Follow the money.
Among San Bernardino County’s 24 municipalities, Ontario, in terms of its governmental operations, is far and away the wealthiest entity in the 20,105-square mile jurisdiction, the largest geographic county in the United States, an expanse larger than New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
Ontario through all of its funds is projected to expend in 2025-2026 $1,234,792,270
The county’s next four best fiscally endowed cities in descending order are Fontana, which has projected an overall expenditure budget for Fiscal Year 2025/26 of $395 million; the City of Victorville, which in 2025/26 is anticipating $387.7 million in expenditures; the City of San Bernardino, which in June saw its city council approve the county seat’s 2025/26 budget including a total operating budget of $348.7 million; and the City of Rancho Cucamonga, which expects to expend throughout Fiscal Year 2025/26 $321,399,159 on its operations.
Thus, Ontario boasts a budget that is larger than the sum of the next three largest cities in the county.
Ontario is not a newcomer to civic affluence. Its position as the city in the county with the most money pouring into its coffers extends back for nearly two generations, when in the mid-1980s it surpassed San Bernardino to the top of heap by succeeding in becoming the most aggressive collector of tax revenue among what were then 17 incorporated cities in the county. Historically, going back to the late 19th Century and the first half of the 20th Century, San Bernardino, the county’s first city to incorporate, had been where the action was, followed to a lesser degree by Ontario, Redlands and Colton, the fourth, third and second cities in the county to incorporate, respectively in 1891, 1888 and 1887. Ontario throughout the late 19th Century and virtually all of the 20th Century was the mercantile center of the western extension of the county. Nevertheless, it and the nearby cities of Upland, incorporated in 1906, and Chino, incorporated in 1910, were weak sisters to San Bernardino, Colton and Redlands, the first two of which were major railroad centers and the third of which was a winter haven for wealthy business interests from the East, in particular Chicago.

In the 1970s, intensified development on the western end of the county began and by the 1980s peaked in a construction frenzy that saw the Chino Valley, what was formerly the Cucamonga Wine District and Ontario transformed, with the formation of the City of Rancho Cucamonga in 1977. In the 1980s, there was rash of municipal incorporations in San Bernardino County – Big Bear Lake, Twentynine Palms, Hesperia, Apple Valley and Yucaipa – followed in the early 1990s by the incorporation of Yucca Valley and Chino Hills. It was during this era that there was a shift in the county’s center of gravity and gravitas. In 1994, the Department of Defense shuttered Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, just as it had George Air Force Base in 1992. In the case of San Bernardino, that closure accelerated the economic decline that was already under way. The center of county government would remain in San Benardino, but many of the corporate institutions and the main regional representatives of the finance industry that had once been a mainstay there began to pull up stakes to depart. An amalgam of the county and the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Loma Linda and Colton tried, in vain, to transition Norton Air Force Base into an international airport and alternative economic engine for the east San Bernardino Valley. In the High Desert, lower property prices had likewise fueled a development [frenzy], and when George Air Force Base had closed, the joint powers authority involving the county and local cities formed to manage the civilian use conversion of the base property had, after making an initial mistake of tearing out the railroad spur from the main Santa Fe line to the base, the joint powers authority opted toward turning it into an aerodrome dedicated to cargo transport rather than passengers.

In short, San Bernardino, which for nearly a century had been the focus of community expansion and a magnet for industry, commercial entities, entrepreneurs small and large, corporations and financiers, was being abandoned for areas further out toward the county’s periphery, in particular that portion most proximate to the Los Angeles megalopolis. For investors and those willing to commit not just capital but effort and intensity toward creating something lasting, it was no longer the east San Bernardino Valley that represented the region’s future but Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Upland, Chino and Chino Hills.

Accompanying that change in focus was an influx of money, billions of dollars being put up by investors looking to see, in not an immediate then an eventual, return on what they were putting into it.

As the money flowed in, the regulatory capacity of government, which had the potential for delaying or limiting that monetary return or preventing profits from being made altogether, was compromised.

Local politicians – members of the board of supervisors, mayors and city council members – who in their roles were supposed to look after the interests of those who elected them, potentially stood in the way of those who were looking to spur economic growth by partaking it themselves through the conversion of bare land into residential subdivisions or commercial buildings or factories. Those large landowners and developers, whose formula already involved throwing humungous amounts of money into what they were doing to create even more money for themselves, applied that money toward the politicians in an effort to purchase their loyalty and make those supervisors, mayors and council members see meeting the needs of the developers and the landowners to be a higher priority than protecting everyday citizens from the impacts of what the developers and landowners wanted to undertake.

The generosity the development industry showed toward politicians took two essential forms. One of those was donations to the political war chests of the elected officeholders. A series of court cases established that the provision of money to assist a candidate in his or her election campaign or other efforts to get into or hold onto elected office is an extension of the U.S. Constitutional right of free speech. Laws thus could not be made preventing anyone – including developers or landowners or anyone with an interest in how a particular candidate for office or current officeholder might decide an issue or vote on a matter – from providing political donations to that particular individual. And no law existed preventing an officeholder from accepting a political donation from anyone, including someone whose financial fortunes might hinge on a vote that officeholder might make in his or her elected capacity. The only law that existed in California, until January 2023, touching upon the issue of a politician receiving political donations from someone who had an interest in how that politician voted was that the donation could not be made explicitly conditional upon that politician voting in the future or having voted in the past in a way that was of financial benefit to the donor. There were reporting requirements for politicians by which they had to make timely reports of the donations they received from all of their political supporters. Still, as long as a politician made full disclosure of the money provided to him or her by his or her donors, there was no law preventing a donor from giving money to a politician and no law preventing a politician from accepting a donation from anyone supporting his or her electioneering efforts.

