at that time for a board position with Chaffey Joint Union High School District; and the owners of the home with the security system that had captured the video as the culprits.
Indignantly, Wapner suggested that what had occurred was a private family matter and his method of dealing with his recalcitrant then-15-year-old daughter was no one’s business but his own. If the video was not removed from the internet along with all references to it, he threatened legal action, including suing for defamation, against all of the responsible parties.
In the same timeframe during the heated 2014 election cycle in Ontario, Wapner asserted, spuriously it would turn out, that Valencia, who was then employed as a deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department at the department’s City of Industry substation, was being assisted by the County of Los Angeles, its taxpayers, its sheriff’s department and various personnel at the City of Industry substation who were using the substation premises and its equipment in conducting his campaign for city council in Ontario. Valencia was on the clock as a sheriff’s department employee while engaging in campaign-related activity, Wapner charged.
Los Angeles County officials and higher-ups in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, having at first been rocked back on their heels by Wapner’s allegation, looked into the matter. Having satisfied themselves that no misuse of Los Angeles County equipment or facilities in support of Valencia’s campaign had taken place, the county and the sheriff’s department made a declaration to that effect. Valencia, sensing that Wapner was seeking to orchestrate events and use his position of power along with sheer intimidation to inhibit his ability to campaign for city council, thereafter sought and obtained a restraining order against Wapner.
At the September 2, 2014 Ontario City Council meeting, the council adjourned into a closed session, during which the panel’s first order of business was to discuss how the city was going to respond to the restraining order that had been filed by Valencia, as well as concern that the city might be sued by the County of Los Angeles and its sheriff’s department over Wapner’s false assertions and his intrusion at the City of Industry substation.
The city council agreed to retain Anderson to represent Wapner with regard to the restraining order filed against him. Curiously, the council sought to disguise the retaining of Anderson by disbursing the funds out of the city’s housing authority account.
As it would turn out, the political status quo in Ontario remained intact as a result of the November 2014 election, in which Leon was reelected as mayor and both Wapner and Bowman were retained as councilmen. Valencia lost that year, as did the two other candidates in the race, Yolanda Garcia and Reyna Machado. Two years later, however, running in his third consecutive Ontario City Council race and without Wapner viciously militating against him, Valencia was elected to the city council.
Two years after that, in 2018, Anderson vied for elective office again, this time for district attorney. He was successful in that bid, ousting the four-term incumbent Mike Ramos. Endorsements from key members of the Ontario Council, including Alan Wapner, played a role in Anderson’s victory. In 2022, Anderson ran unopposed for reelection as the county’s top prosecutor.
Early that year, some Ontario residents were clamoring for officials within the local governmental structure, one of the most logical of which was the district attorney, to take a hard look at the activities at the Ontario International Airport Authority and what they saw as the conflict-tainted decision-making and deliberative processes of the airport commission and its president. At the insistence of a handful of Ontario activists that his office scrutinize what they said were glaring improprieties and instances of graft, Anderson designated one of his least experienced investigators, one with no previous involvement in white-collar or non-violent criminal offenses, to lend an ear to what those residents had to say. The notes from the exchanges were promptly filed away without being reviewed by a prosecutor. No action whatsoever was taken relating to the airport or the Ontario International Airport Authority.
When phone calls and notes to the California Attorney General’s Office elicited no interest, the matter was taken up with federal officials, both the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Unknown is whether the residents acted in conjunction with Gonzaga or whether, in making their approach to the federal officials, Gonzaga was cited as a witness with a meaningful and in-depth knowledge of where the skeletons are buried at the airport.
Federal officials have a policy of neither confirming nor denying the existence of ongoing investigations. Federal agents commonly make a practice of requesting or even ordering witnesses to refrain from discussing or mentioning to others the subject matter they have been questioned about or even so much as revealing that they have been questioned, interviewed or interrogated or confirming so, if asked.
In 2022, the Sentinel sought from Gonzaga an explanation of why she had departed from the board clerk position at the airport authority, a position providing her with $120,614.15 in total annual compensation, for a position as the deputy city clerk in Chino, which provided her with $83,847.95 in total annual compensation. Clearly uncomfortable with the question and perhaps concerned that the situation could be misconstrued to suggest that she had been fired by the airport authority, Gonzaga had responded that she had left the Ontario International Airport Authority on good terms to come to Chino.
