SBC Officials Loading Up To Skim Millions From Energy Efficiency Contracts

By Mark Gutglueck
With the reelection of Paul Cook and Dawn Rowe as supervisors in the First District and Third District and no one contesting Joe Baca Jr. in his run for supervisor in the county’s Fifth District, the table has been set for a graftfest that is to involve kickbacks extending to more than $10 million in exchange for uncontested and noncompetitive county contracts worth well in excess of $100 million over the next decade-and-a-half.
A key figure in the plan to skim money from funds the county is already earmarking for more than two dozen energy efficiency contracts, the first of which was actuated in October, is Bill Postmus, who more than a decade-and-a-half ago established himself as the central actor in the largest governmental corruption scandal in San Bernardino County history.
Implicated along with Postmus in the already ongoing massive scale violation of the public trust are First District Supervisor Paul Cook, Second District Supervisor Jesse Armendarez, Third District Supervisor and current Board Chairwoman Dawn Rowe, Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman, Fifth District Supervisor Joe Baca Jr. and County Chief Executive Officer Luther Snoke, as well as the entrepreneur whose company, Allied Business Solutions, has now been positioned to obtain a series of no-bid contracts with the county to upgrade facilities, i.e., buildings which house county offices.
The skimming is to take place through arrangements using the noncompetitive bid process which are already intended to increase the amount of money the county’s taxpayers would pay if a standard public bidding process were used to be followed by subsequent change orders, contract enhancements and amendments that will pad those contracts to provide Allied Business Solutions with a profit margin substantial enough to warrant providing kickbacks to the full range of public officials that have to be taken care of in order for the scheme to proceed.
Essential to this manipulation is the exploitation of an exemption in California law which allows a governmental entity undertaking any projects aimed at increasing energy in public facilities to bypass a normal state requirement applicable to governmental contracts requiring those contracts to be subject to a competitive bid process by which the contract is awarded to the lowest responsible bidder.
Allied Business Solutions, assisted by Postmus, previously perfected the influence purchasing formula on a smaller scale by securing no-bid contracts with three San Bernardino County cities, and is now replicating that success in the first of what are projected to be multiple phases with the county’s governmental structure.
Central to what is being carried off is the 53-year-old Postmus, a now disgraced politician, who knows more about both legitimate and illegitimate function of of local government than virtually any other current or former officeholder in the state.
In 2000, Postmus was elected to the board of supervisors at the age of 29, making him, after Minor Cobb Tuttle in 1862, Norman Taylor in 1855, Robert McCoy in 1861, John C. Turner in 1893 and Gus Skropos in 1985, the sixth youngest county supervisor in San Bernardino County history. Four years later, in 2004, he became the second youngest chairman of the county board of supervisors after Turner in 1895. That same year he also acceded to the chairmanship of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, a perch from which he had control over the purse strings of the local GOP’s campaign war chest and held tremendous sway in determining who was elected to an overwhelming number of political offices in the county. In 2006 he expended more than $2 million in what yet remains the most expensive political campaign in county history when he successfully challenged the incumbent county assessor, Don Williamson, thereby assuming the most powerful taxing position in San Bernardino County.
He had been the single most powerful political entity in San Bernardino County during his heyday, a virtual kingmaker. It was by his discretion, in the middle of the first decade of the Third Millennium, that over two dozen state senators, assembly members, mayors and council members had been provided with the clearance to run for the offices they held and the monetary and electioneering support they needed to win the contests that put them there. While Postmus was San Bernardino County’s Republican Party Chairman, four of the county’s five congressman were Republicans, four of the county’s five state senators were Republicans, seven of the county’s nine assembly members were Republicans, four of the county’s five supervisors were Republicans and 19 of the county’s 24 mayors were Republicans.
Upon coming into the position of assessor, Postmus created two assistant assessor posts where there had previously been one, and then filled both with his political associates, neither of whom had previous experience in real estate or assessing property. Less than two years later, in 2008, even more serious questions had begun to emerge about Postmus’s judgment and basic honesty when it was revealed that he had installed into 13 of the assessor’s office’s 15 highest-paying positions his political associates who had no real estate or property valuation experience, most of whom were engaged not in carrying out the legitimate function of the assessor’s office but were running political campaigns. Within short order, one of his appointees as assistant assessor, Adam Aleman, was criminally charged and convicted of one count of felony theft, one count of felony destruction, alteration, or falsification of a public document, one felony count of presenting a false claim to a public board or officer, and one felony count of vandalism. His other assistant assessor, Jim Erwin, was charged with eight felony counts of perjury and two felony counts of filing forged or falsified documents, one count of bribing a public official, one count of extortion, one count of embezzlement, one count of misappropriation of public funds and one count of forgery. Two other Postmus political associates who were hired into lucrative positions in the assessor’s office but were performing no work relating to assessing property or factories or assets for taxation purposes were charged, prosecuted and convicted of bilking the county’s taxpayers.