In this way, a politician under the laws was free to receive money from a donor and then vote in his or her elected capacity to benefit the donor as long as there was not an enunciated understanding or agreement that the politician would withhold his vote in favor of the donor if he or she did not receive the donation or that the donor would withhold the donation if the politician did not vote in a way that favored the developer. As long as the line wherein both the donor and the politician understood that a quid pro quo was taking place and that the donation was being traded for a yes vote or vice versa was not crossed, there was no crime.

The other form of generosity shown by the development community toward politicians outright crossed the legal line into the realm of bribery. While a politician can accept money from a person or business that is, can be or might be benefited by a vote that politician makes in his or her official capacity if that money is provided to his or her campaign fund and properly reported, an individual or company/corporation cannot provide money to an officeholder who is called upon to, and does, vote on a matter in a way that benefits that donor financially. Nor can an individual or company/corporation which has been or is to be impacted financially by the vote of the board of a public agency – such as a board of supervisors of a county or a mayor and city council or the members of a water or fire or school board – devise some way of benefiting a member of one of those panels who has voted in that individual or company/corporation’s favor by offering him or her or his or her spouse employment or a product or service. Any such conveyance of money or benefit to an elected official by an entity with a financial interest in that official’s action as a public board/council member is mandatorily deemed to be a qui pro quo, constituting a pay-off, a bribe or kickback. Under most conditions, this is considered a felony.

