Less than two months after a series of FBI raids at the homes and offices of two Ontario International Airport Authority commissioners and those of their political and personal associates put Ontario Airport under the glare of a public spotlight, another development involving the airport’s executive director/manager is subjecting the aerodrome and those running it to a further round of controversy.
In early 2020, then-Ontario International Airport Authority Board President Alan Wapner and the airport authority’s deputy executive director for communications and marketing, Afif Elkadi, sought to assist their fellow USC alum, Scott Jacobson, after the latter had been sacked from his position as the associate athletic director at the University of Southern California in the aftermath of the “VarsityBlues” college admissions scandal that felled a multitude of celebrities, blue bloods and influential titans of finance and industry who used their wealth to have their children accepted at some of the country’s most prestigious colleges and universities in exchange for bribes paid to scholastic deans and other guardians of the gates of academia. Caught up in the scandal along with Jacobson were USC senior associate athletic director Ron Orr, USC athletic department chief operating officer/chief financial officer Steve Lopes, USC soccer coaches Ali Khosroshahin and Laura Janke, athletic department administrator Donna Heinel and water polo coach Jovan Vavic, all of whom were either sacked or resigned. Revealed at the time were that scions of famous actors and wealthy businessmen or industrialists had been given athletic scholarships to USC despite having no skill, no ability and in some cases no familiarity whatsoever with the sports for which those scholarships had been provided in return for a minimum fee, i.e., bribe of $250,000 and in a few known cases as much as $500,000. An internal review of the situation by USC determined that there were grounds to believe that 33 students were admitted to the college under circumstances that involved fraud or deceit, in which 12 of those students were not involved or could not be proved to be involved in violating the school’s admissions procedure, while the remaining 21 were found to have knowingly made false representations about themselves or had others do so, and were in various ways involved in patently dishonest acts such as having others take SAT tests for them or assume their identities in completing the admissions process, including sitting for interviews.
Initially, Wapner and Elkadi entertained the idea of creating an in-house advertising arm for the airport, one that would include promoting the airport at various sporting and entertainment events and venues, and installing Jacobson as the head of the department. They ran head-on into the consideration that two of the divisions of Lamar Advertising – that pertaining to advertisement in general and its airport advertising division – at that point was not quite three years into a ten-year contract related to advertising with Ontario International Airport and the Ontario International Airport Authority that had been initiated in July of 2017 and yet had seven more years to run. Lamar’s was a multidimensional national advertising agency with contracts with 25 airports around the country and established penetration into a wealth of venues. Within Ontario specifically, Lamar was responsible for the airport advertising program, including indoor and outdoor advertising displays within Terminals 2 and 4, which handled the domestic traffic at the airport departing and arriving, and airport parking venues, as well as billboard signage on airport property.
Mark Thorpe, then the airport authority’s executive director who oversaw management, operations, development, and marketing of the airport, was skeptical about what services Jacobson, whose primary experience confined itself to being a university associate athletic director, could offer the airport authority and the airport. He was satisfied with Lamar’s performance and saw no benefit from instituting a redundancy of the nature that Wapner and Elkadi were advocating with the creation of an advertising department and the hiring of Jacobson.
Wapner hit upon an alternate strategy. By the summer of 2020, as the entire airline industry was hit with substantial downturns in ridership as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wapner began bewailing Lamar’s performance. Utilizing the very tangible evidence of the declining numbers of passengers passing through Ontario International Airport’s gates, he maneuvered around Thorpe, working in unison with Elkadi, who directly oversaw the airport’s advertising. On February 1, 2021, the Ontario International Airport Authority entered into a $96,000 annual contract with Fuse Advancement, as it was identified in the contract. At that point, Fuse Advancement had no contracts with any airports or any entities, for that matter. It did not, in fact exist. According to the California Secretary of State, Fuse Advancement was not registered as a business entity until February 18, 2021, 17 days after it was first granted a contract with the airport authority.
Subsequently, on May 27, 2021, the contract with Fuse Advancement was increased to $240,500 per year.
Though both Lamar and Fuse Advancement fell under the rubric of being advertising and promotion companies and both engaged in advertisement at Ontario International Airport, there were elements of their separate functions that differed somewhat. The break with Lamar did not come off as cleanly as Wapner had hoped, and the Ontario International Airport Authority had to buy out the remaining six years of the contract with Lamar.
A significant number of Ontario International Airport Authority employees, indeed upwards of 80 percent of them, and at least one of the airport authority board members knew nothing about the previous relationship between Wapner and Jacobson as the transition from Lamar to Fuse Advancement was being effectuated.
