By Mark Gutglueck
A series of narratives are circulating around Ontario in which Planning Commissioner D’Andre Lampkin figures quite prominently. Among city officials and the business and political establishment that has sustained the city’s elected leaders in office, there is concern that an exposure of the details relating to Lampkin’s still-evolving change in fortune will rip the cover off the facade of propriety constructed to keep the pay-to-play ethos that predominates at Ontario City Hall hidden.
Lampkin represents a fascinating case study in the social and political implication found in the intersection of charity, voluntarism, business interests and political ambition, elements of which are yet playing out in an ongoing string of unfolding events.
At the very center of the basic narrative is Lampkin himself. His profile on the website for his foundation describes him as “the youngest of three brothers, the son of a single mother, and the product of the poor, gang-ridden, and drug-infested South Central Los Angeles. Despite his upbringing, Mr. Lampkin has made it his mission to make a positive contribution to society through public service.” Lampkin himself has said that his rough upbringing in South LA instilled in him “perseverance and compassion for the poor.”
In 2006, he went to work as a deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, spending most of his first nine years there as a transit operations officer patrolling Los Angeles County bus and rail systems. In 2015, he was moved into the prestigious assignment of an investigator with the department’s mental evaluation team, in which he responded to incidents involving the mentally ill and assisting field, custody, and operations personnel with assessing mental health of detainees and prisoners. The position required that he work closely with the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, particularly when dealing with incidents involving individuals with known mental health issues or suicide attempts.
In 2016, Lampkin founded Care Staffing Professionals, which, in Lampkin’s words, served to “match high quality health care professionals to hospitals and medical offices.”
In 2017, he created the D’Andre D. Lampkin Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization established, in his words, to effectuate “positive opportunities and change for individuals, communities, and environments. Our goal is to sponsor and develop programs and initiatives that lead to the evolution of stronger communities and positively impact individuals wanting to lead happier and healthier lives.”
His foundation was, Lampkin said, “focused on societal problems, the prevention of those problems, and viable solutions. In short, we are a nonprofit that makes life better for the people we serve.”
Among Lampkin’s talents is the ability to network and create infectious enthusiasm in others for the challenges he would take on. This inspired volunteers and brought in donations and assistance, sometimes from expected, sometimes unexpected sources. Through the generosity of James Previti, the owner of the development company Frontier Homes, the Andre D. Lampkin Foundation took up quarters in the Frontier Building located near the Ontario Convention Center. Those headquarters contained the foundations main office and a number of other features, including conference and meeting rooms, a classroom and a food pantry. The largest conference room was used as a community gathering hub, what was termed “a community gathering and resource site open to community members who are not a part of official organizations but have a strong desire to network and work with neighbors on community projects.” The Foundation encouraged grassroots projects, neighborhood block parties, informational briefings, civic engagement activities, leadership development, community assessment, demonstration projects, and resource distribution among neighbors. The classroom at the foundation headquarters served as the setting for meetings, conferences, presentations, workshops, training sessions and seminars.
While the foundation did not achieve a high profile during the first two-and-a-half years of its existence, in 2020, with the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, it came into its own. With the state’s sequestering mandates and many people confined to their own homes or premises under semi-quantine conditions, access to and the distribution of food and basic items as well as medicine and medical supplies became difficult and problematic.
According to Ontario Mayor Paul Leon, “Everyone who went through that, with the stay-at-home mandates and the isolation of much of our most vulnerable residents, there was a real challenge making sure people were checked on and had adequate essentials, while making sure they were not exposed to the virus. During COVID, D’Andre was an absolute superstar. He and his people would always find a way to get supplies to them.”
Later that year, in December 2020, Lampkin was appointed to the Ontario Planning Commission after Leon nominated him and the entirety of the city council endorsed him.
In 2021, Lampkin was made the vice president of the Los Angeles Region Community Recovery Organization, which was created in response to the devastation of the Woolsey Fire, which started in Los Angeles County and spread north to Ventura County in November 2018, burning 96,949 acres, destroying 1,643 structures, killing three people and prompting the evacuation of more than 295,000 people. The Los Angeles Region Community Recovery Organization coordinates disaster recovery efforts and the provision of resources in areas affected by disasters.