One yardstick by which to measure the depth of corruption among municipalities, at least within San Bernardino County, is the size of that city’s budget. The sheer amount of money passing through all of a city’s various funds – from the general fund to permanent funds to special revenue funds to debt service funds to capital projects funds to franchise fee funds, to water enterprise funds to sewer enterprise funds to sanitation funds to internal service funds to investment trust funds to the pension fund to miscellaneous employee benefit funds to custodial funds to private-purpose trust funds to the external investment pool fund and others – the more money that is available for diversion, the greater the temptation and the higher the odds that someone, quite likely within the municipality’s finance division but potentially someone in a position of trust or authority in any division of the city will bleed off money for an authorized or venal purpose. Paralleling a wealthy city’s internal operations are the depth and breadth of private sector activity that comes in for or is in some fashion subject to city regulations, the city code or approval processes at City Hall which are the province of regular line employees two to three to four levels below that of a department head. Under the classic council-manager form of government which is the closest model to what exists in Ontario, the residents elect a mayor and city council, which then appoints what is supposed to be a professional, non-political city manager to oversee daily operations, hire department heads, and implement the policy approved by a majority of the council. According to the model, neither the mayor nor any of the council members are officially empowered to interact with city staff directly. City staff is answerable to the assistant head of the department, who is in turn answerable to the department head, who is answerable to the city manager. The mayor or city manager therefore are supposed to give direction to the city manager who conveys such an order to a department head who works through an assistant department head to convey to the city’s line workers how to carry out their assignments. While the classic model is the ideal, the reality of municipal operations, including in Ontario, is in actuality somewhat different.
A clear indicator of the depth of corruption in Ontario is reflected in the longevity of the current city council. Ontario is at the forefront of all city and town councils in San Bernardino County in terms of stability on the city council.
Councilman Alan Wapner has been on the city council continuously since 1994, having now logged 31 years and counting in continual office.
Mayor Paul Leon initially began as a councilman in Ontario in 1998. He transitioned to mayor in a special election in 2005. He has logged more than 27 years continually in office.
Councilman Jim Bowman was elected to the council in 2006 and has served continuously in office over the 19 years since then. Previously, from 1986 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1998, he was on the city council. He has logged 31 years on the city council.
Councilwoman Debbie Dorst-Porada was first elected to the city council in 2008 and has now logged 17 continuous years on the city council.
Councilwoman Daisy Macias, the least senior member of the council, has been a member of the panel since 2024.
The average length of time the five members of the Ontario City Council have been in office is 21.4 years.
Among San Bernardino County cities and towns, only one city other than Ontario – Chino – has a single member who served on that city’s council beginning in the 1980s. All four other members of the Chino City Council were first elected in the 2020s.
The Fontana City Council comes the closest to the Ontario City Council in terms of the longevity of its members. Councilman John Roberts has hung onto his position since 1992. Mayor Acquanetta Warren was on the city council from 2002 until 2010, when she was first elected mayor. The average length of time on the council of Fontana’s five current council members is 16.4 years.
The City of Highland’s council is just behind Fontana, with its members having served an average of 16.2 years
The five members of the Chino Hills City Council have spent an average of 15 years in office.
The Montclair City Council has two members who were first elected in the 1990s. All five members together average 13.6 years in office.
The members of the Apple Valley Town Council have been in office an average of 13.4 years.
In Yucca Valley, the members there have served an average of 11.2 years.
Throughout San Bernardino County, not including Leon and Wapner, there are five other politicians who have been in office since the 1990s.
What explicates the political stability in Ontario and the longevity of its council members is the willingness of the business community, which wants to be excused from the regulatory restrictions governments impose on the development community, to maintain the current mayor and council in office to ensure that the restrictions that would inhibit them in securing the profit margin they are pursuing are suspended or substantially mitigated.
The extent to which those entities seeking to be excused from being subjected to the same set of standards that was generally the case is demonstrated by the amount of money the “leading” elements of the business community – those which have profited the most by having, over the years, the combination of Leon, Wapner, Bowman and Dorst-Porada in office – have invested dollar-wise in their political careers.
Wapner stands head and shoulders and half of his trunk above every other elected municipal official in San Bernardino County in terms of political fundraising.
Records show that in the 31 years that Wapner has been on the city council, he has received over $3.2 million in donations. That puts him well ahead of Leon, who in the 27 years he has been on the city council and mayor, has brought in $2.1 million
The big picture is that multiple – indeed, over the years, hundreds of – deep pocketed interests doing business or seeking to do business in Ontario have made donations to Ontario’s politicians to purchase influence. It is the granular focus on a good number of the little pictures that exposes the corruption Ontario’s political leadership is involved in and the price that the city’s residents are paying as a result.
What might be labeled Exhibit 1 is the bullet the city ducked when Wapner sought to sell off a major portion of its airport property.
In 1967 the City of Ontario and the City of Los Angeles entered into a joint powers agreement in which the Ontario agreed to entrust to the larger city management and operation of Ontario Airport, which at that time hosted roughly 200,000 passengers per year flying on a handful of airlines that occasionally docked there. Los Angeles, through its Department of Airports and airport-operating corporate division, Los Angeles World Airports, made investments in the facility, putting in an east-to-west runway, necessitating the removal of the old northeast-to-southwest runway, paving its sand flea-infested gravel parking lot and modernizing, restructuring and gentrifying its basic facilities such as its terminal, concourse, passenger walkway and tower.
Beginning in 1969, flights out of Ontario dramatically increased and would continue to do so as Los Angeles World Airports and Los Angeles city officials used their influence with various airlines and control over gate positions at Los Angeles International Airport to establish routes to and from Ontario. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s and 1990s, Los Angeles World Airports assiduously promoted Ontario International. In 1985, after Los Angeles had met all the performance criteria laid out in the 1967 joint powers agreement, the Ontario City Council as it was then composed, over the objections of then-Mayor Robert Ellingwood, surrendered ownership of the airport, deeding it to the City of Los Angeles for no consideration, pursuant to what was considered a public benefit transfer that most local officials, with a few notable exceptions such as Ellingwood, believed would improve the airport and contribute to its further expansion.
For the next 22 years, ridership at the airport steadily increased, reaching 7.2 million passengers, a 3,600 percent increase over what the use of the airport had been before Los Angeles took over management in 1967. In 2007, the sudden downturn in the national state and local economy, what would later become known as “the Great Recession,” hit. Ontario Airport, by then commonly referred to as Ontario International Airport, was not excepted from the consequences of the country’s financial collapse, which hit the airline industry as hard or harder than most other sectors of the economy. The number of passengers making their way through the gates at the airport dropped from a record 7,207,150 in 2007 to 6,232,975 in 2008 to 4,861,110 in 2009 to 4,812,578 in 2010.
By 2009, Wapner, seeing an opportunity, initiated a campaign aimed at prying control and ownership of Ontario International Airport away from Los Angeles. Wapner pursued a strategy of engaging in relentless personal and vindictive attacks on Los Angeles officials, most prominently Los Angeles World Airports Executive Director Gina Marie Lindsey, claiming, spuriously, that they were responsible for the decline in ridership at Ontario Airport. Lindsey and Los Angelese World Airports were deliberately manipulating the situation to raise costs at Ontario International and thereby minimize both the number of passengers and revenues there as part of a plot to increase revenue and gate numbers at Los Angeles International Airport, Wapner alleged. Framing the issue as a matter of pride justice and suggesting that any of his council colleagues or Ontario residents failed to line up with him they were not being true to the city, Wapner soon had a chorus echoing his accusations.
Withe the further fall of passenger numbers at Ontario to 4,540,694 in 2011, Wapner was achieving irresistible momentum, and Los Angeles World Airports executives were unable to redress the situation, as the contractions in the airline industry were a continuing national and international phenomenon. It was all Los Angeles officials could do to keep the seven airlines that were yet flying into and out of Ontario International from departing along with an equal number that had already done so.
LAWA managers asserted that the airline executives’ decisions relating to where flights needed to be directed to maintain their corporations’ profitability were the driving factor in the dwindling passenger levels at Ontario International. This softened no soap with Wapner, who along with other Ontario officials rejected such explanations as implausible excuses meant to mask Los Angeles World Airports’ ill intent to promote Los Angeles International Airport at the expense of Ontario. Ridership at Ontario International continued to decline, falling to 4,296,459 in 2012 and hitting rock bottom at 3,971,136 in 2013. Amidst this, the City of Ontario joined with San Bernardino County in forming the Ontario International Airport Authority in 2012, designating Wapner as the president/chairman of the authority’s board of directors. What Ontario officials clearly had in mind was that the authority would oversee the airport when Los Angeles was out of the picture.
