The former Ontario city auditor is alleging that action the city took in deadending an audit/investigation into some questionable expenditures of public funds by one of the city’s line employees belies other even more serious diversions and misappropriations potentially implicating those all the way to the top of the municipal organization.
Brad Neumann, who had risen to the post of city auditor, in 2023 learned from a tip provided by an unidentified city employee through the city’s “EthicsPoint hotline,” a forum for whistleblowers to anonymously inform city administrators of issues impacting the city, that there were anomalies in some purchases made by the city, which the unknown employee indicated might have involved bribery and/or kickbacks being exchanged for a city contract. In discussing the matter, which had been given the nomenclature “Case 44,” with Jordan Villwock, who was then the city’s director of management services, Neumann indicated that he was opening an audit of the expenditures and the staff member[s] involved in Case 44. As management services director, Villwock oversaw the city’s Innovation, Performance Management and Audit Department, and was Neumann’s immediate supervisor. Villwock reacted to Neumann’s expression of interest in Case 44 by telling Neumann that the staff member who was most logically the focus of the audit was “a good guy” and that he did not believe or expect that anything would come of the investigation.
According to Neumann, Villwock thereafter requested that Neumann hold off on the investigation until Michael Heider, the chief investigator for the city’s human resources department, contacted him.
After a decent interval, Neumann had not heard from Heider, and began inquiries up the city’s administrative chain of command. Neumann, sensing he was being discouraged from pursuing the issue, persisted with his inquiries, learning that no substantive investigation into the matter was underway.
Eventually, on November 30, 2023, according to Neumann, he was presented with a copy of the “whistleblower report” into the allegations received via the hotline. The report revealed that no substantive investigation had been carried out and that what action had been taken had violated the basic auditing principles that would normally accompany any such inquiries. Neumann at that point moved ahead with the audit he had suspended when, pending action by or an investigation being done through the human resources division, Villwock had ordered him to hold off.
Case 44 involved a considerable about of money. Whereas a previous vendor had the contract in question for $24,000, a revamped version of the contract was providing another vendor that had taken the place of the first vendor with $6 million. Continue reading →

Former San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Robert Page has been sued by the United States Department of Justice in his present capacity as Orange County registrar of voters for unlawfully concealing from federal officials records relating to the removal of non-citizens from voter registration lists.
Page finds himself caught in a situation which not only involves conflicting provisions of state and federal law but a circumstance which was revealed as a consequence of a complaint which brought into focus the long-talked-about accusation that non-citizens have been voting in California elections with the assonance of public officials.
Because the matter involving Page and Orange County was complaint-driven and the specific complaint germane to a situation in Orange County, the action taken by the Justice Department so far does not pertain to San Bernardino County. The Sentinel is informed, nonetheless, that there are “at least hundreds” of similar instances of voter registration applications having been provided to non-citizens throughout Southern California, such that the demands made of Page by the federal government are likely to be visited upon San Bernardino County election officials. How the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office responds to the requests for information and/or action by the Donald Trump Administration, which in recent weeks has taken very aggressive action with regard to immigration enforcement in California, will be a controlling factor in whether Page’s successor as San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters, Stephenie Shea, will be subject to a civil court challenge similar to that faced by Page.
On Wednesday, June 25, the Department of Justice filed a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief against Page, citing violations of Section 303(a)(2)(B)(ii) of the Help America Vote Act, 52 U.S. CODE § 21083 and Section 8(a)(4) and 8(i) of the National Voter Registration Act, 52 U.S. CODE § 20507(a)(4).
According to the complaint, “The Attorney General recently received a complaint from the family member of a non-citizen in Orange County indicating that the non-citizen received an unsolicited mail-in ballot from the Defendant, despite lack of citizenship. On June 2, 2025, the Attorney General requested the following documents from the Defendant: 1. Records from January 1, 2020, to the present showing the number of voter registration records in Orange County canceled because the registrant did not satisfy the citizenship requirements for voter registration. 2. Records from January 1, 2020, to the present related to each cancellation described in Request No. 1, including copies of each registrant’s voter registration application, voter registration record, voting history, and related correspondence sent or received by the County of Orange Registrar of Voters in regard to the registration.” Continue reading →