It is not altogether clear whether Lampkin fully understood from the outset the context into which he had been abstracted when he was appointed to the planning commission. Ontario more than three decades ago evolved into what is now San Bernardino County’s dominant municipality in terms of its financial status, speaking strictly in terms of revenue taken in by the city government. While other cities in the county such as Chino Hills, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Grand Terrace and Redlands are populated by residents/homeowners who on average enjoy larger salaries, personal income and household income than the residents of Ontario, the city governmental structure in Ontario – City Hall – takes in more money in the combined form of sales tax, property, fees and both state and federal subventions than does any other city or incorporated town in San Bernardino County. Indeed, Ontario is so far ahead of the curve in this regard that over the past decade-and-a-half, its municipal income level has been consistently more than double the income of the cities – varying between Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and Victorville – that qualified in any particular year as the second wealthiest city. In practical terms, this has meant that Ontario has an annual budget that is more than that of its two closest municipal rivals in the county combined.
Multiple factors combine to give Ontario its financial edge over other cities.
Its sheer size at this point – 50 square miles – makes it larger than all but four of the county’s 23 other municipalities. Of those, only the City of San Bernardino is substantially urbanized throughout its 59.2 square miles. The cities of Victorville, Hesperia and Twentynine Palms and the Town of Apple Valley, at 74.01 square miles, 73.1 square miles, 59.14 square miles and 73.19 square miles, respectively, all feature substantial expanses of what is essentially undeveloped desert land.
Ontario has ten separate highly concentrated commercial districts, consisting of the Holt and Mission Avenue corridors extending west from Montclair; along major portions of Mountain Avenue from its north end at its intersection with the 10 Freeway to its south end and its intersection with the 60 Freeway; on Euclid Avenue in its downtown area; on Euclid proximate to the 60 Freeway on the south side of the city; along Fourth Street in the area where it intersects with both Grove Avenue and the 10 Freeway; near the interstices of Haven, Milliken, Grove and Vineyard avenues in proximity to the 60 Freeway; and the environs that includes and surrounds the Mills shopping mall is endowed with dense commercial uses, virtually any three of which equal or exceed the mercantile districts of ten of the county’s smaller cities. In total overall, it substantially outdistances its closest competitors in that regard, including Victorville, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, San Bernardino, Chino, Redlands and Chino Hills.
At the same time, Ontario, with its population of 184,705, lags behind only San Bernardino and Fontana in terms of the numbers of people and therefore homes, while it runs slightly ahead of Rancho Cucamonga, with its somewhat pricier housing stock, in terms of sheer numbers. Because property values have taken a dip in the county seat of San Bernardino and homes in Fontana pricewise are slightly behind those in Ontario, Ontario runs relatively evenly with Rancho Cucamonga for the county lead in income from residential property tax.
Meanwhile, those areas of land within Ontario that are not developed are being rapidly developed, increasing the assessed value of that land, thus creating the prospect of enhancing the city’s property tax revenue.
From 1965 until 1999, the Williamson Act prevented agriculturally-zoned land lying within what was designated as the Chino Agricultural Preserve from being developed. In 1999, with the break-up of the preserve while there were still 140 dairies operating in Chino Valley, the city of Ontario annexed nearly 8,200 acres or 12.8125 square miles of the 15,200 remaining acres or 23.75 square miles yet in the preserve. Chino laid claim to the other 7,000 or 10.9375 square miles. Ontario drew up master plans for development of 31,000 homes, 5 million square feet of retail space and 5 million square feet of industrial space on its portion of the preserve that had been annexed. As each year passes, more and more of that property is being developed. As a rule of thumb, those doing the development have accrued good will – lots of it – among Ontario city officials, most notably the ones with the ultimate power of decision on land use issues – the city council. That good will has been purchase through political donations to members of the city council. In particular, Councilman Alan Wapner, who has been in office consistently since 1994, has during his three decades in office, taken in more political donations than any other elected municipal official in San Bernardino County history – $3. 3 million. Mayor Paul Leon, who was appointed to the city council in 1998 and served continuously in that role until he was elected mayor in 2005, in his 26 years in office has received just over $2 million in in political contributions. Councilman Bowman, who served on the city council from 1986 until 1988 and again from 1990 to 1998, left that position to become Ontario fire chief. In 2006, he again was elected to the city council and has served continuously since then. He has collected over $1.5 million in political donations his time in office.