In 2013, Ontario, represented by the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, sued Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, claiming neglect and negligence, breach of contract and misfeasance in the operation and management of Ontario International Airport, along with damages.
In 2014, as the economy began to rebound and air travel in general started to pick up around the country, ridership at Ontario International Airport zoomed to 4,127,280. Los Angeles officials, who were genuinely taken aback at the vitriol of Ontario’s attacks and who were acutely conscious of the investments of money, time and expertise that the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Department of Airports and Los Angeles World Airports had sunk into the monumental task of seeking to transforming Ontario International Airport into one of the world’s leading hub airports and had no illusions about the intensity and expense of continuing in that mission. With Ontario officials patently unappreciative of the efforts being made and, conversely accusing city officials in multiple venues including court of purposefully seeking to fail at Ontario International, they decided to cut their losses, attempt to recover the hundreds of millions of dollars that had been expended in the effort, settle the litigation and return the airport to Ontario.
In December 2015, Los Angeles and Ontario signed an agreement that had been arrived at in principle four months previously, finalizing the transfer as of November 1, 2016, with Ontario paying Los Angeles $60 million out of its various operating funds and another $30 million taken out of its reserves, and committing to make payments of $50 million over five years and $70 million in the final five years of the ten-year ownership transition. In addition, Ontario absorbed $60 million of the airport’s bond debt.
Even as Wapner and company were carrying out the virulent attacks on Lindsey and Los Angeles,
Ontario remained entirely dependent on Los Angeles for the facility’s management and operation. The smaller city had nothing in the way of personnel or operational expertise to keep the extremely sophisticated and complex systems, departments, equipment and facilities an airport entails functional or safe.
In 2015 Ontario Airport continued on the road to recovery, with the number of passengers reaching 4,209,311. As part of the settlement worked out between Los Angeles and Ontario, Los Angeles graciously agreed to continue its management/operational oversight of the airport until noon November 1, 2016.
In 2016, ridership at Ontario Airport continued to go up, to 4,251,903.
In the interregnum between the settlement of the lawsuit in August of 2015 and Ontario’s full reassumption of ownership of the airport in November 2016, the Ontario International Airport Authority approached a number of individuals from around the country with airport managerial experience and a few so employed at international venues to determine their willingness to oversee Ontario International. In January 2016 the airport authority signed Kelly Fredericks, the president and CEO of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation and the manager of T.F. Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island to serve as Ontario International Airport’s executive manager. Fredericks was to acclimate himself to Ontario during the final nine months of Los Angeles World Airport’s operation of Ontario International Airport and take over upon Ontario’s assumption of the facility’s ownership once more.
The department heads and submanagers at the airport during what was essentially Fredericks’ dry run as the manager in the summer and early fall of 2016 were Los Angeles World Airports veterans. As November 1, 2016 approached. Fredericks remained enthusiastic and confident with regard to the assignment he had taken on, his major concern being whether those key employees who were technically Los Angeles World Airports employees were going to be willing to make the jump to being Ontario International Airport Authority employees and whether they would be willing to stay the course once they did. Just prior to Ontario’s takeover, however, Fredericks was given an abrupt and rude awakening. His political masters on the Ontario City Council and the Ontario International Airport Authority, meaning essentially the strong-willed Wapner, were intent on taking action Fredericks had in no way anticipated, had not had even a rudimentary chance to evaluate or think through and which he instinctively and intuitively believed to be ill-conceived. Wapner wanted a survey done of all of the non-essential airport property, meaning anything that was not currently being used for aviation purposes with regard to its eligibility for being liquidated, I.e, sold. And he wanted the survey done immediately, tout de suite, pronto, jetzt, chop-chop. Fredericks was astonished at Wapner’s urgency. It was as if he expected everyone affiliated with the airport to understand and accept that selling off prime airport property to entities of Wapner’s choosing had been the game plan all along and any further delays would not be abided now that Los Angeles World Airports was out of the way. In Wapner’s sights for the sale were some of the larger pieces of ground within the aerodrome’s footprint, along with some smaller plots. Frederics, at first dumbfounded, made a show of preparing some form of documentation. He began some inquiries. What he learned was that there were two entities that were pre-approved by Wapner as the eventual purchasers of what was to be deemed the prime available airport property – Sares-Regis Group and Lee and Associates.
Wapner wanted the survey of what could be or was to be considered surplus property so that officers with those companies might make an offer to purchase property near the airport that would meet their needs, so they could make an early offer on it, perhaps or even likely avoiding the need for any bidding on the property having to take place.
Documentation shows that since April of 1998 and running up to the present, Sares-Regis, including principals John Hagestad and Peter Rooney as well as Larry Lukanish, Kenneth Coatsworth, Patrick Russell, Vincent Ciavarella and William Thormahlen, have provided Wapner with at least $130,316.06 in political donations. Similarly, since December of 1999, Joe McKay, Mike Wolfe and Carol Plowman of Lee & Associates have supplied Wapner with $97,153.14 in campaign funding.
Fredericks, believing that the airport authority divesting itself of property which, while then idle, could conceivably be transformed into active aviation use in the future to be imprudent, continued to drag his feet in handing over a list of acreage that should be put up for sale. As mid-2017 approached, it had become clear to Fredericks that remaining in the position of the airport’s executive director was simply not tenable. Wapner had at least three other votes of the airport authority board’s directors to back him. In quietly held discussions, it was agreed that in exchange for Fredericks signing a nondisclosure agreement permanently sealing his lips with regard to anything and everything he had seen, heard, learned or experienced as the airport’s CEO, he would depart with a severance payout of $398,500, equal to his annual salary.
“Both the commissioners and Kelly acknowledge that their approaches to the direction and management of the Ontario International Airport Authority differ and that it would be mutually beneficial to part ways as Ontario International Airport Authority moves to the next phase of the airport’s development,” Wapner said.
Mark Thorpe, who had formerly been with Los Angeles World Airports and who had been hired as Ontario International Airport’s chief development officer in August 2016, was elevated to replace Fredericks on an interim basis.
Thorpe offered the airport board an assurance that he had every intention of establishing Ontario International as a major hub airport and began filling the gaps that had persisted during Fredericks’ last several months in place while the board was engaged in chasing him away.
As he had with Fredericks, Wapner began banging on Thorpe to provide him and the board with an inventory of the airport property that could be sold to development interests intent on constructing warehousing and other land uses that would benefit from being proximate to an airport. Thorpe indulged Wapner in that request, compiling a comprehensive list of the airport authority’s holdings, which included descriptions of the parcels and their surroundings and limitations.
In October 2017, convinced that Thorpe was willing to make things work for him, Wapner lined up the votes on the board and dropped the “interim” qualifier from his title, making Thorpe the full-fledged airport chief executive officer.
Wapner made clear that he was looking for the airport authority’s staff to facilitate the sale of available “surplus” property that at that point wasn’t being utilized for aviation purposes to those who were ready to develop it. Thorpe played along, considering having the authority sell off some of the land most distant from the airport grounds where there was no actual aeronautical activity ongoing or propspect that it would be converted to such a purpose in the future.
That wouldn’t do at all, Wapner responded. There was, Wapner said, some specific ground – 198 acres of so-called surplus property located due east of the runway across Haven Avenue, north of Jurupa Avenue, south of Airport Drive and west of Carnegie Avenue, referred to as “the Boot” because of its shape – that a “preferred group” of investors was interested in acquiring.
Such a sale, Thorpe believed, 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 countered that for such a sale to take place, there would need to be Federal Aviation Authority approval, further arrangements and a bidding process on the property.
In actuality, Wapner responded, getting Federal Aviation Authority approval would prove to be a mere formality if it were presented in the right way. His expectation was, Wapner said, that Thorpe and the authority staff would make a convincing application to the FAA to get that approval. Moreover, Wapner said, carrying out a competitive bid on the property would not be necessary if airport authority staff, meaning Thorpe, were to author a report stating that the sale of the property would prove beneficial, would contribute to the expansion of the local economy, would further the airport authority’s goals and that the amount of money being offered by the proposed buyer was a fair price. If Thorpe would write up just such a report and accompany it with a resolution calling for the sale to be made and the board approved the resolution, everything would work out, Wapner said.
Wapner upped the pressure.

