By Mark Gutglueck
Electing to jump rather than being shoved, Ontario City Councilman is resigning all of his appointive assignments growing out of his status as a city councilman. That will include his beloved position[s] as both a member of the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of Directors and that panel’s president. He will also walk away from his membership, as the City of Ontario’s representative, on the board of directors of Omnitrans, which oversees local rapid transit operations consisting essentially of bus lines and of which he is the current president; the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, of which he was formerly the president; the San Bernardino County Council of Governments, of which he was formerly the president; the Southern California Association of Governments, of which he was a past president; the National Association of Regional Councils; the California Association of Councils of Government.
He dropped his letter of resignation off at the Ontario City Clerk’s Office unsigned on Tuesday, saying he would return on Friday, August 14, to sign it and make it official and binding. Thus, at present, he retains his status as a member of all of the boards, commissions, committees and governmental adjunct positions conferred upon him, most of which came as the result of a voted by the city council, of which he remains a member.
The crisis which has forced the resignations materialized on July 28, when the FBI served search warrants at Wapner’s home, the home and office of San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman, who is also a board member with the airport authority; Frank Lizarraga, a one-time Ontario planning commissioner who is Wapner’s personal attorney; James Su, the owner of EDI Media; the business office of Andy Sehrmelis, a major campaign donor to Wapner, Hagman and other local elected officeholders; and at a mansion in the 600 block of North Canon Drive of Beverly Hills. The day of those raids, the FBI also served subpoenas for the production of documents at Ontario City Hall and the administrative offices of the Ontario International Airport and the Ontario International Airport Authority.
Word emanating from informed sources in government and the Ontario/West San Bernardino County community is that the pay-to-play culture that both Wapner and Hagman were steeped in was brought to the attention of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office too many times and with concrete examples of graft, quid pro quos, payoffs, kickbacks and bribes which could not be ignored. Wapner, who has been on the city council since 1994, has in that time collected at least $3.8 million in campaign contributions, making him the most prolific political fundraiser among municipal and county elective officeholders in county history. Wapner’s technique in raising funds is legendary, one feature of which is his buttonholing anyone and everyone with business before the City of Ontario or the various commissions or governmental entities of which he is a board member and then asking for support, without making any overt threat but implying that for the prospective donor’s pending project, franchise application or contract that has or is coming before the governmental entity in question to be met with approval, a donation to his political war chest is in order.
A shockingly high percentage of those businesses and entities which have obtained project approval and secured franchises and contracts with the City of Ontario and the Ontario International Airport Authority are identified as donors on the campaign financing disclosure documents Wapner, like all elected officials in California, is required by law to fill out twice annually during non-election years and more often in election years.
According to some of those who approached the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in regard to Wapner over the past several years, Wapner was able to sidestep being brought to account by local and state authorities, most notably the Ontario Police Department and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, primarily, in the case of the police department, because he was formerly a police officer, detective and lieutenant with that agency and now has tremendous influence over the department as a council member, and, in the case of the district attorney, because District Attorney Jason Anderson was formerly one of Wapner’s city council colleagues, formerly served as a lawyer representing Wapner when Anderson was in private practice and Anderson has tapped into the same political support network within the Ontario and San Bernardino County establishment that has backed Wapner in his run as a public official for more than thee decades. It was for that reason that those disturbed by the manner in which Wapner was prioritizing government action to favor his personal and political associates turned to federal authorities.
Wapner on Tuesday deferred his resignations on the multiple committees and boards he is on until Friday so that he could attend two critical meetings involving a subcommittee and another delegation of the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority on Thursday, August 13. On that day, tomorrow, the SBCTA Transit Committee is to meet and selected members of the authority are also scheduled to participate in the Metro Valley Study Session. The authority’s transit committee often sets the parameters for what the discussions and votes of the entire 29-member authority board, which consists of a representative in the form of a mayor or council member from the county’s 22 cities, two incorporated towns and the county’s five supervisors. In this way, the transit committee in the past has controlled what projects were to be considered and which were to be taken off the table, whether freeway commuting options were to be prioritized over rail transit options and whether certain proposals would be previewed to the entire board or rejected without further discussion.
The Ontario City Council at its August 18 meeting is set to consider a vote to remove Wapner from all of his committee, commission, board and adjunct assignments. Indications were that as recently as last weekend, Saturday and Sunday, August 8 and 9, Wapner was intent on engaging in some very serious arm-twisting of Councilman Jim Bowman, his longstanding ally on the council, in seeking to exploit Bowman’s various vulnerabilities, including his alcoholism, financial constraints and some questionable political trade-offs involving past votes on the city council and the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of Directors. Wapner’s belief was that with his own vote, that of Bowman and that of Councilwoman Daisy Macias, he could prevent the council from achieving the three votes to remove him from his appointed assignments.
By Monday, however, Wapner had discarded that approach.
The Sentinel is informed that someone who was not identified convinced Wapner that he should do as Hagman did in the days after the July 28 FBI raids, in which Hagman stepped down from all of the committee and other assignments he had taken on as adjuncts to his position as Fourth District County supervisor.
Wapner’s resignation will have historic implication, as he has been the only president of the Ontario International Airport Board of Commissioners since its inception in 2012. It is anticipated that Councilwoman Debra Dorst-Porada will be appointed to replace him on August 18.