Together with Councilwoman Dorst-Porada, who has been on the council since 2008, Wapner, Leon, and Bowman have evolved into a four-member ruling coalition who only rarely vote in opposition to each other and are in virtual lockstep with regard to land use issues, approving the vast majority of the development proposals that come before them. The lion’s share of money that has been donated to Wapner’s, Leon’s, Bowman’s and Dorst-Porada’s political war chests has come from individuals, entities, corporations, organizations, associations and/or unions which have a financial interest in the decisions made by the city council, ranging from the ratification of employment contracts with the various bargaining units for the city’s employees, policeman or firefighters, approving contracts with vendors providing goods or services to the city, granting franchises to service providers, approving projects proposed by landowners or development companies, passing ordinances pertaining to many issues or setting policy through altering or augmenting existing, or creating new, municipal codes.
While the unions representing the city’s employees have shown tremendous generosity toward most especially the city council’s incumbents over the years, it is the major players in the local real estate and development industries that have proven the largest and most consistent donors to the council members. The amount of money pouring into the campaign coffers of Ontario’s city council members has been so substantial that it has overwhelmed anyone challenging the ruling coalition. In this way, the stability on the Ontario City Council – as displayed with Wapner’s 30 years in office, Bowman’s 28 years in office, Leon’s 26 years in office and Dorst-Porada’s 16 years in office – has been equal to or exceeded that of virtually any other of the 21 city councils or two town councils in San Bernardino County. In return for that financial support that has allowed them to remain in office for so long and turn back any political challenge that comes their way, the grateful Wapner, Bowman, Leon and Dorst-Porada have voted, uniformly and without any meaningful exception, in favor of their donors whenever an item impacting those donors’ contracts, franchises or projects have come before them. Such preferences for those who have maintained a positive relationship with their political masters on the city council have been inculcated into the city’s employees in all departments, such that recommendations provided in city staff reports that pertain to those items to be voted on by the city council – contracts, franchises or development proposals – predictably encourage the city council to contract with or franchise or give project go-ahead to their donors.
Unspoken but known and recognized widely is that Ontario City Hall is engulfed in a pay-to-play atmosphere.
If Lampkin ever mused about, mentioned, discussed or protested the pay-to-play ethos he had been thrust into as a member of the Ontario Planning Commission, he did not do so publicly. Essentially, the record shows, and the attitude evinced toward him by Wapner, Leon, Bowman and Dorst-Porada indicates, Lampkin went along and he continued to get along, for the most part, with the Ontario political and social establishment.
Indeed, for a combination of reasons – his status as a law enforcement officer and medical service provider facilitator, humanitarian rendering service through his foundation and the Los Angeles Region Community Recovery Organization and his community service on the Ontario Planning Commission in which he time and again demonstrated that he was on the same page as Ontario’s powers that be – he was considered, by the circle of Ontario’s politicians, movers and shakers, business establishment and its social elite, to be one of the city’s A-Listers. The A List was a short roster of personages of substance, ones being seriously considered as someone who might be supported in a run for a position on the city council were it to become available. That support, to be put up by the political donors who had thrown in their lot with Wapner, Leon, Bowman and Porada, would consist of an overwhelming amount of money to be used in an election campaign which would most assuredly result in Lampkin taking a place on the council dais.