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.” Greg Devereaux and Chris Hughes, respectively, were the principals of Worthington Partners and Woodlawn Consulting. Devereaux had been Ontario’s city manager from 1997 until 2010. At the time Devereaux left the City of Ontario in 2010 to become the chief executive officer of San Bernardino County, Hughes had been Ontario’s fire chief. The city council at that time elevated Hughes to the city manager’s post, a position he filled until he retired in December 2013. Paul Haney had been with Englander, Knabe & Allen, a firm specializing in public sector services from the time that company began consulting for the Ontario International
Airport Authority almost at its inception. In December 2017, Haney, through his separate company, Paul Haney and Associates, was given a consulting contract with the Ontario International Airport authority on the same terms that Devereaux and Hughes were working under: $20,000 per month or $240,000 per year.

Wapner had lined up the votes of all four of his colleagues on the airport authority board. Bowman absolutely followed Wapner with regard to every vote made by the board. Likewise, Wapner, who at that time was working for Fourth District County Supervisor Curt Hagman as his policy advisor, could count on Hagman going right down the line with him on any matters that came before the airport authority board. The two other members of the board – former Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge and Julie Gouw, who had replaced Lucy Dunn in July 2017 – were not independent true independent voices on that panel. Wapner had three votes lined up on the Ontario City Council, those being his own, Bowman’s and Debbie Dorst Porada, de-appoint Loveridge or Gouw. He was in a position to pull the trigger on them at any point, and they knew it. Thus, for them, deviating from the way Wapner wanted them to vote on any major issue that came before the airport authority board would come at an exorbitant price, one which neither one was willing to pay.
At Wapner’s behest, Devereaux, Hughes and Haney went to work on trying to convince Thorpe that the best course of action was to sell the 198 acres.
Involved in the proposed deal, Thorpe learned, were Sares-Regis and Lee and Associates, who had tendered an offer of $101 million for the property. Shortly thereafter, Nick Johnson of Johnson Aviation, a company specializing in strategic land use planning, facilities planning, financial planning, and capital programming within the airport industry and which was doing consulting work for the airport authority, joined with Devereaux, Hughes and Haney in seeking to convince Thorpe selling the property would be propitious.

Thorpe thus found himself, like Fredericks before him, beset on all sides with advocates for selling off airport property, in particular the Boot.
While he did not know, precisely, how much money Sares-Regis and Lee and Associates had contributed to Wapner, he knew the companies and their employees – Hagestad, Rooney Lukanish, Coatsworth, Russell, Ciavarella, Thormahlen, McKay, Wolfe and Plowman were among his more substantial donors.
Thorpe was casting about for some way to avoid the sale altogether or create a dynamic where, at the least, there would be a competitive bidding process by which the airport authority would avoid selling the property at far below its value. Though he did not want to sell the property off or go into the public registry as having been the executive in charge when the sale was made, he recognized that the offer that had been tendered was, speaking conservatively, 30 percent of the actual value, given its proximity to the air field and the types of land use that would be most logical for it once it was in private hands.
Thorpe was acutely conscious of what had happened to Fredericks when he had stood in the way of the sale. Somewhat ironically, however, the way in which Fredericks had been disposed of strengthened him. The public had readily accepted that sacking Fredericks was within Wapner’s and the board’s purview, doing so a mere eight months after Fredericks had moved into the executive director’s position. If Wapner and the board were to do the same to Thorpe three or four months into his tenure as actual chief executive, that might beget questions about who, exactly, represented the real operational problems over at the airport – aviation facility professionals or the inexperienced and fickle politicians who knew virtually nothing about running an airport. This bought Thorpe some time.
When Thorpe began looking seriously at the prospect of not selling the Boot, he examined the rationale Wapner cited, which was to have the land, which was at that time going unused, become, as Wapner put it, “a magnet for economic development.”
Instead of going toe-to-toe with Wapner, who was capable of bringing his superior political leverage to bear, Thorpe went around him, addressing himself to the other members of board and those elements of the public attending the airport authority board meetings.
Were he to do as Wapner was insisting and make the acreage from the airport’s land inventory available for sale to the Sares-Regis Group/Lee and Associates consortium at $510,101.01 per acre, Thorpe said, he would forego the possibility of seeing a far larger return on the sale. If a bidding process were initiated, he said, offers would start at no less than twice what Sares-Regis/Lee and Associates was offering, well over $1 million per acre, and ranging to as high as $2 million per acres. Indeed, he said, it might be stretching things, but it was within the realm of reality that someone with really energetic intentions for that property might offer $3 million.
That, however, was not the only consideration. In closed sessions, outside the earshot of the public, Thorpe informed the board of another consideration they needed to take seriously.
The Ontario International Airport had with the various airlines flying into and out of the airport a double residual financial agreement. That agreement extended to the cost of aviation operations, the cost of running the airport and the terminal, with the airlines absorbing those costs and reimbursing the airport authority, which fronted the money. If the airport authority’s costs rise, in turn the airlines have to cover those increases. Uniformly, under the agreement, if the airport authority’s costs fall, the airlines’ costs are to be reduced. In this way, if the airport were to make the land sale, thereby increasing the amount of money flooding into the airport’s coffers, the airport’s operations would move from being in the red into the black – well into the black. To the extent that the airlines became aware that the airport’s profit increased, they would be able reduce – indeed eliminate – the fees they were paying to utilize the runway, the gates, the bays, the terminal and the other airport facilities. If the airlines were to lay claim to their shares of the revenue coming in, the airport would see the money paid to it for the pland eaten up by its various airline partners.
There was a way out of this dilemma, Thorpe told the board. While land sale revenue was included within the terms of the double residual financial agreement, lease revenue was not. If the airport authority were to lease the property in question, multiple birds could be killed with a single stone. First, new negotiations over the financial terms of the lease could be initiated, perhaps including an open bidding process on the lease rate and duration, such that the airport would not have to merely accept the offer tendered by Sares-Regis/Lee and Associates. Second, the airport would not give up ownership of the land, meaning that if the need to repurpose the property to another use or for airfield or runway expansion emerged at a future date, that could be done once the lease expired. Third, the airport authority would not need to share the revenue coming into it for leasee’s use of the property and would be able to use that money for a multitude of purposes, including capital projects at the airport.
This represented a far more advantageous arrangement than selling the land, Thorpe told the board members. Once the land was sold into the control of private owners and companies and developed, it would be virtually impossible to recapture it for aeronautical use. While a 25-year lease or a 50-year lease would encumber the property and render it unusable for aviation purposes for a quarter century or a half of a century, such preclusion of the airport’s expansion would not last 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.
Starkly illustrated by Thorpe was that Wapner was militating on behalf of his deep-pocketed campaign supporters at the expense of the airport, the airport authority, the City of Ontario and both its current and future residents.
By 2020, Wapner was resolved to be rid of Thorpe but, remarkably, did not have the votes on the board to effectuate doing so. Still, for Thorpe, being in the same room with Wapner was an extremely tense, unnerving and thoroughly unpleasant experience. Thorpe, by privately convincing Wapner’s colleagues on the board that selling the Boot outright would be a mistake, had stymied the deal with Sares-Regis/Lee and Associates, an unforgivable transgression in the world of Ontario politics and governance.
Thorpe coupled his efforts within the confines of the Ontario International Airport Authority’s executive suite with making certain that the public was not kept in the dark about what was taking place at the airport. Much of Wapner’s strategy consisted of having as little public scrutiny as possible with regard to the backroom arrangements being made. Thorpe understood that much of what was taking place with regard to the running of the airport would not stand the light of day.
The turning point came when Devereaux, who had been the most powerful weapon Wapner had in making the case for selling the 198 acres to Sares-Regis/Lee and Associates, flipped and began advocating for leasing the property instead. Devereaux’s gravitas as the former city manager of Fontana, former city manager of Ontario and former chief executive officer of San Bernardino County made him the most influential voice in the orbit around the airport.