Wapner is a member of the USC Class of 1978 and self-identifies as a Trojan. Like hundreds of other USC alums, Wapner is a participant in the Trojan Athletic Fund, and as such was frequently in attendance at USC’s home football games at the Coliseum/United Airlines Field, where he viewed the action on the gridiron in a seating section reserved for VIPs. More notably, documentation obtained by the Sentinel shows that Wapner was the recipient of a lagniappe arranged for him through Jacobson, the value of which cannot be quantified, that being the rare privilege of traveling with the football team on certain away games such as those vs. Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana on October 12, 2019 and the contest against the University of Texas in Austin, Texas on September 15, 2018. During the years Jacobson was associate athletic director, he regularly made arrangements to have Wapner fly with the team to the locations where they were playing. Subsequent to Jacobson’s departure as associate athletic director, there was a carryover of the rapport the councilman had established with the USC athletic department through Jacobson, as when he continued to travel with the football in in 2020 and 2021, such as to Denver, Colorado for the team’s match-up against Colorado on October 2, 2021.
Thorpe’s tenure as interim executive director of the airport/airport authority lasted from July 2017 to October 2017, and his official tenure as the full-fledged executive director last four years and five months from October 2017 to March 31, 2022. Throughout the last three years of his time as executive director, Thorp and Wapner were on increasingly acrimonious terms, as Wapner dominated the airport board of commissioners and was dictating policy virtually unilaterally, pursuing policies, including overtures to sell what he defined as “surplus” airport property to real estate speculators and development companies which had made substantial donations to his political fund. Thorpe resisted several initiatives that Wapner was pursuing in this regard. By October 2021, the relationship between Wapner and Thorpe had deteriorated that Thorpe was placed on a special assignment, during which time he was restricted from contacting staff except with regard to those areas relating to his limited assignment. From that point forward, Elkadi, having been designated by Wapner, began serving as the de facto executive director of the airport, despite his lack of expertise in virtually all areas beyond communications and marketing. On January 21, 2022, Thorpe submitted his resignation as CEO, with his term ending March 31, 2022.
Elkadi immediately transitioned to acting CEO and in short order Wapner lined up the votes to promote him to the airport and airport authority’s chief executive officer.
Even before Thorpe’s departure, complaints emanating from Ontario residents relating to Wapner’s actions in his role as president/chairman of the airport commission had been lodged with the FBI.
The focus of that investigation over the course of more than five years has expanded and evolved to touch on quid pro quo arrangements, specifically alleged bribes or kickbacks from individuals, businesses, and entities seeking project approvals, contracts, or franchises from the airport authority, the City of Ontario and San Bernardino County’s government structure, as well as overseas banking activity, particularly involving financial institutions in the People’s Republic of China, and related cryptocurrency exchange access and account codes pertaining to Wapner and another member of the Ontario International Airport Authority, San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman.
On July 28 of this year, the FBI served search warrants at homes of Wapner, Hagman, James Su and Frank Lizarraga, located, respectively, in Ontario, Chino, West Covina and in Rancho Cucamonga. A search warrant was simultaneously served at a mansion in the 600 block of North Canon Drive of Beverly Hills, the domicile of a yet undisclosed individual.
James Su is the owner, president and manager of EDI Media, the California-based West Coast arm of Guoguang Century Media, which consists of 34 radio stations in 14 countries. Guoguang Century Media is backed and funded by China Radio International, the state-owned international radio broadcasting network of the People’s Republic of China. Guoguang Century Media is dedicated to producing content aligned with Beijing’s interests, both domestically and internationally. In 1993, using funding provided to him by the Chinese government through Guoguang Century Media, Su founded EDI Media, Inc., which is now affiliated with G&E Studio Inc. and CiTi News, a company of which Su is the president that includes multiple TV stations, radio stations, magazines, and newspapers. Su and his employees were substantial donors to Hagman’s political campaign fund. Lizarraga is closely identified with the City of Ontario, having had three offices in the city. He was a member of the Ontario Planning Commission for 13 years. He has served as Wapner’s personal attorney and that of Wapner’s wife, for Ontario Councilwoman Daisy Macias and for Ontario Councilman Jim Bowman, who is also a member of the Ontario International Airport Board of Commissioners. Lizarraga was the former general counsel to the Southern California Association of Governments, representing six counties.
In addition, on July 28, search warrants were served at Hagman’s San Bernardino County Fourth District supervisorial office located in the Chino Hills municipal government complex; the EDI corporate office in West Covina; Lizarraga’s law office in Ontario; and the business offices of Andrea “Andy” Sehremelis in Chino. Sehremelis is a major donor to the campaign funds of both Wapner and Hagman. In addition, the FBI submitted subpoenas to the offices of the Ontario city clerk and the airport authority’s executive suite and administrative offices on Avion Drive at the airport.
The FBI’s activity proved to be unsettling in the Ontario community, the Fourth Supervisorial District in Southwest San Bernardino County, at Ontario City Hall, at the airport, its administrative offices, the offices of the airport authority and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in Los Angeles County in West Covina and the Mansion District of Beverly Hills. Before the FBI raids, Wapner was running for mayor in the upcoming November 3 election, challenging the incumbent, Paul Leon, and Hagman’s son, Jonathan, was vying for a position on the Ontario City Council, representing the city’s Third District. Following the raids, Wapner dropped out of the mayor’s contest to run for election in the city’s Third District and young Hagman dropped out of the council race entirely.