In June 2021, revelations with regard to Lampkin began to bubble to the surface. That information was upsetting to a number of people within the circle of power and influence in Ontario, and for different reasons. The mayor and the council majority had at that point relatively recently before committed to bestowing upon Lampkin a four-year term on the planning commission, during the course of which he was to presumably support their developmental agenda to benefit their legions of campaign donors. In the six months Lampkin had been in place, he was working cooperatively with the Ontario establishment, projects were being given timely go-ahead by the planning commission or the city council with the recommendation of the city’s planning division and the planning commission, campaign donors were pleased, money was flowing in the direction and channels that were to benefit the city’s elite.
At that point, the more knowledgeable members of the circle were faced with a rather inconvenient police report pertaining to events that had taken place on January 8 and 9, 2019. According to that report, Lampkin had driven to San Bernardino on January 8, where he had made the acquaintance of a college student, a young man, whom he had enticed into accompanying him to his home in Ontario on Blue Fox Drive with an offer of dinner and drinks. According to the college student, Lampkin had apparently drugged him, and he woke up in bed the following morning, naked with Lampkin penetrating anally with an unknown object. The college student, according to the report, disengaged from Lampkin and hastily dressed and fled from his house, going to the Mills shopping mall, where he contacted the Ontario Police.
Over the next several months, the college student, conscious of the attention and potential glare of publicity that was likely to result from pressing charges, was less than fully cooperative with the follow-up investigation. By July of that year, however, he contacted the Ontario Police Department, stating he wanted the department to pursue an investigation into the matter. Detectives with the department initiated an investigation but encountered difficulty in getting Lampkin, an experienced law enforcement officer himself, to cooperate. At one point, investigators, after on multiple occasions having failed to catch him at home or get him to answer the door, finally encountered him at his residence. When they made clear that they wanted to question him about the events of January 8/9, 2019, he gave no substantive response and stepped into his home, closing the door behind him.
The college student, meanwhile, having grown impatient, began pressing the Ontario Police Department with regard to what action it was going to take. When he learned that the investigation had stalled out, in an alcohol-fueled rage, he obtained a gun and was driving to Ontario in what seemed to be an ill-advised move to exact revenge on Lampkin. Before that occurred, however, he was involved in a traffic accident, at which point the gun in his possession was discovered. A statement was obtained from the college student in which he enunciated his intent to harm Lampkin and the reason why. The Highway Patrol informed both the Ontario Police Department and Lampkin’s employer, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, about the situation it had encountered with the college student and the college student’s statements.
Thereafter, the Ontario Police Department redoubled its investigation into the matter, succeeding, at last, to interview Lampkin. Lampkin acknowledged that the college student had indeed been at his home on the evening/morning of January 8/9, 2019, but that it was the student who had raped him, not the other way around.
Having obtained statements from both parties and some limited evidence or information in other regards, the report on the matter, bearing the Ontario Police Department nomenclature of 190200478, was completed and filed with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office.
At several turns, the confidentiality that normally attends police investigations as well as the interests of the Ontario politicians and politically well-connected in that community redounded to Lampkin’s advantage insofar as a wide exposure of the matter relating to the college student. Routinely, in Ontario as most places elsewhere, police reports are kept under wraps pending some further action or development with regard to the matters they pertain to, such as the filing of criminal charges against an alleged perpetrator of a crime or crimes the report documents or some public statement is made by the district attorney’s office or some other prosecuting agency such as the California Attorney General’s Office of the U.S. Attorney that no charges will be filed. Even then, police reports are not automatically released and may be withheld or redacted for a number of reasons, though an involved party can generally obtain a police report by going through proper channels.