In January 2009, when investigators with the district attorney’s office arrived at his Rancho Cucamonga residence with a search warrant to seek evidence of misuse of his authority as assessor, a cache of methamphetamine and the paraphernalia for smoking and injecting it was found. The following month, Postmus resigned as assessor.
In July 2009, Postmus was charged with four counts of embezzlement by a public officer, two counts of grand theft and one count of perjury pertaining to activities he had engaged in while he was assessor. Those charges pertained to accusations he had used the office’s assets and facilities for purposes unrelated to the assessor’s function, and that he had taken money or reimbursements he was not entitled to.
In February 2010, Postmus was charged with five felonies – criminal conspiracy (Penal Code Section 182), soliciting a bribe (Penal Code Section 86), accepting a bribe as a public official (Penal Code Section 165), engaging in a conflict of interest as a public official (Government Code Section 1090), and misappropriation of public funds (Penal Code Section 424). Those charges related to exchanging his votes as supervisor, which extended to conferring a $102 million legal settlement on his largest political donor in return for a $50,000 donation to an entity he controlled, the Conservatives for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, and a second $50,000 donation to another outfit he had founded, the Inland Empire Political Action Committee. Postmus pleaded not guilty to the charges. Over the next 13 months, the original five charges relating to soliciting and receiving a bribe in his official capacity, embezzlement by a public official, conflict of interest by a public official and conspiracy would be augmented by three further charges, including fraud and perjury.
In March 2011, Postmus entered guilty pleas to 14 felony political corruption charges – eight stemming from his time as supervisor and six from his stint as assessor. He further pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor drug charge relating to the methamphetamine found in his home during the January 2009 search of those premises.
His guilty pleas entailed an agreement that he cooperate in the prosecution of those involved with him in the depredations he had admitted to. The month after his guilty plea, Postmus became the star witness before a grand jury, which in May 2011 returned an indictment against four of his alleged co-conspirators. His sentencing on the crimes he had pleaded guilty to was held in abeyance until the prosecution of his co-conspirators could conclude, so that the degree to which his cooperation with authorities could be assessed. Postmus’s conviction on the Government Code Section 1090 Public Official Conflict of Interest charge carried with it a ban for life from holding elected public office in California. Still, he longed to get back into the political game.
Pretrial legal sparring between prosecutors and the co-conspirators he was expected to testify against and appeals relating to several of the court’s rulings resulted in the trial being delayed by more than six-and-a-half years. During the interim from the indictment to the trial, Postmus found himself languishing. Though he could no longer hold elected office, he longed to get back into the political game. Some four years after he had resigned from office, he hit upon a way to not only once more make himself politically relevant, even if he was no longer in office, and make a substantial amount of money at the same time.
Sizing up the situation, Postmus recognized that his having been involved in bribetaking and other forms of graft and corruption and then getting caught gave him an uncommon degree of insight on the pitfalls awaiting politicians who sell their office. He had gained, through his time in office, his arrests and ensuing prosecution and conviction, an implicit and explicit understanding of how the political and justice systems work and mesh, as well as both the reach and limitations of the prosecutorial arm of the government in making politicians adhere to the law. He had attained a flawless feel for the circular pay-to-play element of control and governance where politicians take in money from those with an interest in the governmental decision-making process, use that money to get into office or stay in office and vote to approve the development projects or the contracts or the franchises of those who have donated that money. He resolved to put that knowledge and insight to work.
On April 8, 2013, Postmus sojourned to Cheyenne, Wyoming and registered Mountain States Consulting Group LLC, based in Cheyenne, as a Wyoming domestic limited liability company with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s corporate division.