In the midst of this, in the last two weeks comes word that Elkadi’s 24-year-old daughter, Abigail daughter, Abigail Elkadi, has been hired by Jacobson to work for Fuse Advancement. This has caused quite a stir. While some see no particular problem with young Elkadi finding a job, and there are assertions that as a parent, Elkadi has no control over what his adult children do., nevertheless, some are suggesting that Jacobson hiring Elkadi’s daughter at Fuse when Elkadi played a primary role in providing the company with a contract that has resulted in payments to that company of more than $1.25 million over the last five years is improper. At the very least, some of the same people who were instrumental in getting the FBI investigation rolling that resulted in July 28 serving of search warrants are saying, it looks bad. Others have alleged that it constitutes nepotism that crosses the line into a criminal conflict of interest.
The Sentinel this morning in an email to Elkadi asked him to on the record on behalf of the airport authority with regard to the matter. The Sentinel asked him if it was appropriated for Fuse to hire his daughter and if there was any problem with Fuse having hired a member of the airport authority’s general manager’s family. The Sentinel asked Elkadi, if he did not consider the situation to be problematic, to provide a cogent refutation to those who say it is. The Sentinel sought from him an encapsulation of the airport authority’s position vis-à-vis those calling for him to resign over what has occurred. The Sentinel further sought from him what the airport authority’s position is with regard to those who are calling for the airport authority to end its relationship with Fuse and Jacobson. The Sentinel asked if the airport authority is reevaluating its contractual relationship with Fuse.
Elkadi did not respond. However, the airport authority’s/airport’s spokesman, Steve Lambert did react to an email posing similar questions to the airport authority for official comment, stating, “Your ridiculous inquiry attempts to manufacture a controversy out of the employment of the CEO’s daughter by a private company. She is an adult, pursuing her own career and making her own professional decisions. The suggestion that her employment somehow constitutes grounds for her father’s resignation—or should dictate the airport’s relationship with an outside firm—is an extraordinary leap, and nothing presented in your inquiry establishes a factual basis for it.”
Lambert said, “More troubling is the decision to make a family member part of the Sentinel’s continuing campaign against Ontario International Airport. The airport has tolerated a steady stream of Sentinel stories and inquiries built around accusations, innuendo and false claims advanced by individuals who plainly have grievances against the airport and its leadership. You have repeatedly and apparently intentionally misstated generally available facts about the airport, its success since its return to local control and its impact on this vibrant region we serve. You have steadfastly refused to provide the same level of scrutiny to those who are feeding you misinformation, all while hiding their identities. But going after someone’s daughter is beyond the pale. Public officials and executives of public agencies should expect scrutiny. Their children should not become collateral damage simply because someone is looking for another angle of attack.”
Making no acknowledgment of Fuse’s status as a contractor to a public agency or Elkadi role in heading that public agency, Lambert implied that Fuse’s hiring of Elkadi’s daughter had no public relevance.
“Your predicate—asking the airport to rebut unnamed people who are supposedly demanding resignations and terminated contracts—is not a factual one,” Lambert asserted. “It is an invitation to participate in the creation of a controversy. We decline to do so.”
The Sentinel’s coverage of the matter relating to the Fuse contract, Atif Elkadi’s role as the executive director of the airport and airport authority, Abigail’s hiring by Fuse and a host of other issues pertaining to Ontario International Airport and the airport authority, Lambert said “is unfair, misleading and driven more by personal vendettas than by a legitimate effort to inform the public. This latest inquiry fits a pattern we have seen repeatedly, and bringing an adult daughter into it takes that pattern to a disturbing new level.”
The matter pertaining to Abigail Elkadi’s hiring by Fuse following her father’s participation in extending a public contract to Fuse is paralleled by the circumstance involving former Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was also at one time a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, an Assemblyman and a California State Senator. Ridley-Thomas was convicted in 2023 on five counts of honest services wire fraud, one count of conspiracy and one count of bribery involving programs receiving federal funds.
The case centered on a quid pro quo scheme between Ridley-Thomas, then a Los Angeles County Supervisor, and Marilyn Flynn, then dean of the USC School of Social Work. Prosecutors alleged that Flynn arranged for benefits for Ridley-Thomas’ son, Sebastian – including USC graduate school admission, a full-tuition scholarship, and a paid professorship – in exchange for Ridley-Thomas’ support for a telehealth contract between Los Angeles County and USC.
In March 2023, a Los Angeles federal jury found him guilty on the seven counts but acquitted him of 12 other fraud charges. In August 2023, he was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison and a $30,000 fine The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his convictions in August 2026.