The Ontario establishment by 2021 had made a substantial investment in Lampkin. It has installed him in a position of trust, credibility and authority as a decision-maker on the planning commission. That trust was far more nuanced than the concept of public trust normally accorded to public officials in which there is an expectation that they will do what is right and best for the community. The trust involved in this case was that Lampkin would do what was best for those who had installed him into his position on the planning commission, that he would make decisions on the City of Ontario’s land use policy that would involve giving approval to the projects being proposed by those who had donated substantial amounts of money to the city’s elected leaders so they could win the elections that put them into office and kept them in office. It was a majority of those elected officials who had appointed Lampkin to the planning commission. In a good number of cases, development projects were not subjected to city council approval but were given go-ahead by the planning commission. Thus, it could be, and often was, asserted that the decision-making on the aggressive development that was taking place in Ontario was not being made by the city council, which was collectively taking, on a yearly basis, tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from the developers profiting by those projects. Instead, it was said, those decisions were being made independently of the council, by the planning commission. And, it would be noted, the planning commission was composed of honorable and honest, experienced and qualified individuals of good character and sound judgment, indeed, people like Lampkin. This undercut, considerably, that Ontario was ruled by the pay-to-play ethos that so many people decried. The people getting money from the developers – the city council members – were not passing judgment on the developers’ projects – it was the planning commission doing that. Even in those cases where the city council was required to provide that approval because it alone has the authority to make a zone change or grant a variance in the city code that some projects require, those matters were first considered by the planning commission, which would make a recommendation to the city council about what it should do. In such circumstances where the city council would vote to approve a project that resulted in a donor who had given the individual council members $1,000 or $5,000 or maybe $10,000 for their campaigns getting clearance to build an apartment complex or residential subdivision or shopping center in which that developer stood to make a profit in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, the council members could say that they were merely following the recommendation of their “trusted” planning commissioners.
A question yet stands as to how it was that Lampkin was granted one of the keys to the Ontario Kingdom with the matter relating to the San Bernardino college student hanging over him. The events of January 8/9, 2019 occurred well prior to his appointment to the planning commission in December 2020. The answer to that mystery appears to lie in the confidentiality that is maintained with regard to police reports. Many of his most ardent supporters knew nothing about the matter involving the college student. There is a strong suggestion that for some, at least, Lampkin’s secret, his Achilles heel, rendered him more valuable than he would be otherwise because it gave those who knew something about it a means by which he could be controlled, as long as, of course, it remained secret. Moreover, the intense degree of positive publicity that the D’Andre D. Lampkin Foundation had garnered with regard to its COVID-19 assistance heroics throughout the latter three-quarters of 2020 overwhelmed and drowned out any potential bad-mouthing that might have been vectored in Lampkin’s direction.
By mid-year 2021, however, word had reached some members of the Ontario community, including those who have long questioned whether the direction the longstanding ruling coalition on the city council is taking the city in is in the best interests of those who do not have a financial stake in the aggressive development agenda that predominates at City Hall, that Lampkin’s too-good-to-be-true image as someone who walks on water indeed was too good to be true. Questions were asked. Documents were examined. Representations that Lampkin was bankrolling his philanthropy with his own money was given close scrutiny. That, it turned out, was a myth. It was shown that one of the primary assets the D’Andre D. Lampkin Foundation had at its disposal – its headquarters, offices, conference room, pantry and classroom in the Frontier Building – were the product of Previtti’s generosity in providing them at little or no charge. Indeed, Lampkin could be credited with sparking the enthusiasm and providing some of the direction for what his foundation was undertaking, but the work and heavy lifting was actually done by those whom he had inspired. And then came an anonymous tip: Someone should look into a certain police report relating to Lampkin and a college student who was said to have had a rather unpleasant experience at the future planning commissioner’s house.
A request, filed under the California Public Records Act, was made to the city with regard to a police report or any police reports pertaining to D’Andre Lampkin.
At the pinnacle of the Ontario political establishment, it was recognized that Ontario Police Department Report 190200478 represented a monumental threat to the grand castle of corruption in which the city’s elite lived their opulent existences. Throwing Lampkin to the wolves was, at that point, not an option. He had already been abstracted into the establishment. As a member of the planning commission, someone who had already been called upon and was still being called upon to rubber-stamp the projects being proposed by the city council’s deep-pocketed political donors, he knew too much. He could go out and unload an eighth of what he had been made privy too and severely embarrass the city; he could expose one-fourth of what he knew and cause two or three people real heartache; if he gave up half of what he knew, some powerful people could well end up in prison; and if he told the whole story, he could bring the entire edifice of Ontario city government down.