Though he officially retained the title of airport CEO, Thorpe by the spring of 2021 was essentially functioning as the airport authority’s chief executive in absentia. Beginning in July 2021,Thorpe was no longer in attendance at the board’s public meetings. Nevertheless, he had managed to place the airport authority on a trajectory to commit the disposition of a sizable portion of airport property not to Sares-Regis/Lee and Associates’ speculative use, but with another entity, a venture formed by San Antonio, Texas-based USAA Real Estate Company and McDonald Property Group of Newport Beach known as CanAm Ontario LLC, which had made an offer with regard to the Boot that was far more beneficial to the airport authority than the one proposed by Sares-Regis/Lee and Associates.

At one point, Lee and Associates, recognizing that despite Wapner having done the best he could running interference for the company, resolved itself to the airport authority board’s intent to consider only lease arrangements for the disposition of the Boot. McKay, Wolfe and Plowman tendered an offer to lease the property, but its proposal fell well short of what CanAm Ontario was willing to provide. By having the airport authority accept a non-refundable $10 million deposit, Thorpe conferred an exclusive negotiating arrangement with USAA Real Estate Company and McDonald Property Group that closed the door on Sares-Regis/Lee & Associates. The deal that was worked out pertained not to a land sale, but a lease.
Under the lease terms, the airport authority leased for 55 years 198 acres within the Boot for development consistent with CanAm Ontario LLC’s plans for it. The $10 million deposit was to be used toward CanAm Ontario paying the airport authority $25 million the first year and $25 million per year over the following four years. During the second five years, CanAm is to pay the airport authority $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.

In December 2021, after Thorpe ensured that the terms of the deal were given public exposure such that Wapner could not orchestrate a sale of the property to his campaign donors at what was less than one-sixth the amount of money the authority stood to receive through the lease, the airport authority board voted to approve the lease arrangement.
Thorpe had effectively outmaneuvered Wapner, which infuriated the councilman. Earlier that year, in May 2021, Wapner had arranged to have Thorpe’s second-in-command at the airport, Assistant CEO Atif Elkadi, like Wapner a USC graduate, serve as the acting CEO during board meetings. The writing was on the wall. On January 21, 2022, Thorpe submitted a letter of resignation, effective officially as of March 21, 2022.
The Kelly Fredericks/Mark Thorpe chapter had exposed, unequivocally, the pay-to-play ethos that had been cultivated within the airport authority. Open to the world was the manner in which Wapner, by sheer force of will, sought to have the airport authority board take action through votes and engage in decisions intended to benefit his campaign donors.
Previously, both city staff at City Hall and airport authority staff at the airport had witnessed, in the words of one former airport official, “Alan constantly hitting up vendors for political contributions.” Such actions crossed the line from being permissible political fundraising to out-and-out solicitation of bribes, as Wapner insinuated that the contracts those vendors or service providers had with the city or the airport would dry up if they were not forthcoming with donations to his political war chest. For years, indeed decades, there had remained in place a code of silence about such things, as the perception was that Wapner was too powerful and too vituperative to cross. He was trading votes he was making on the city council and as a member of the airport authority board that put money in the pockets of his donors who in turn were putting money into his campaign coffers – clear quid pro quos, tens of them, dozens of them, scores of them, even hundreds of them. There were no negative consequences for this action. If anything, Wapner grew stronger and more powerful, unchallengeable politically because his campaign bankroll made it impossible to dislodge him from office. A city employee who blew the whistle on this circumstance or who tried to would be unlikely trigger any effective enforcement action against Wapner. Rather, the perception was that the likely outcome would be that Wapner, with the support of a majority of the city council or the airport board, would call upon the city manager or the airport CEO to instruct the department head overseeing the loudmouthed employee to discipline if not outright terminate him or her.