Unlike Ridley-Thomas, Atif Elkadi is not an elected official. Nevertheless, Elkadi served in a key decision-making role with regard to the hiring of Fuse Advancement. As in the Ridley-Thomas matter, Ontario International Airport receives federal funds. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, which prosecuted Ridley-Thomas, is overseeing the production of evidence being accumulated in the FBI’s investigation of Ontario International Airport and the airport authority, and will handle the prosecutions that may result from that investigation

3 years of records show the San Bernardino County Gangs & Drugs Task Force never produced a single executive board agenda or minutes – giving a window on information discussed only at meetings open to the public

By Carlos Avalos
For more than three decades, the San Bernardino Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force (GDTF) has presented itself as a nonprofit coalition of educators, police chiefs, prosecutors and community volunteers working together on gang and drug prevention. Its letterhead in 1992 already listed county supervisors, mayors, police chiefs, the sheriff, the district attorney, and county counsel among its ranks. Today, according to its own bylaws and public materials, the organization is administered by the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools (SBCSS), its finances are handled by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, and its leadership includes the sitting president of the county Board of Education, the county’s district attorney, a state assemblymember, and, as documented below, the sitting mayor of the city of San Bernardino.
When a county resident sought the task force’s meeting agendas, minutes, and financial records through the California Public Records Act, what came back, and what didn’t, turned out to be one of the more telling parts of this story. This account is based on a direct review of three years of those records, dozens of agendas and minutes spanning 2023 through 2025, along with the bylaws, a formal Brown Act cure-and-correct demand, San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ response, and the organization’s own promotional materials.
A Familiar Playbook: The San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools Precedent
The underlying legal question isn’t new. In February 2024, the California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued Opinion No. 22-402 , concluding that another San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools-affiliated group, the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools, or SANDABS, qualifies as a ‘legislative body’ under the Brown Act (Gov. Code § 54952) because it was created by public agencies, staffed by public employees, funded through public channels, and administered by the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, known by the acronym SBCSS. That opinion is the yardstick against which the San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force’s own structure is now being measured, and the parallels are substantial: San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools performs the San Bernardino Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force administrative functions under its own bylaws; the Sheriff’s Department serves as fiscal agent; the Executive Board is dominated by elected officials and agency heads; and the organization operates from public facilities under a mission coordinating law enforcement, education, probation, and elected officials on public-safety programming, which mirrors the kind of governmental function the Attorney General cited in the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools, opinion.
What Three Years of Records Actually Show

• The bylaws require San Bernardino County’s Gangs & Drugs Task Force to have an Executive Board to meet monthly, apart from July, to elect officers, approve budgets, and govern the organization. Separately, the bylaws call

   

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  for General Membership meetings on a different schedule. That distinction turns out to matter enormously, because a direct review of the records the county produced shows something the earlier legal analysis had only suspected: every document turned over, every single agenda and every set of minutes from 2023 through 2025 is labeled a General Membership Meeting. Not one Executive Board agenda, and not one set of Executive Board minutes, appears anywhere in three years of production. 

  That is not a minor omission. It means the public record shows only the informational, presentation-driven meetings the San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force has holds for outside groups and community partners, never the sessions in which its governing board, by its own bylaws, is supposed to elect officers, approve its budget, and make binding decisions. If those Executive Board meetings happen, as the bylaws require, there is no public paper trail of them in what the county has disclosed.
  A second pattern emerged from reading the agendas themselves. Every agenda reviewed for this story follows the same template: Call to Order, Introductions, Minutes, Program Presentation, then Announcements and Adjournment. Some agendas add a ‘Questions & Answers’ item, but it is tied specifically to that meeting’s invited presenter, never a standing invitation for members of the public to address the board on any subject of their choosing, which is the kind of general public-comment period the Brown Act requires of bodies it covers.
  A third pattern involves where the meetings are held. With only occasional exceptions, the minutes show meetings held at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department headquarters at 655 East Third Street or at the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ Dorothy Ingraham Learning Center, never at a neutral or privately operated venue. Both are public buildings staffed by the same agencies that run the task force’s administrative and fiscal functions.
  The Rotating Chair
  The bylaws limit board members to three consecutive terms ‘per title,’ while explicitly allowing unlimited service if members simply rotate titles. The minutes show that provision in action. From 2023 through 2025, both Dr. Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers and Dr. Scott Wyatt appear, in different months and different years, personally calling meetings to order and personally adjourning them, the functions of a presiding chair. San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ own 2025 roster lists Dowdy-Rodgers as Chairperson and Wyatt as Vice Chair; earlier minutes show Wyatt exercising the chair’s gavel just as often. Whatever the formal title on paper in a given month, the same two people have effectively shared the task force’s top leadership position for years, one of them the sitting president of the county Board of Education, the other a San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ employee and elected trustee of the San Bernardino City Unified School District.
  A City Mayor on the Board
  The executive board roster already included the county’s district attorney, its schools superintendent, and a state assembly member. The minutes add another name: San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran is listed as a citizen-at-large executive board member on the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools’ own 2025 roster, and appears in an August 2023 meeting delivering a presentation, in her capacity as mayor, on the city’s homelessness response. A sitting city mayor serving on the governing board of an organization administered by the county schools office and financed through the sheriff’s department is one more thread tying the task force’s leadership to elected officials whose own agencies the task force regularly showcases.