At the center of the scandal was how and why he was in place on the planning commission, who knew what, when did they know it and to what purposes was the knowledge they had being put. All lines in this regard led to City Councilman Alan Wapner, who through his political war chest is bound to virtually everyone engaged in developmental activity in the city. Wapner was, before he was first elected to the city council in 1994, a police officer with the Ontario Police Department. A graduate of the University of Southern California, he also obtained a law degree from Whittier College. During his sixteen years with the Ontario Police Department, he promoted to detective and then retired as a sergeant of detectives. He retains contacts within the department, trafficking in information that is of value to him in his role as an elected official. While Leon as mayor is widely publicly perceived as the city’s political leader, it is understood by those truly knowledgeable about the the city and its operations that Wapner, by virtue of his control of Councilman Bowman and through Bowman his control of Councilwoman Dorst-Porada, is the de facto political leader of the city council. As the head of the city council’s ruling coalition, which includes, essentially, Leon, Wapner is the City of Ontario’s shot-caller. In this capacity, it is said, he “owns” the planning commission, as is demonstrated by how he has historically manipulated it to serve the interests of the political donors who have sustained him in office. Given all of these considerations, the Sentinel was told by a reliable source within Ontario City Hall, it is “inconceivable” that Wapner did not know about the contents of Ontario Police Department Report 190200478 prior to Lampkin’s appointment to the planning commission.
In response to the public records request, the city stalled and obfuscated. City officials seized upon even the flimsiest rationale to avoid disclosing anything that might prove problematic. One thing that was of help in this regard was that over at the district attorney’s office, the matter with regard to Lampkin was yet pending. No decision to prosecute him with regard to the college student’s accusations had been made, while no decision to not prosecute him had been arrived at. Similarly, the office was yet undecided with regard to whether a prosecution of the college student should be initiated, based on Lampkin’s allegation that the young man had raped him. This provided the city with grounds to hold off on complying with the public records request, initially in whole and ultimately in part. Prior to the city providing what it characterized as its “completed” response to the request, according to a high ranking city offical, Lampkin met with City Manager Scott Ochoa. During that meeting, according to the official, Ochoa permitted Lampkin to determine what in the report, which was authored by Sergeant David Newland, was to be redacted. The result was that roughly 84 percent of the three-and-one-third page report was redacted. Only then, on July 8, 2021, was the report released.
Reportedly, the report to the district attorney’s office was routed to the desk of District Attorney Jason Anderson. In this way, the matter was not channeled, as is the standard practice, to the filing district attorney who reviews those police reports coming into the office to determine if the cases as outlined in the report and the available evidence and potential testimony referenced would form the basis of a case that would be sufficient to obtain a conviction, i.e., prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt in a jury were to be impaneled to hear it. The report, as was related to the Sentinel, remained on Anderson’s desk.
Of note, well prior to his election as district attorney in 2018, Anderson was, from 2004 until 2008, an elected member of the Ontario City Council. During those four years, he was a colleague of Leon, who during that time served as both a councilman and mayor; Wapner, who was a councilman all four years Anderson remained on the council; and Bowman, who was a councilman two of the four years Anderson was on the panel. In 2008, Anderson was replaced on the council by Dorst-Porada. While Anderson was on the city council, he was a deputy district attorney. In 2014, at which point Anderson was in private practice, he had been retained by the Ontario City Council to represent Wapner, against whom a restraining order had been granted. In addition, Anderson, particularly in his 2018 run for district attorney, was heavily supported by many of the same donors who have contributed heavily to the political war chests of Wapner, Leon and Bowman. Consequently, despite the consideration that Anderson and his wife since his time on the Ontario City Council have relocated their domicile from Ontario to Upland, Anderson is yet considered to be a member of the Ontario political and social establishment.
In the intervening time while the report relating to the January 8/9,2019 incident involving Lampkin and the college student remained on Anderson’s desk, the statute of limitations on sexual assault lapsed. Nevertheless, Ontario Police Department Report 190200478 as authored by Sergeant in its original unredacted form remains in the possession of Ontario city officials.