In May 2023, the Sentinel, having been informed that the FBI had been in contact with Gonzaga, inquired of her directly as to whether she had been approached by federal investigators or had on her own approached them and what information she was at liberty to disclose about those exchanges of information as well as what more she could say about improprieties at the airport authority that had come to her attention. Gonzaga made no response.
Within the last two weeks, upon learning that auditors are making an exhaustive analysis of the airport authority’s books, the Sentinel once more approached Gonzaga, who has been promoted from her former position of deputy city clerk in Chino to city clerk. This time, in addition to essentially repeating previous inquiries that had been made, the Sentinel requested that Gonzaga warn the Sentinel off, if indeed the reports that she was in contact with federal agents were inaccurate. Again, she made no response whatsoever.
The Sentinel is informed that the Ontario International Airport Authority recently sought a $25 million grant from the Federal Aviation Authority to carry out improvements to the runway, taxiways and concourse. In response, the Federal Aviation Administration gave an indication it would need to verify certain particulars relating to the airport and its capital assets. That was followed up in July, the Sentinel was told, with a senior FAA official contacting Elkadi, now Fredericks’ and Thorp’s successor as the airport authority’s executive director, with a request that Elkadi arrange for one of the hotels near the airport to provide accommodations for a team of five federal auditors, who were to spend as much time as would be required, most likely in the neighborhood of two weeks, to go through the airport’s and the airport authority’s books with a fine-tooth comb.
Initially Elkadi sought to put the request off for a week, but was informed that the inquiry could not be forestalled. By the end of July, the Sentinel was told, the auditors were in Ontario and had begun their work.
The auditors were especially interested in, according to knowledgeable sources, spending out of the airport’s $10 million promotional budget, which is roughly five times that of comparably sized and located aeronautics facilities and which involved what for many is an inexplicable entanglement with multiple professional sports teams and what turned into the alleged illicit trafficking in and distribution of sports tickets, including those for the USC Trojans Football Team; the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League and its affiliate, the Ontario Reign. Furthermore, the audit is said to be delving into expenditures with regard to a number of non-aviation related activities, extending to payments for luxury boxes at Ontario’s Toyota Arena, publicly-funded travel airport authority officials have engaged in and payments to various consultants.
Both Wapner and Elkadi, a source familiar with the situation told the Sentinel in July, were beside themselves over what was taking place, “sweating bullets” out of trepidation of what the investigators/auditors were uncovering. There was a parallel report that airport authority officials were seeking to hide some of the documents in the authority’s files from the auditors.
While one of the airport authority’s consultants confirmed that FAA auditors had come to Ontario last month and were looking things over at the airport, he said the reports that the examination of the airport’s books was anything more than a routine examination of the airport’s financial picture were overblown.
Greg Devereaux also implied that the auditors have completed their work and have moved on. While stopping short of saying that the examiners had found absolutely no anomalies, he indicated they had not come across anything earth shattering. He said the results of the audit will be available, most likely within two months, and that at that point the public will be reassured that nothing is amiss.
“This audit was part of the normal FAA audit cycle,” Devereaux said. “We’ve had the airport back for eight years. The normal cycle for an FAA audit to take place is within five years. There have been four audits of airports this year, Ontario and three others. Two of the others were Pittsburgh and San Antonio. I don’t know the name of the other. These audits were all carried out in the normal course of FAA business.”
With conviction, Devereaux intoned, “The audit absolutely was not prompted by anything involving the FBI. It is incorrect that the focus of the audit was on the consultant contracts. It is true that my contract was audited. In the normal course of an audit, the auditors select random items to review. That is the way most audits are done. They reviewed mine and found absolutely no issues, as was reported to me. They did not come in looking at consultant contracts. To the extent that auditing of the consultants took place, that was just part of the random selection process. They found no issues.”
Devereaux emphasized, “The FBI was not involved. There were allegations a few years ago, and it is my understanding that two years ago the FAA did do an audit of some of the things you mentioned. They looked at those things and said, ‘There is no issue.’”