  Where the Scholarship Money Comes From
  The minutes also put a number on the grant and scholarship activity the earlier analysis flagged as an open question. In 2024, San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force has awarded 44 scholarships of $1,000 each; the following year, roughly 30 more were awarded. The June 2024 minutes state plainly that the scholarship program was made possible through the Children Deserve Success Department with San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, the Sheriff’s Department, the District Attorney’s Office, the Probation Department, and the Public Defender’s Office, five different public agencies. Applications were reviewed by a panel that included a sheriff’s deputy, an assistant sheriff, and a San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ staff member, not an independent scholarship committee insulated from the agencies whose money and staff time fund the program. Separately, San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools has publicly touted a $20,000 grant from the county Probation Department presented directly to the San Bernardino County Gang and Drug Task Force.
  The Paper Trail: A Cure-and-Correct Demand, and an Unusual Denial
  On August 28, 2025, a formal “cure and correct” demand under Government Code § 54960.1 was addressed to County Superintendent Ted Alejandre and the San Bernardino County Board of Education. The demand alleged that the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools’ executive board was violating the Brown Act by holding monthly meetings without public notice, agendas, or an opportunity for public comment, with meeting information effectively hidden inside an internal San Bernardino County superintendent of schools staff event system accessible only through a school-district registration portal. A follow-up addendum on September 1, 2025, renewed the demand and invoked the California Attorney General Office’s opinion relating to the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools matter directly.
  The response came on September 26, 2025, not from the board of education or Superintendent Alejandre, but from Jenny Owen, the San Bernardino County superintendent of schools’ director of communications and intergovernmental affairs. Owen’s letter stated plainly that “the task force is not a part of SBCSS,” while acknowledging in the same paragraph that the San Bernardino County superintendent of schools “serves as the administrative agent for the task force.” The letter asserted that the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools was never created by a legislative body, that participating officials serve “in their personal capacities” rather than as agency representatives, and that neither the San Bernardino County superintendent of schools nor the sheriff’s department is itself “governed by a legislative body,” a characterization that, on its face, is difficult to reconcile with the county board of education’s own role as the San Bernardino County superintendent of schools’ governing board, or the sheriff’s department’s status as a county department under an elected sheriff. The letter separately asserted that a cure-and-correct demand was the wrong legal vehicle in any case, since the cure-and-correct demand had not identified a specific board action to invalidate, only an ongoing pattern of closed meetings. It closed by declaring the matter concluded.
  Who Sits on the Board – and Whom They Answer To
  Public records and the San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force’s own materials show an Executive Board with substantial overlap between the task force’s leadership and the very institutions meant to oversee, fund, or answer to it:
  • Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers – San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force Chair (2025 roster), and, separately, President of the San Bernardino County Board of Education, the body that governs the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ . Minutes show she and Scott Wyatt have effectively alternated the chair’s duties across 2023–2025.
  • Scott Wyatt –San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force Vice Chair (2025 roster), a San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ employee, and an elected trustee of the San Bernardino City Unified School District, the same board Dowdy-Rodgers previously served on. Minutes repeatedly show him presiding as Chair in other years and months.
  • Ted Alejandre– County Superintendent of Schools, serving as San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force ex officio member, while his agency simultaneously administers the task force.
  • Jason Anderson– San Bernardino County District Attorney, listed as an Executive Board member and shown in attendance at task force meetings, whose office would ordinarily be positioned to evaluate potential Brown Act or conflict-of-interest complaints touching county bodies.
  • Helen Tran– Mayor of the City of San Bernardino, listed as a Citizens-at-Large Executive Board member, who has also appeared before the board as a featured presenter on city policy.
  • James C. Ramos– State Assemblymember, listed as the board’s Legislative representative; Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, a state Senator, is listed in the same category.
  • Brenda Dowdy– a Citizens-at-large representative on the board who, according to the underlying cure-and-correct correspondence, is Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers’ sister, and who has chaired the scholarship-announcement process at board meetings.
  • Sherman Garnett and Don English– Garnett is a former San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools administrator and current San Bernardino County Drug and Gang Task Force Executive Board member; English, the San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force Executive Director, is also a San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools administrator whom Garnett is said to have recommended for the position. Garnett has separately been paid by the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools on a per-attendee basis for workshops– compensation that, according to the cure-and-correct correspondence, has at times equated to more than $3,000 per instructional hour.
  None of these relationships is illegal on their own. Family members, former colleagues, and overlapping public officials serve together on boards throughout California without running afoul of any law. But taken together, a rotating chair shared by two San Bernardino County Superintendents of Schools-linked officials, a city mayor, a district attorney, a state legislator, and a scholarship-review panel staffed by the same sheriff’s office that holds the money, the pattern is precisely the kind of fact pattern that open-government advocates say the Brown Act was written to reach.
  Laws Potentially Involved
  The following is a summary of the legal frameworks that the documented facts above could implicate. None of this is presented as an established finding of wrongdoing; each depends on facts, the San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force’s precise legal structure, who controls its funds, and how its leadership actually functions, which have not yet been resolved by a court, the Attorney General, the Fair Political Practices Commission “FPPC”, or any other authority.