Frederick’s and then Thorpe’s defiance of Wapner created cracks in that façade of silence.
City employees and airport authorities began to talk about what they had seen. Memories of long forgotten incidents were refreshed. Questions surfaced.

What, some asked, were Devereaux, Hughes and Haney doing to earn the $200,000 a year they were being paid by the airport authority? Initially, those consulting contracts were to extend to three years and were, it appeared, to come to a close, in the cases 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, remain in place to the present, rolling over annually. Questions with regard to those consulting contracts provoked inquiries in the form of public record requests for invoices submitted by the three cataloging what work was performed and what services rendered in exchange for the $1,920,000 each paid to Devereaux and Hughes and the $1,820,000 paid to Haney through July 2025. No such documents were submitted or are available for examination, according to the city.

Word

Ontario International Airport is a significant, what might be described as a unique entity, within San Bernardino County. While San Bernardino boasts what it has labeled the San Bernardino International Airport and Victorville is host to the Southern California Logistics Airport, Upland has Cable Airport, the community of Big Bear is home to Big Bear Airport, the towns of Apple Valley Airport, Yucca Valley and Lucerne Valley have Apple Valley Airport, Yucca Valley Airport and Rabbit Ranch Airport, Redlands lays claim to Redlands Municipal Airport and Hesperia contains Hesperia Airport, in and

responses for the forEmployesOthers began to talk about what they had seen
City employees and airport authorities began to talk about what they had seen. Memories of long forgotten incidents were refreshed. Questions surfaced.

What, some asked, were Devereaux, Hughes and Haney doing to earn the $200,000 a year they were being paid by the airport authority? Initially, those consulting contracts were to extend to three years and were, it appeared, to come to a close, in the cases 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, remain in place to the present, rolling over annually. Questions with regard to those consulting contracts provoked inquiries in the form of public record requests for invoices submitted by the three cataloging what work was performed and what services rendered in exchange for the $1,920,000 each paid to Devereaux and Hughes and the $1,820,000 paid to Haney through July 2025. No such documents were submitted or are available for examination, according to the city.

Word

Ontario International Airport is a significant, what might be described as a unique entity, within San Bernardino County. While San Bernardino boasts what it has labeled the San Bernardino International Airport and Victorville is host to the Southern California Logistics Airport, Upland has Cable Airport, the community of Big Bear is home to Big Bear Airport, the towns of Apple Valley Airport, Yucca Valley and Lucerne Valley have Apple Valley Airport, Yucca Valley Airport and Rabbit Ranch Airport, Redlands lays claim to Redlands Municipal Airport and Hesperia contains Hesperia Airport, all of those entities taken together involve a fraction of the passengers that embark or disembark at Ontario International Airport. Accordingly, there are similar accommodations to what are the norm at international airports around the globe in the terminals at Ontario International. Currently, the concessions within the airport’s two domestic flight terminals include food and dining establishments, those being Brewery X, Chick-fil-A, Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts, Pizza Vino, Mi Casa Cantina Einstein Bros. Bagels, and lounges such as Tap & Pour, Urban Crave and, in exclusively in Terminal 2, the Aspire Lounge. There are intersticed among these a handful of retail concessions. In addition, there are close to a dozen service providers or venders providing goods to the airport related to the terminals and their functions, including custodial/cleaning companies, machine maintenance providers, heating/ventilating and air-conditioning system servicing and maintenance technicians, electricians, plumbers and groundskeepers. Outside the terminals are teams that take on a diverse range of tasks, including upkeep and resurfacing of the runways, taxiways and aprons, maintenance of lighting and signage systems and ones which are continuously present to inspect the facilities to identify and ward off safety hazards and to promptly address those hazards, either anticipated or unforeseen, when they manifest. Additionally, the airport has franchises, contracts or arrangement with rental vehicle companies and taxi-cab companies, along with tow truck services.

What was recognized throughout Ontario and in the circle of communities surrounding it was the degree to which a pay-to-play ethos had seeped into the arrangements for business, contracts or franchises relating to the airport. To the political victors – the mayor and members of the city council and those on the council chosen to serve on the airport authority board – went the spoils, i.e., kickbacks in the form of donations to their campaign war chests or just outright payments.

It was, prior to January 1, 2023, a peculiarity of California law that elected officials were free to rake in political donations and then vote, while acting in their official elected capacity, on an issue in which that donor had a financial stake. The way in which Section 84308 of the California Government Code, also know as the Levine Act, was written when it was first adopted in 1982 was that it applied to members of a local appointed government body but not to members of local elected bodies. In this way, the members of the Ontario City Council, like all city council members elsewhere in the Golden State, were free to take money from their political supporters and, if a franchise, contract or project proposal involving that donor came before the council, vote to approve the franchise, contract or project. As elected officials acting in an elected capacity, they were exempted from California Government Code Section 84308. When Wapner and Bowman were acting in the capacity of airport authority board members, however, they were no longer serving in an elected capacity but rather in appointed one, as they had not been elected to the Ontario International Airport Authority but had been appointed to those posts by the city council. Thus, the exemption written into California Government Code Section 84308 did not apply.