The current hype about the audit, with its lurid suggestions of improprieties, Devereaux said, is difficult to dispel without the tangible elements of the review contained in the audit. But once that information becomes available, those making overinflated statements will be discredited, he implied.
“In 30 to 60 days, the draft audit will be sent to the airport,” he said. “The airport will then have 90 days to respond and then the FAA will send the final audit to the airport and it will be a public record. You and any other interested party may want to request a copy so you and they can see for yourselves what the FAA is or isn’t concerned about. There won’t be anything about any of the things someone is alleging in that report. They [the auditors] weren’t looking at the things alleged.”
While Devereaux did not engage in a general defense of the consultants working at the airport, nor particularly of Paul Haney and Chris Hughes, he did address insinuations that he was not pulling his weight.
“In terms of what I am involved in and have been involved in as director of development for the airport, I led the team that negotiated the new Fed Ex facility. FedEx went from being in an old 30,000-square foot building to the new 251,000-square foot building they developed on the northwest side [of the airport]. That is a ground lease, and the airport now gets a lot more annual lease revenue and revenue from landing fees from additional flights from FedEx.”
Devereaux said, “In addition to that, I led another team that ran the selection process and negotiated the lease for the development of the 200 acres of undeveloped land across Haven east of the airport, referred to as “the boot,” that is in the flight path. It is currently being developed into about 4.3 million square feet of industrial uses. That 55-year lease will bring in over $3.3 billion to the airport over the life of the lease That’s all money that goes back into maintaining the airfield, buildings, creating new facilities like a new terminal that will be of benefit to not only domestic but international passengers and customers. In addition, the buildings will be deeded to the airport at the end of the 55 years and continue to produce revenue.”
Devereaux continued, “Two other things I would mention are that I am part of the team negotiating a new use and lease agreement between the airport and both the passenger and cargo airlines. The existing lease is 25 years old. It was negotiated by Los Angeles World Airports and will be expiring later this year. Use and lease agreement negotiations are complex, and striking the right deal is critical to the airport’s continued growth and success. We are currently in negotiations on two expansions of and two new cargo facilities. That is the kind of thing I do.”
Devereaux said, “I also did and do part of the orientation and training of existing staff and of new personnel, teaching the new employees what a joint powers authority form of government, such as the airport, is, what rules and laws it operates under, the roles and responsibilities of the board and the staff, the history of the airport and what its relationship to the city, county and region are, as well as how the city got ownership back from Los Angeles.”
Devereaux’s services as a consulting manager are much in demand, such that he has now or in recent years has had consulting roles with the City San Bernardino, the City of Upland, the East Valley Water District and the County of San Barnardino. On occasion, he has declined work because he was unable to find the time to meet the demands of some would-be employers. He said the service he has rendered Ontario International Airport, measured monetary, has proven to be of greater value than what he charges for his services.
“Just the Fed Ex lease of the property alone justifies my contract,” he told the Sentinel. “My contract would be paid hundreds of times over by the 55-year $3.3 billion lease of the boot property.”
The criticism vectored at the airport authority and the implied wrongdoing growing out of the audits was wrongheaded and a product of the unwarranted suspicions and naivete of people, well meaning or not, who don’t know what they are talking about or who are either Wapner’s political enemies or are abetting them, Devereaux said.
“The airport also has its own internal auditor who audits everything on a yearly basis,” Devereaux said, asserting that the mere fact that an audit had been initiated was meaningless. “It is standard procedure. Every agency audits its own operations. That has always been the case.”
There is nothing out of the ordinary in the auditors making an in-depth survey of the airport authority’s promotion and advertising of the airport, he said. The consideration that airport officials are making an effort to promote the airport carries with it no untoward implication, he said, even if they are spending more money in that regard than some or even most other airports.