With Mountain States Consulting Group, Postmus created a political money laundering operation, a device by which politicians can engage in pay-to-play trade-offs without getting caught and being stigmatized with criminal convictions as he had been. Mountain States Consulting Group takes money originating with individuals or companies with a stake in governmental decisions, launders that money through his company and then provides that cash, either as political donations or payments in some other form to the politicians making those decisions. Postmus employs Mountain States Consulting Group as a cutout, insulating the recipients of the money – the politicians – from those who are providing the money. When Postmus properly executes on this mission, it protects the politicians from the perception that their votes are being purchased, which has political benefits, while serving to lessen to a considerable extent the possibility that the politicians he is funneling money to will be subject to law enforcement action for engaging in what in the final analysis are quid pro quos, out-and-out bribes or kickbacks. Postmus also utilizes Mountain States Consulting Group to employ politicians or those considered to be up-and-coming in politics with phantom assignments, providing them with a way to hold body and soul together without actually having to work, freeing them up to engage in campaigning or other electioneering activity to advance their political prospects, standing or careers.
In this way, Postmus has managed to remain as a power broker in San Bernardino County political circles.
The trial for his alleged co-conspirators took place over the course of nine months in 2017, during which Postmus was called as a prosecution witness. Three of his co-conspirators were acquitted. The jury deadlocked and was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the charges against a fourth. The failure of prosecutors to gain convictions against any of the defendants was in some measure considered to be a reflection of Postmus’s lack of credibility brought on by the scandal he had immersed himself in.
While Postmus was yet awaiting sentencing, he moved toward fully re-immersing himself into San Bernardino County politics. He started in Hesperia, a community with which he was intimately familiar. In 2014, he succeeded in getting his longtime political associate, Paul Russ, elected to the city council. In 2016, he strengthened his hold on Hesperia by successfully working, through Mountain States Consulting, in getting another political affiliate, Rebekah Swanson, elected to the city council.
After Hesperia Mayor Russ Blewett died in May 2018, Postmus acted rapidly to promote Jeremiah Brosowske, an ambitious 27-year-old Republican Party activist he had taken under his wing as a Mountain States Consulting Group employee, as the appointee to fill the gap on the council Blewett’s passing had created. Thereafter, with Brosowske advantaged by being able to do so as a council incumbent, Brosowske, again with Postmus’s advice and support, in November 2018 was elected to the Hesperia City Council in his own right.
That same month, Postmus’s sentencing by Judge Michael A. Smith on 14 guilty pleas on political corruption charges he had entered in 2011, took place. Judge Smith sentenced Postmus to three years in state prison.
Postmus reported to begin his sentence on November 30, 2018.
He was initially incarcerated within the state prison system, but because of so-called prison realignment codified in Assembly Bill 109 and passed by the California Legislature in 2011, he was returned to the custody of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Because of the non-violent nature of Postmus’s crimes, a positive evaluation of Postmus’s behavior in custody and his expressed attitude, his assertion of having undergone a religious conversion and a series of political favors he had done for San Bernardino County’s then-Sheriff, John McMahon and McMahon’s political allies, Postmus was released from custody in August 2019, more than 27 months early.
Postmus immediately picked up where he had left off. Having established himself as a successful political operative in the 2014, 2016 and 2018 election cycles, he was even more active during the 2020 election.
Though during his original incarnation as a politician in the early 2000s, Postmus had held himself out as an arch-conservative, one who was dedicated to holding the line, with so many of his Republican cohorts, against the cannabis legalization or decriminalization that had come about because of the 1996 passage of Proposition 215, the compassionate Use of Marijuana Act, he reinvented himself as a representative of those seeking permits and licensing to engage in the sale of marijuana in San Bernardino County in the aftermath of the 2016 passage of Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act. Whereas in his capacity as a supervisor from 2000 until 2006 Postmus openly referred to marijuana use as “immoral,” derisively dismissed advocates of the availability of marijuana for medical use as “potheads” who were seeking to use the medical applicability of the drug as a ruse to obtain and use it for its intoxicative effect while vowing legalized availability of marijuana would never happen in San Bernardino County as long as he was in office, upon the legalization of the substance, Postmus turned on a dime and not only began representing what is now known as the “Postmus cartel,” a group of cannabis entrepreneurs who have achieved licenses and permits to run cannabis-related businesses in Needles, Adelanto, Hesperia and San Bernardino, which had liberalized their ordinances with regard to the drug, but became purveyor of marijuana himself by virtue of his partnership with his longtime political and business associate, John “Dino” DeFazio in one such establishment in Needles.