Over the objections of a majority of the residents who spoke at the Wednesday June 25 meeting of the Twentynine Palms Planning Commission, the four commissioners present voted unanimously to recommend that the city council give approval to the Ofland Resort Project.
Ofland Director of Acquisitions Luke Searcy said the project will be put primarily in the 42 acres near the center of a 152-acre site east of Lear Avenue and south of Twentynine Palms Highway.
Instead of houses, the resort will feature 100 guest cabins, modeled on the primitive local homestead cabins of a bygone era, Searcy said.
In order for the project to proceed, the land must be rezoned from residential, upon which 61 single family units could be developed on the 42 acres in question, to tourist commercial. Both Ofland and the city’s planning and community development staff touted the project as one which prioritizes conservation and enhances the region’s natural beauty, would not represent an over-intensive land use, such that it would be a low impact baseland for Joshua Tree National Park visitors, develop 42 out of 152 acres while leaving 10 acres surrounding the resort in a natural and undeveloped state and would provide a 550 foot buffer from the Indian Cove residential neighborhood to mitigate noise and other impacts. In addition, Texas-based Ofland intends to incorporate dark sky approved lighting on the project to protect night sky viewing and reduce light pollution.
Other positive features emphasized by city staff and embraced by the planning commission is that Ofland has asserted the project will add 30 to 40 sustainable jobs, bring in $800,000 annually in taxes and inject $3 million into the local economy through visitor spending.
Ofland also made the claim that the project’s on-site dormitory for those working at the resort contributes a solution to local housing demands.
The planning commission also went along with staff’s recommendation that both the planning commission and city council adopt the mitigated negative resolution prepared for the project as the central element of its environmental certification. Continue reading →

The Redlands Unified School District Board of Trustees on Tuesday passed policies which restrict the flags that can be displayed in classrooms to the U.S. Flag, the California Flag and those of the U.S. military and provide for the removal of what are deemed to be sexually explicit books from school libraries, but deferred until later a consideration of a parental notification requirement with regard to students assuming a gender identification different from their biological state.
Many leftward on the political spectrum decried the policies as ones that were intended to remove gay pride flags from classrooms and ban books. They characterized the moves as the district’s latest lurch toward bigotry and intolerance following the election of board members Candy Olson and Jeanette Wilson in November. Others, however, lauded the move as one which counteracts the district’s longstanding superimposition of a political or philosophical ideology in what should be a neutral academic setting.
A crowd of approaching 600 residents, far more than could be accommodated in the board meeting room was present, including parents, students and faculty members, while 500 speaker cards to address the board were filled out – a number believed to be a record for not only the Redlands School Board but governmental executive/legislative bodies in San Bernardino County for a single public meeting. District Superintendent Juan Cabral, however, pointed out that one would-be speaker had filled out 72 cards, indicating he or she wanted to address the board on 72 topics. “I think one person was going to talk to every single item on the agenda,” Cabral said. “Another person asked for 25 cards.” The board came to a 3-to-2 decision that speakers, who in years past were given three minutes to speak and in more recent times a minute-and-a-half to speak, would be limited to 45 seconds each. Those speakers offered a wealth of opposing viewpoints relating to the topics being taken on by the school board.
A complicating issue was that the district had placed the policy issues relating to flags and books onto the consent calendar, which is by definition reserved for non-controversial matters. This was considered to be a questionable ploy by both those in favor and opposed to the policies, as was evident in that evening’s turn out. Continue reading →