“What was published [in the July 26 Sentinel] said there was some concern that similar-sized airports did not spend as much on advertising and promotion,” Devereaux said. “I would suggest we are in one of the most competitive markets [for air travel] in the country. When we took over the airport, more than 70 percent of the travelers within our market area were going to other airports in the region. When you have that much market leakage, you have to establish more of an identity. If you look at how this airport recovered after [the] COVID [pandemic], we had 40 months straight of year-over-year growth, making Ontario International Airport the fastest growing airport in the United States and the fastest recovering airport in California, which clearly demonstrates that we are getting results from the marketing and advertising that the airport has done and is doing. Those who are saying we are spending more money on advertising have a point, but if you look at what we are paying in terms of promotion alone in comparison to an airport that doesn’t have any real competition, that is very different from an airport in a market where you have significant competition from five other major airports.”
Efforts to reach Hughes were unsuccessful.
The Sentinel, while obtaining both email addresses and phone contact information for Haney, was unable to persuade him to engage in an exchange. The Sentinel was unable to obtain a description of Haney’s duties beyond the generic indication that he was engaged in “consulting services relating to airport administration, operations, marketing, branding, development, financing, and public and communications relations of the Ontario International Airport Authority.” According to the authority, there is no itemized description of what activity he is engaged in and no log delineating his hours, specific work, tasks, assignments or even travel on behalf of the of the airport authority going back to 2017. In its email to Haney sent on August 1, the Sentinel asked Haney for his description of work he had done and specific accomplishments. He provided no response.
In its email to Haney, the Sentinel noted the generosity Haney had displayed toward Wapner in terms of donations to his electioneering fund and further noted Wapner’s assertion that it was the knowledge, skill and experience Haney had accumulated in the aeronautics industry with Lockheed and Lockheed Martin, within the airline industry in his role as a regional managing director and division manager with American Airlines and his experience with Los Angeles World Airports as a deputy executive director that justified his hiring as a consultant with the Ontario International Airport Authority. Referencing Haney’s role as the director of Lockheed Martin’s ethics and corporate compliance programs, the Sentinel asked his assessment of the ethics Wapner had displayed with his consistent displays of decision-making favoring his campaign donors with lucrative contracts and votes or efforts to benefit those campaign donors financially. The Sentinel inquired of Haney directly about the growing perception among Wapner’s constituents in Ontario that the $14,000 he, his company and his wife have made to Wapner over the years were a form of kickbacks or quid pro quos made in exchange for Wapner have arranged for him to obtain his consulting contract with the Ontario International Airport Authority.
Haney made no response to the Sentinel’s inquiry.
Similarly, Wapner spurned the Sentinel’s inquiries with regard to his treatment of Gonzaga, his expectation that Gonzaga resist public records requests pertaining to the details of the airport’s operations and the airport authority’s various actions, his use of attorney Kevin Sullivan to resist efforts by members of the public to obtain airport authority records and documents, the pay-to-play atmosphere impacting the airport authority growing out of the favoritism shown toward his deepest-pocketed campaign donors, his acknowledgment of the California Government Code Section 84308 restrictions on his voting with respect to any matters impacting a donor of $250 or more to his electioneering fund when he recused himself of voting to approve Haney’s consulting contract followed by his voting to approve $20,000 monthly payments to Haney 73 times, how the purchasing of substantial numbers of sporting event tickets was legitimately related to the effort to promote and advertise the airport, how his taxpayer-defrayed use of a luxury box at Toyota Arena was related to airport operations, what function the purchase of four luxury SUVs bore to the airport’s operations and if he believed his and the Ontario City Council’s hiring of Jason Anderson to represent him with regard to Valencia’s restraining order against him provided him with some level of immunity from prosecution by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office.
The Sentinel also asked Wapner to give a concise summary of what accomplishments he attributes to the consultants who have been hired by the airport authority and for him to give an accounting of what benefits or tangible improvements to the airport had been derived as a consequence of the international travel he had engaged in on behalf of the airport and airport authority.
The Sentinel asked Wapner to provide a cogent refutation of the accusations that he has been over the years receiving kickbacks from individuals, entities and companies with contracts, franchises or projects pending with or approved by the city or contracts pending with or approved by the Ontario International Airport Authority Board.
The Sentinel asked Wapner what it is that the federal auditors are looking for in their examination of the airport authority’s books.
Wapner did not respond to the Sentinel by press time.