Postmus was suddenly in the thick of the movement to marijuanaize San Bernardino County, a play caller among the teams of applicants swarming into Adelanto City Hall and San Bernardino’s community development division with briefcases stuffed with cash to bribe the likes of former Adelanto Mayor Rich Kerr, former Adelanto Councilman Jermaine Wright, former San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia and current San Bernardino Councilman Juan Figueroa. He was similarly the brains behind finding creative ways of retaining or paying commissions to former Adelanto Councilman John Woodard or, once Kerr and Wright were indicted and on their way to prison and Woodard was voted out of office, delivering political donations or subsidizations to current Adelanto Gabriel Reyes and Adelanto City Manager Jessie Flores to make sure they stayed the course toward converting Adelanto to a marijuana-based economy.
Key to this program was stirring up law enforcement to carry out operations crippling the competition of the cannabis-related businesses that Postmus represents. Behind the scenes, through his connection with former San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, former Assemblyman Thurston “Smitty” Smith, San Bernardino County Supervisor Paul Cook, San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman and San Bernardino County Supervisor Dawn Rowe, Postmus has prompted the sheriff’s department to carry out an intensive more than two-year running effort at eradicating “illicit” marijuana growing operations, meaning those cannabis-related operations that are not run by owners, investors and entrepreneurs who are delivering through Postmus money to the politicians in control of the marijuana business permitting processes.
In January 2021, a stepped-up marijuana eradication effort was initiated, the brainchild, or so it was credited, of former Sheriff McMahon. It was perpetuated by McMahon’s designated successor, Shannon Dicus, and was dubbed Operation Hammer Strike on August 30, 2021 after having been granted by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors a $4 million augmentation to the 2021-22 San Bernardino County Budget and a similar add-on to sheriff’s department operations in 2022-2023. The extent to which Postmus had become effective in front-ending for the cannabis industry was given clear demonstration on June 8, 2021, when just prior to his resignation as San Bernardino County’s highest ranking law enforcement officer, Sheriff John McMahon, who had spent a significant portion of his 35-plus year career in law enforcement putting marijuana users and traffickers in jail, appeared before the Apple Valley Town Council, making a presentation in which he depicted the licensed and permitted cultivators who were subject to taxation as earnest, decent, law-abiding and upstanding members of the community who were being victimized by the bad guys, the unlicensed and unpermitted marijuana growers functioning in the county’s desert areas who were not paying taxes on their crops.
Postmus’s involvement in establishing licensed, permitted and protected marijuana-related enterprises is perhaps the most remarkable element of his political comeback, given his past opposition to marijuana in any form and the extent to which he has succeeded in compromising the sheriff’s department as a law enforcement institution in doing so. In terms of sheer volume, however, the lion’s share of Postmus’s political activity has consisted in advancing the interests of those seeking to obtain governmental approval for businesses operations which have traditionally been deemed lawful and legitimate, ones making applications for property development or construction projects or those seeking to compete for government service or supply contracts or to be awarded franchises that are controlled by various governmental entities.
For many of those who see government as a cash cow – vendors who sell products and equipment used by cities and counties, developers, providers of services used in municipal or governmental operations, franchisees such as ambulance operators, taxi companies, tow truck operation that are on police and fire department rotations and trash haulers – it is elected officials, usually based upon the guidance and recommendation of the administration or management of the government structures they head, who make decisions to determine whether their businesses profit and thrive, merely survive and subsist or whether their businesses will fail. Those elected officials more often than not are the arbiters of which development projects will be allowed and which ones will not, which company will get contracts to deliver goods and provide services and which ones won’t be able to market their wares or talents to the government, which applicants for franchises will be selected and which ones will be rejected.
The six years Postmus spent in office at the head of county government and the two years he headed a primary division of the county government gave him a close-up window on how government operates and its vulnerabilities. At this stage he is using his intimate knowledge of those vulnerabilities to assist those who want to exploit government for their own purposes.