In 2022, Ontario officials began discussion of a major expansion of the Ontario Convention Center as part of what they said was their commitment to transform that facility, which is proximate to Ontario International Airport, into the economic and entertainment centerpiece of the Inland Empire. Simply as a matter of course, those talks involved Jeff Burum, who is currently the most prolific donor of money to the campaign funds of San Bernardino County’s elected officials, a primary member of the Ontario political and social establishment and the owner of the property immediately east of the convention center. As those discussions evolved, a plan by which the city committed to undertaking a $400 million renovation of the convention center and Burum agreed, in principle, to constructing a five diamond hotel on his adjacent property to augment that effort. The city intends to expand the convention center to cover the area now occupied by the facility’s existing parking lot. In preparation for doing that, the city arranged to purchase from Previti the Frontier Building, in which the D’Andre D. Lampkin Foundation was located. The intention is to eventually raze the Frontier Building and install in its place a parking structure to accommodate the vehicles of those attending events/conventions at the convention center and those staying in the hotel. Previti has partnered or joint-ventured with Burum on projects in the past.
The city’s acquisition of the Frontier Building made the D’Andre D. Lampkin Foundation the City of Ontario’s tenant. Given that it is a public agency, Ontario was and is required to lease any property it possesses at market. Providing space in the Frontier Building to the D’Andre D. Lampkin Foundation at no cost or a discounted rate, as Previti had been doing, is prohibited, as a gift of public funds, under Article XVI, § 6 of the California Constitution. Information available to the Sentinel is that over the course of the last year-and-a-half, the D’Andre D. Lampkin Foundation has experienced financial challenges. Shortly after the city’s acquisition of the Frontier Building, the Sentinel is reliably informed, the foundation fell into arrears on its lease payments to the City of Ontario for the space it occupied there. Accordingly, Lampkin and members of the foundation’s board, which included Michael Porto-Gathright, Marcellus McMillian, Tywanna Hill, Tom Burciaga and Marcus King, prevailed upon the city to allow the foundation to remain in place, asserting that while it was not able at that point to remain current on its lease payment obligation, that an infusion of money within the following four to six months was anticipated which would allow it to make the city whole. More recently, with that hoped-for money not having materialized, the Sentinel is informed that Lampkin has been “begging” the city to convert the arrearage to a loan after the fact and that it be forgiven. The Sentinel is told that with toundation’s debt having grown to over $22,000, the organization is now exiting the premises.
Hard feelings have ensued, with Lampkin at one point having reportedly stated that he and the other board members and volunteers who have done so much for the community are being shabbily treated by the city. Suddenly there is a divide between those associated with the foundation one side and on the other side those considered to be the pillars of the Ontario community – elected official, city employees and the vast reservoir of those with deep pockets who have been sponsoring community programs and charities while bankrolling elected officials with major donations to their political war chests. Lampkin, having seen his foundation in a very short period of time go from a dynamic tool of social assistance to an nonentity, an organization without so much as an address, is acutely conscious that the unredacted version of Ontario Police Department Report 190200478 is yet in the possession of the city and that at any moment the city council could vote to remove him as a member of the planning commission. He is not sure what might come next. At the same time, Ontario’s political and social establishment is on edge, because Lampkin, someone who was welcomed into the inner sanctum and is now armed with knowledge of who is pulling the strings and levers and who is beholden to whom and how is on the brink of renegade.
Mayor Leon sought to put the best face on things.
“We’d like to keep the foundation alive,” Leon said. “We really would. We want to help D’Andre, but it is a question of: ‘How do you help a good guy and not violate the rules?’ Unfortunately for him and for all of us, he is a planning commissioner, so, to a certain extent, he ends up with a golden rope. Being a planning commissioner puts him into a position so that we cannot give him help in this way, showing him some favoritism [i.e., allowing his foundation to function out of a city owned building at no charge.] He knows that. Unfortunately for him, by becoming a planning commissioner he tied his own hands.”