  State Law
  • Ralph M. Brown Act, Government Code §§ 54950–54963– California’s open-meetings law for local legislative bodies. Whether it applies turns on whether San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force meets the statutory definition of a ‘legislative body’ under § 54952, the same question resolved against San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools, SANDABS, in AG Opinion No. 22-402 . The complete absence of any produced Executive Board agenda or minutes, across three years of CPRA production, is a documented fact directly relevant to that analysis, whichever way it is ultimately resolved.
  • California Government Code § 54960.1 (the ‘cure and correct’ procedure) whether San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ staff-level denial, issued without an apparent Board of Education vote, satisfied the statute’s requirement that the legislative body itself respond to a cure-and-correct demand.
  • California Public Records Act, Government Code § 7920.000 et seq. (formerly § 6250 et seq.) bearing on whether San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force has Executive Board agendas, minutes, and financial records, none of which surfaced in the production reviewed for this story, exist and were properly disclosable, or whether their absence reflects that such records are simply not being kept.
  • Political Reform Act, Government Code § 87100 et seq., enforced by the state Fair Political Practices Commission– potentially relevant to the compensation arrangement involving Sherman Garnett, and to any instance in which an official with a personal or financial interest participated in a governmental decision affecting that interest. (Underlying research referenced an open FPPC matter involving Garnett; this account makes no independent finding as to its status or outcome and describes it only as a matter under review, not a proven violation.)
  • Government Code § 1090– the state’s core conflict-of-interest statute barring public officials from having a financial interest in contracts they help make; potentially relevant to the Garnett-English hiring and compensation history described above, and to a scholarship-review process staffed by the same agencies that fund it, if any participant had a financial interest in the outcome.
  • Incompatible-offices doctrine, Government Code § 1099, and common-law incompatibility principles–potentially relevant to Scott Wyatt’s simultaneous status as a San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ employee and an elected school district trustee, and more broadly to officials sitting on multiple interlocking boards that oversee or fund one another.
  • Supervision of Trustees for Charitable Purposes Act, Government Code § 12580 et seq., and related charitable-solicitation rules– potentially relevant if the San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force solicits donations or scholarships from the public without the registration such activity typically requires.
  Federal Law
  · 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3) and related IRS tax-exemption requirements- relevant if the San Bernardino County Gangs and Drugs Task Force holds itself out as a tax-exempt nonprofit without a corresponding IRS determination on file; this account does not confirm the GDTF’s IRS status either way.
  · Federal grant-compliance requirements- if any federal funds (for example, federal juvenile-justice or Byrne-type grant dollars administered through county agencies) are commingled with San Bernardino County Gangs and Drugs Task Force activities, those funds would carry their own federal reporting and use restrictions. Nothing in the records reviewed for this story confirms that federal funds flow directly to the San Bernardino County Gangs and Drugs Task Force, and this item is flagged as a question for further reporting, not a documented violation.
  Local / City Considerations
  • San Bernardino City Unified School District board policies and Education Code provisions governing trustee conduct and outside employment, as they may bear on Scott Wyatt’s dual role.
  • Any City of San Bernardino conflict-of-interest or outside-activity policy governing Mayor Helen Tran’s service on an Executive Board administered by the county school’s office and financed through the county Sheriff’s Department.
  • San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors’ oversight authority over the Sheriff’s Department’s role as fiscal agent for an outside organization, and whatever county policy, if any, governs county departments serving in that capacity.
  What the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Says
  San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ position, as stated in Jenny Owen’s September 26, 2025, letter, is unambiguous: the San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force is a separate, private coordination platform; the public officials who sit on its board do so in a personal capacity; and neither the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools nor the sheriff’s department is itself a Brown Act ‘legislative body’ in a way that would extend coverage to a group they administer. San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools did not, according to the records reviewed, address why the response came from a communications director rather than the board of education itself, nor did the board of education take any public action on the underlying cure-and-correct demand.
  What’s Still Unknown
  Substantial questions remain open, and answering them would likely require additional public-records requests, an Attorney General opinion, or litigation:
  • Do San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force Executive Board meetings, as required by the bylaws, actually take place every month, and if so, why has not a single agenda or minutes document from any Executive Board meeting surfaced in three years of CPRA production?
  • What is the San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force actual legal form, an unincorporated association, a government program operating under an assumed name, or something else, and who formally created it?
  • Who has legal custody of San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force funds, who approves its budget, and has that budget ever been independently audited?
  • Did the San Bernardino County Board of Education ever formally consider the cure-and-correct demand before San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ staff declared it ‘concluded’?
  • What is the status of the FPPC matter referenced in connection with Sherman Garnett’s compensation, and has any determination been made?
  • Are there written policies governing conflicts of interest for the panel that reviews San Bernardino’s Countywide Gangs & Drugs Task Force scholarship applications, given that reviewers have included sheriff’s department personnel from the same department that serves as fiscal agent?