Comprehensive budget legislation being pushed by the Donald Trump, referred to officially as the 2025 Budget Reconciliation and by President Trump as the Big, Beautiful Bill, called for the sell-off of public land across the country, including roughly 16 million acres in California. That included land in San Bernardino County dear to environmentalists, conservationists and those passionate about having wilderness remain as wilderness.
That provision of the bill was inserted by Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a crucial ally of the president in his struggle against the Washington, D.C. establishment. Lee’s provision would apply to between 600,000 and 1.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in the 11 Western states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
Land in San Bernardino County that was scheduled for placement on the auction block included acreage in the Angeles National Forest, extending to dense old growth trees in areas without access roads as well as on the northeast side of the forest; extensive and disparate areas within the San Bernardino National Forest, including near Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear Lake and in Barton Flats, an area south of Big Bear which stands at the west entranceway to the San Gorgonio Wilderness and the trailhead that leads ultimately to the Mount San Bernardino, Mount Shields, Mount Jepson and Mount San Gorgonio peaks; the Coyote Dry Lake Bed outside Joshua Tree National Park.
To the relief of those who want to prevent the privatization of those public lands, President Trump, even after the experience of his first term, remains virtually entirely focused on the executive function of government and has not yet grasped the importance or nature of legislative action and he has not personally bothered to cultivate the skill or ability to manipulate the Senate or the House through a combination of positive and negative reinforcement, standing strong and relenting, praise and pressure, backscratching and arm-twisting or outright political horsetrading. Nor does he have on his staff someone with that ability and he has no true allies in positions of power in either Congress or the Senate who have the status and leverage to husband a bill through the give-and-take of the legislative process.
After more than a month of using all of the force at his disposal to ramrod the bill through, while maintaining and vowing revenge against anyone who opposed the legislation he is championing, he learned, through a belated tallying, what everyone else knew from the start, which was that it is touch-and-go as to whether he has the votes needed to garner the Big, Beautiful Bill’s passage. At least 27 House Republicans have expressed opposition to one or more of the bill’s provisions. In the senate, Republican senators John Curtis of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina have all made clear that the bill will need to undergo substantial revision for them to support it. This means that in both houses, President Trump will need the support of a fair share of Democrats if the bill as originally drafted is to pass, and he has burned his bridges with virtually every Democrat in the country. Continue reading →

In the City of Big Bear Lake, where the political game is played as or more ruthlessly than anywhere else in San Bernardino County, the forces in control of the community this week installed two key functionaries to maintain the establishment’s hold on the machinery of governance.
The city council on June 11 appointed Jim Eakin and Ernesto Mendoza to the planning commission and reappointed Michael LoGrande and Lisa Bist to the panel.
The action came two months and two days after former Planning Commission Chairman Jeff Holoubek was removed in a coup, which no one affiliated with the city or familiar with the details is willing to talk about.
Key to understanding the reality of life in the rustic paradise hidden away in the northeast corner of the San Bernardino Mountains is that control over the machinery of governance in the county’s second smallest municipality population-wise and third smallest city geographically lies not with the city’s residents but a mix of the locally-based entrepreneurs and both national and international corporations running the community’s booming tourist industry.
A skiing mecca in the winter and early spring, a co-claimant with Lake Arrowhead as the boating capital of San Bernardino County from spring until mid-fall, a major swimming venue in the summer, a place where hiking, camping and fishing are ongoing year round and the spot for upland game bird and California mule deer hunting in season, Big Bear has almost as many outsiders breathing its rarefied,1.277-mile-high oxygen-thin atmosphere on a daily basis than natives who call it home. While its status as a tourist community first and foremost has proven highly profitable and advantageous to the operators of the community’s skiing resorts, lodges, hotels, motels, boating rental businesses, the owners/landlords of short-term rentals, property owners, investors, real estate speculators and the like, the influx of temporary residents into any given locale and in particular within the city limits of Big Bear Lake has left many of those who actually call Big Bear Lake home – the residents of the city – with the impression that they are second class citizens. Continue reading →