That does not mean that someone officially unaffiliated with the city cannot step in, the mayor said. He called upon someone, anyone, to do so.
“Since we cannot do that, I’m calling on the community to give him some help,” Leon said.
There is no hard feeling on the part of the city toward Lampkin, Leon said.
“We are not trying to hurt him, but by being above board and honest and doing it by the book, we – and by ‘we’ I mean the city – are just not in a position to do that for him,” Leon said. “Other people can help him, just like he has helped a ton of people.”
Leon said the foundation losing its quarters was an unintended consequence of the effort to expand the convention center and bring in a top-of-the-line hotel.
“The plan is to make vast improvements to the convention center, so that it expands into all of the parking lot that is now there,” Leon said. “The building we bought from Jim Previti will be torn down and the parking structure put in its place. Jeff Burum, who is his partner sometimes, is going to build that hotel on land he already owns in the vacant lot southeast of the Convention Center. Then then there will be a bridge connecting the hotel and the convention center and the convention center to the parking lot. As far as I know, I don’t think that Jim Previti is part of the hotel project.”
Of the convention center expansion, Leon said, “We all think it is a much-needed asset in the Inland Empire, not just Ontario. This area, this region has lost out on hosting some important conferences because the convention center we have is too small and because we have no five diamond hotel. We want it to go in because that is to be the future hotel for the convention center, and Jeff Burum is the caliber of builder that can do something that. The current hotel for convention center is the Double Tree, which is quite nice, actually, but Jeff Burum is going to give us a major step up from that. We’re talking about a pretty good-sized hotel. There is nothing being held back on the city’s end, but we are not the ones building it. Jeff has said he wants to build it, and we’re waiting on him. He has to get to where he needs to go in terms of financing. He and his people have to talk to the banks. They have to find the money. If there is a place where we can help by assuring whatever banks or lending institutions or what have you that this project is going to go all the way, we will do that. This is a private enterprise undertaking, but we’re happy to look into doing whatever we can. The construction phase just isn’t here yet.”
Asked if the project could be under way by 2026, Leon reacted, “I hope it is not a year away before we start striking ground. I want to break ground sooner than that, as soon as everything is taken care of. But as of know, there has not been a shovel stuck into the ground yet.”
Leon acknowledged it was clearing the way for the convention center expansion, Burum’s hotel and the parking lot structure that had resulted in the D’Andre D. Lampkin Foundation being pushed out of its quarters and the crises that has ensued. He said the city would do what it could for the foundation but would need to remain within the framework of the law.
“Yes, D’Andre and his foundation are out of, or he is starting to get out of, the lease arrangement,” Leon said. “He is a great guy who has done a lot of great stuff for the people of Ontario. But we can’t just give free space to him, so we are trying to figure out a way we can peacefully coexist with a very active nonprofit. During COVID he was the best thing we had going. Right now, we are trying to make this a soft landing for him. That’s the story. I feel very bad we cannot underwrite him. It isn’t that we don’t want to. It is just that we cannot.”
Leon dismissed the allegations contained in Ontario Police Department Report 190200478 as false and inaccurate and not reflective of who D’Andre Lampkin is.
“If you knew D’Andre like I know him, you would know that whole thing is a fabrication,” Leon said. “I think he is a totally great guy, and I don’t believe any nonsense gossip that you might have heard.”
Leon said the insinuations about Lampkin’s sexuality that follow in the wake of the accusations in the police report and the efforts to discredit him in that way are beyond the pale.
“I, as a pastor, do not determine anyone’s relationship with Jesus,” Leon said. “I do not judge people on their private lives or on their relationships. I know he has a relationship with Jesus. I know he goes to church and is a good person. He is someone who has values we all share. Someone is always going to gripe about somebody. I don’t believe he would ever do anything like that, and I hope you wouldn’t believe anything like that. That’s ridiculous. I certainly wouldn’t buy it. Someone is going to have to prove that one.”
Efforts by the Sentinel to obtain Lampkin’s version of events with regard to the range of issues swirling about him, including emails with specific questions and phone messages seeking a return call, did not garner any response.