  Editor’s note: This article is based on bylaws, three years of meeting agendas and minutes obtained through public records requests, correspondence between a county resident and SBCSS, and the organization’s own promotional materials, supplemented by publicly available Attorney General opinions. Statutes are identified as potentially relevant to the facts described; none of the legal questions raised here has been resolved by a court, the Attorney General, the FPPC, or any other authority with jurisdiction to make that determination, and no individual named in this story has been found by any such authority to have violated the law. This story will be updated as records requests are fulfilled and as SBCSS, the San Bernardino County District Advocates for Better Schools, or named individuals respond to requests for comment.

As one of San Bernardino County’s most recently incorporated municipalities, Twentynine Palms over the years has also proven to be one of the county’s jurisdictions most resistant to the State of California’s usurpation of local land use authority. It was therefore to the surprise, dismay and delight of many that one set of the city’s officials made a 180-degree reversal from that tradition and this month embraced what is in many circles considered to be the most radical of Sacramento’s notions with regard to modern urban planning.
At its September 15 meeting, the Twentynine Palms Planning Commission broached the concept, which will be considered and wielded into a policy that is potentially to be adopted by the city council as early as next month.
By a 3-to-0 vote, the planning commission, in essence, recommended that the city council revamp the city’s development code in a way that will allow homeowners – that is, those who hold title to existing single family residences – to augment their properties with as many as three so-called accessory dwelling units.
What is afoot as a consequence of this reorientation toward what the standards for living arrangements the community is to adhere to is the quality of life a significant portion of the population in Twentynine Palms over the next several generations. In essence, the planning commission is calling upon the city council to allow the density of single family homes already built in the city or to be built in the future to be quadrupled.
A multitude of factors is at play. Continue reading →

As part of its concerted effort with other public agencies to drive the homeless population out of San Bernardino County, sheriff’s deputies on September 4 confronted 64 people they had grounds to believe were living on the streets of Loma Linda, Grand Terrace and unincorporated areas of San Bernardino County. The deputies offered to drive them and their belongings, no questions asked and without checking to see if they had any outstanding warrants, to any destination of their choosing in contiguous Los Angeles County, Riverside County, Orange County, Kern County Inyo County, Kern County, Clark County in Nevada and Cochise County in Arizona. Those who accepted the offer were given conveyance to wherever they wanted to go, and provided with a hot fast-food meal to boot. Those who refused were identified by the forced production of identification or the use of what one lieutenant in the department called “alternate means.” They were then subjected to checks utilizing their names, birthdates, license or registration numbers against the data bases shared by California law enforcement agencies – NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, considered the United States’ primary database and information registry for tracking crime-related information, maintained by the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, known by its acronym CLETS, consisting of information compiled by the California Attorney General’s Office to include criminal histories, arrests, convictions and information on California’s licensed drivers provided by the Department of Motor Vehicles and other databases at the disposal of California public safety agencies; Continue reading →

While corporate officials with Brightline West are putting the best face possible on the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing done by its parent/sister company across the continent, a host of developments indicate that the sword of Damocles is stretched perilously above the Southern California-to-Las Vegas high-speed rail project.
Brightline West is proposing to build a 218-mile, all-electric, high-speed passenger rail system connecting Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga.
Brightline has built and established a 235-mile intercity higher-speed passenger rail network connecting South and Central Florida. Brightline operational rail routes and infrastructure in Florida is impressive. From south Florida to the central Florida corridor, Brightline operates a line running from downtown Miami to Orlando International Airport, covering the full distance in about 3 hours and 25 minutes at top speeds of 125 mph. Brightline’s Phase 1 in South Florida, which launched in 2018, utilizes upgraded tracks along the century-old Florida East Coast Railway corridor connecting Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. The company’s Phase 2 East-West Connector, which opened in September 2023, is a dedicated 35-mile, fenced, grade-separated rail corridor alongside the Beachline Expressway, also known as State Route 528, from Cocoa to Orlando International Airport. The established stations in Florida include MiamiCentral Station, the Aventura Station, the Fort Lauderdale Station, the West Palm Beach Station and the Orlando International Airport Station. Continue reading →

Circumstances support 180 degree opposite interpretations of the prospect that prosecutors will be able to get the murder charge lodged against 53-yer-old Jeff Anthony Maiorca to stick.
The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office is proceeding with the theory advanced that Maiorca, then 33 years old, murdered his ex-wife, 29-year-old Jill Maiorca, in November 2006, more than two years after he had initiated divorce proceedings against her.
The case involves more than one anomaly.
Jill Maiorca was not reported as missing until 2007. Based upon evidence developed by homicide detectives with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, she died as the result of foul play months prior to that. Ultimately, investigators say, her body was disposed of beneath the wooden floor joists of a home in a residential area of Big Bear, in the community where the couple lived prior to their divorce, and where Jeff Maiorca was yet residing as of earlier this month. Continue reading →

SUMMONS – (CITACION JUDICIAL)
CASE NUMBER (NUMERO DEL CASO) CIVSB2435106
NOTICE TO WENSHENG JIANG
(AVISO DEMANDADO):
YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF:
(LO ESTA DEMANDANDO EL DEMANDANTE):
YAZHOU CHEN
NOTICE! You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below.