A safeguard built into government in California meant to protect the state and its taxpayers consists of the competitive bidding requirements that apply to most public contracts. Generally, when a municipal or county government or an agency or district in California seeks goods or needs work performed or services provided, it engages in a bid process by making what is referred to as a request for proposals or request for qualifications relating to a certain task, inviting vendors to submit a bid for a specified item, set of items or product or, in the case of services, a bid on a specifically outlined job or undertaking. In most cases, those bids are confidential ones, literally sealed in an envelope that would betray itself as having been opened if the seal is breached prior to the official unsealing of the bids. Only bids deemed responsive to or in keeping with the requested service or project description are considered. The individual, entity or company providing the lowest responsive bid is awarded the contract.
There is a subset of governmental contracts, however, which are exempt from competitive bid requirements. Among the services Postmus now provides is to “politically wire” things so that those companies intent on gaining these governmental contracts that are exempt from competitive bids can land those contracts. Postmus does this by delivering money provided by his client seeking such a no-bid contract to the politicians who must ultimately approve the contract.
A case in point is that of Alliance Building Solutions, a company owned by Brad Chapman. Alliance Business Solutions has grown over the past 58 years from a relatively small mechanical contractor to a mid-size electrical, mechanical, heating, ventilation and air conditioning company with a specialized sideline in efficientizing buildings and facilities in terms of energy use, including augmenting them with insulation, installing appliances or equipment that require less electricity to function than that of previous generations, installing solar panels on roofs and south-facing walls and the like.
In recent years, Alliance Building Solutions succeeded in obtaining from the cities of Fontana, Rialto and Upland no-bid contracts for such energy efficiency makeovers. An exception to the competitive bid requirement for public agencies and governments in California relates to energy efficiency projects. As long as a public agency or government can demonstrate that the work or service to be provided will result in improved energy efficiency or a reduction in fuel or energy use as well as show that some savings in cost will accrue to the entity contracting for the service, it need not conduct a bidding process but can simply award a contract to a provider of that service, even if another contractor is available to do the work at lower cost.
By hiring Postmus to lobby on his behalf, Chapman made sure that the no-bid contracts that Fontana, Rialto and Upland engaged in to make their facilities more energy efficient went to Alliance Building Solutions rather than any of a multitude of other companies that provide the same service, including ones that would do the work at a lesser cost, in some cases significantly lesser cost.
Postmus lined up no-bid contract work for Allied Building Solutions with Fontana by coordinating with Mayor Acquanetta Warren, to whose electioneering fund he has served as a conduit to vector tens of thousands of dollars in donations from a variety of donors. Warren, who was appointed to the council in 2002, was elected and then reelected as councilwoman in 2004 and 2008, elected mayor in 2010 and reelected to that post in 2014, 2018 and 2022, with no little assistance from Postmus.
One of Warren’s firm-and-fast allies on the four-member ruling coalition she has assembled to be able to dominate Fontana City Hall is Phil Cothran Jr., the son of one of her major patron’s Phil Cothran Sr. Over the years, it has been with Phil Cothran Sr.’s backing that Warren has been able to solidify her political grip on the city. Since early 2021, Phil Cothran Sr has been the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, the position Postmus once held. Phil Cothran Sr is no stranger to political fundraising, having been involved in Fontana politics for some three decades and, within the last ten years, he has branched out to be a major fundraiser for Republicans in general throughout San Bernardino County. Upon becoming chairman of the central committee, he did not hesitate to turn to Postmus for assistance in raising money for the party and the party’s candidates, based in large measure on the historic success Postmus achieved in his fundraising efforts when he headed the San Bernardino County Republican Party. According to one source with a window on behind-the-scenes developments within the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, Phil Cothran Sr has delegated to Postmus and to Dakota Higgins, an elected member of the Republican Central Committee who is also the assistant chief of staff to San Bernardino County First District Supervisor Paul Cook, management of the county central committee’s fundraising efforts.
An element of Postmus’s fundraising success has always been and continues to be his understanding that donors, if they are going to be truly generous, need to be confident they are getting something in return for their donations. Postmus has long recognized donors must have assurance that they are receiving something real in return rather than something insubstantial and intangible beyond simply “access.” In practical terms, that means conveying to the donors that they are buying favorable treatment in the future from the politicians they are donating to, whether that will be approval of their project proposals, approval of their contracts to provide goods or services to the city, county or agency the politician heads or the granting or continuation of a franchise to that donor or his/her company. In this way, donations are considered investments, ones by which pennies can be transubstantiated into veritable fortunes. Postmus is able to easily convince those transacting business locally that it is in their interest to provide $1,000 or $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 up front to an officeholder with an assurance that when the time comes, the politician who received that money will vote to approve action that allows an enterprise by which that donor will see a profit in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
A problem is that such exchanges of money for votes are illegal. While under California law a politician can receive a political donation from an individual or entity who has business before an elected board or panel of which that politician is a member and then vote on matters relating to that donor and/or his/her company or undertaking, those donations and the receiving of the donations cannot be conditional. That is, a politician cannot commit or promise to take any official action or vote as an official in exchange for a donation. Such an arrangement is a quid pro quo, which in Latin means “this for that.” Engaging in a quid pro quo is tantamount to bribery.