There were a multitude of examples in which Wapner’s and Bowman’s donors had a financial interest relating to the airport. California Government Code Section 84308 applied to votes but it also applied to any action taken by Wapner or Bowman in their capacity as, respectively, the airport board’s president or airport commissioner.

In 2017, when Wapner, backed by the other members of the airport authority board, including Bowman, was pressuring Fredericks to prepare short lists and long lists of airline “surplus” properties so that one of those properties in particular, “the Boot,” could be sold to the consortium consisting of Lee and Associates and Sares-Regis, both were acting in violation of California Government Code Section 84308. California Government Code Section 84308 prohibited any local government official serving in an appointed capacity from taking action that would have a financial impact on an individual or company that had provided that official with $250 or more in political donations. The $130,316.06 that had been donated to Wapner by the Sares-Regis principals and the $97,153.14 that came to him from the Lee and Associates corporate officers should have not only disqualified him from being able to vote on any matter relating to those two companies or combination thereof but rendered him mute with regard to them as well, making him unable to pressure Fredericks to take action that would benefit the Sares-Regis/Lee and Associates partnership.

The same principle applied to Wapner’s later effort to get Thorpe to sell the 198 acres to the Sares-Regis/Lee & Associates [amalgam] for $101 million.

Likewise, over the years, since his 2006 return to the city council until present, Bowman has received ??? ,000 from Sares Regis and $??,??? from Lee and Associates. As was the case with Wapner, Bowman was never actually presented with voting to sell the property to the two companies. If the sale had come before the board as an agendized item and if he and/or Wapner had voted to make that sale, that would have constituted a clear violation of Government Code Section 84308. Just as Wapner had, Bowman, in backing Wapner in his dual failed ploys to intimidate Fredericks and Thorpe into facilitating the sale of the 198 acres at what was approximately one third to one fourth of its actual value to one of his major campaign donors, Bowman, too, had crossed the legal line.

Other Government Code Section 84308 violations that Wapner and Bowman engaged in pertained to the public sector service firm Englander, Knabe & Allen; one of that that company’s employees, Paul Haney; taxicab companies that service the airport; tow service companies that service the airport and the unions for the City of Ontario’s public safety employees.

Early in its going as an up-and-running joint powers authority, the Ontario International Airport Authority contracted with the firm of Englander, Knabe & Allen for guidance relating to dealing with land use entitlements and regulatory issues, engaging with the public and managing communications during the aggressive effort to convince Los Angeles to abandon its ownership and management of the airport, and when that failed, trying to shape public perception in favor of the city and the airport authority when the lawsuit against Los Angeles was launched. The firm 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 Haney at that time was one of Englander, Knabe & Allen employees who specialized in airport and airline related issues, having worked for Los Angeles World Airports previously. Englander, Knabe & Allen assigned Haney to work with Ontario and the Ontario International Airport Authority on the airport takeover attempt.

On June 18, 2014, Paul Haney contributed $1,000 to Wapner’s political war chest. He donated another S1,000 to Wapner on February 15, 2016 and another S1,000 on January 27, 2017;

When the board approved the consultation agreement with Haney on December 13, 2017, hiring him on a $200,000 per year retainer, Wapner recused himself, abstaining from the vote. Bowman, however, participated in the vote, which passed with all four board members participating in support. In the years since both Wapner and Bowman have freely participated in approving the warrant registers, which include the $16,666.66 monthly checks to Haney.

Haney made a S1,000 donation to Wapner on March 5, 2018 and a $1,000 donation to Bowman on Mach 30, 2018. He made a $1,000 donation to Wapner on February 7, 2020; another S1,000 donation to Wapner on January 25, 2021 and another S1,000 donation to Wapner on March 1, 2022; and a S2,000 donation to him on December 19, 2022. Susan Haney, Paul Haney’s wife, gave Wapner S1,000 on July 18, 2022.

The continuous votes Wapner and Bowman have made to approve payments to Haney over the last seven years appear to be violations of California Government Code

Section 84308.

For years, the owners and operators Airport Mobil towing, located at 1046 East California Street in Ontario’s industrial section about a mile west of the airport, had sought in vain to get onto the City of Ontario’s towing rotation. Companies are permitted onto the list of tow companies called in when cars or vehicles have to be moved from the scene of an accident or impounded after a traffic stop or police encounter with a suspect or individual involved in actual or assumed criminal activity by action of the city council, based upon a recommendation delivered by the police chief. Despite having met what Airport Mobile towing’s owners believed to be the city’s standard to be placed on that list, tow rotation status had not been granted to the company. The owners were informed that entrée onto the list was granted to those who made donations to the members of the city council and that a sure way to achieve the status the company sought was to hire Wapner as a consultant.

Wapner had served on the Ontario Police Department as a patrolman, detective and then a sergeant from 1981 until his retirement in 1998. It was represented that Wapner would be able to convince the police chief to recommend a towing company for inclusion on the tow rotation, after which the council’s approval would be a formaility.

In 2012, according to Wapner’s Form 700 filing, a state document intended to show public officials’ economic interests, Wapner’s consulting company, Alan Wapner & Associates, received more than $10,000 but less than $100,000 from Airport Mobil Towing. There is no description of precisely what service Wapner provided Airport Mobil towing. atowingwas paid Wapner more than $10,000 pbrought in dipped below $100,000 again, though it remained above $10,000, according to Wapner’s Form 700 filing. Caltrop Corporation and Bingo Innovations of California, Inc. again were major sources of that money. They were joined by Airport Mobile Towing as a provider of more than $10,000 of the income to Alan Wapner & Associates in that year’s reporting cycle.

In 2011, the amount of money Alan Wapner & Associates brought in dipped below $100,000 again, though it remained above $10,000, according to Wapner’s Form 700 filing. Caltrop Corporation and Bingo Innovations of California, Inc. again were major sources of that money. They were joined by Airport Mobile Towing as a provider of more than $10,000 of the income to Alan Wapner & Associates in that year’s reporting cycle.