You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons is served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court.
There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can locate these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case.
¡AVISO! Lo han demandado. Si no responde dentro de 30 dias, la corte puede decidir en su contra sin escuchar su version. Lea la informacion a continuacion
Tiene 30 DIAS DE CALENDARIO después de que le entreguen esta citación y papeles legales para presentar una repuesta por escrito en esta corte y hacer que se entreque una copia al demandante. Una carta o una llamada telefonica no le protegen. Su respuesta por escrito tiene que estar on formato legal correcto si desea que procesen su caso en la corte. Es posible que haya un formulano que usted puede usar para su respuesta. Puede encontrar estos formularios de la corte y mas información en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California (www.sucorte.ca.gov), en la biblioteca de leyes de su condado o en la corte que le quede mas cerca. Si no puede pagar la cuota de presentación, pida si secretario de la corta que le de un formulario de exencion de pago de cuotas. Si no presenta su respuesta a tiempo, puede perder el caso por incumplimiento y la corta le podrá quitar su sueldo, dinero y bienes sin mas advertencia.
Hay otros requisitos legales. Es recomendable que llame a un abogado inmediatamente. Si no conace a un abogado, puede llamar a un servicio de referencia a abogados. Si no peude pagar a un a un abogado, es posible que cumpia con los requisitos para obtener servicios legales gratu de un programa de servicios legales sin fines de lucro. Puede encontrar estos grupos sin fines de lucro en el sitio web de California Legal Services, (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California, (www.sucorte.ca.gov), o poniendoso en contacto con la corte o el colegio de abogados locales. AVISO: Por ley, la corte tiene derecho a reclamar las cuotas y los costos exentos gravamen sobre cualquier recuperación da $10,000 o mas de vaior recibida mediante un aceurdo o una concesión de arbitraje en un caso de derecho civil. Tiene que pagar el gravamen de la corta antes de que la corta pueda desechar el caso.
The name and address of the court is: (El nombre y la direccion de la corte es):
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN BERNARDINO
24 W THIRD ST., SAN BERNARDINO California 92415 SAN BERNARDINO JUSTICE CENTER
The name, address and telephone number of plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: (El nombre, la direccion y el numero de telefono del abogado del demandante, o del demendante que no tiene abogado, es):
GENE H. SHIODA / SHIODA LANGLEY CHANG LLP
1063 E. LAS TUNAS DR.
SAN GABRIEL CA 91776
Telephone: 6262811232
DATE (Fecha): 11/21/2024
Clerk (Secretario), by ALLEXUS FIERRO
Published in the SBCS Ontario on: 09/04/2026, 09/11/2026, 09/18/2026, 09/25/2026

Continue reading →

Twenty-two years after San Bernardino County’s transportation officials committed to using taxpayer-approved funding to extend what has now become the world’s longest light-rail system across the Los Angeles County border to ultimately reach Ontario International Airport and points eastward, the City of Montclair on September 2 Filed suit against the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority over its recurrent pattern of funding and defunding its share of the undertaking in a way that has delayed the project and raised its completion costs to the point of threatening its viability altogether.
In its lawsuit, Montclair is alleging that the transportation agency made and then broke multiple commitments to proceed with the light rail project, and that those commitments included ones made to the public at large when it asked voters to extend a half cent-per-dollar sales tax to pay for transit improvements in 2004 and an accompanying explicit expenditure plan relating to project. The suit maintains that the county transportation agency prioritized other projects at the expense of the Gold Line Extension to Montclair, directing San Bernardino County Transportation Authority staff to dedicate funds committed to the Gold Line Extension to Montclair to other regional projects, funneling funds to more affluent areas with lower minority populations and negatively impacting low income populations. According to the suit, the county transportation agency’s action to defund the Gold Line Project violated the City of Montclair’s procedural rights relating to the city deriving its fair share of the benefit it was to receive as a result of its participation in the transportation agency as a member. Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
Over the course of less than two months in the City of Ontario, there have been wild swings in political prognostication, fluid realignments between its politicians, global recalculations within the deep-pocketed support network that once both enabled and controlled those officeholders and radical readjustments in City Hall’s hierarchical arrangements.
In a debacle of epic proportions, all of the city’s employee union’s last year turned their backs on the mayor, siding with a councilman who was seeking to unseat him. That councilman is now under the FBI’s microscope and has withdrawn from the mayor’s contest. This has created a situation so awkward that union officials are now calculating they will need to volunteer to have their members forego raises over the next four years as a show of penance.
Worse, the realization that virtually everyone at City Hall had grown to accept the criminal culture that enveloped them so they could be the highest paid municipal employees in the county until the FBI acted has robbed local government in the city of 189,505 of any moral authority it once possessed.
When the candidate filing period opened on July 13, there was a widespread perception that a major shake-up on the City Council – more specifically with regard to the office of mayor – was in the offing. Continue reading →