What Postmus has done is to construct for Mountain States Consulting Group’s clients and many of San Bernardino County’s politicians – the bribers and the bribe-takers – what is simultaneously a simple and complex fiction that can be maintained, one that holds that bribery is not occurring. Postmus instructs his client to either make a donation directly to a politician or in the alternative to entrust the money to him so he can filter the money to that politician. Postmus or someone working with him in the same timeframe approaches the politician to explain what it is that the donor wants to achieve and how that goal at some point is dependent upon a vote by the politician and his or her colleagues in the future. An understanding is achieved all the way around as to what is to occur. In this way, the donor and the politician might not even meet or do so much as exchange pleasantries. In such cases, both the donor and the politician can truthfully say, if either or both is ever queried about the relationship between the donation and the vote, that they never met, never spoke and as such could not have concluded between themselves a corrupt and illegal deal.
Having seen to it that Alliance Building Solutions was acclimated into the real world of pay for play politics by its success with the Upland, Fontana and Rialto no-bid energy efficiency makeovers, Postmus in 2021 turned his attention toward the big fish – the governmental structure in San Bernardino County. Given the sheer size of San Bernardino County – a land area larger than the states of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut and New Hampshire, combined – the number of county buildings and facilities represent potential contracts worth well in excess of $100 million and potentially exceeding $200 million to the company or companies that can gain contracts to upgrade their energy efficiency.
At this point, Postmus, has already effectively moved to purchase influence with the four of the county’s five Republican supervisors – Cook, Armendarez, Rowe and Hagman, and has slipped them into his pocket. In 2021, he found himself in the advantageous position of having already once before secured for Alliance Building Solutions the support of the board’s single Democrat, Joe Baca Jr. Four years previously, when Baca was still a member of the Rialto City Council, that city had entered into a no-bid arrangement with Alliance Building Services for an energy services contract involving installing solar panels, efficient lighting, air-conditioning and control and monitoring systems at City Hall and other municipal facilities.
Cook, Rowe and Hagman have what is perhaps best described as a schizophrenic relationship with Postmus. Within the political and top-level governmental bubble in which they function that includes their board colleagues, other politicians they consider to be their political allies, their own staffs, the senior administrative/management of the county and their political supporters and the electioneering networks they coordinate with, Cook, Rowe and Hagman make no secret of, indeed seem to be proud of and will even brag about, their closeness to Postmus and the degree to which they seek his advice and adhere to his counsel. Outside that circle, however, they are loathe to acknowledge the interaction they have had and continue to have with him. They are aware of Postmus’s history, his convictions and his reputation for dirty and underhanded politics. Though the scandals he involved himself in occurred a decade-and-a-half ago and much or even all of what that entailed has faded from the collective public consciousness, the three understand that open association with him could prove exceedingly difficult, particularly if a committed political opponent comes into possession of too many of the details of that association.
As a consequence, the working out of the intricacies of the arrangements of what Postmus wants accomplished has been entrusted to the support networks around the supervisors and within the senior levels of the county bureaucracy. This provides the supervisors with two immediate benefits. Firstly, it insulates the supervisors from Postmus, perpetuating their ostensible separation from him. Secondly, it makes for a situation in which the action eventually taken to benefit Postmus’s clients is the final outcome of a process in wherein the supervisors can claim they are merely voting in accordance with a recommendation provided to them by county staff.
Postmus, who had previously engaged in extensive fundraising on behalf of Hagman, Cook and Rowe, likewise participated in the effort to endow the successful 2022 election campaign of the county’s newest supervisor, Jesse Armendarez. Historically it has been the case that Hagman, Rowe and Cook have tolerated – indeed more than tolerated and in fact in some cases encouraged or required – that the employees of their supervisorial offices participate in their political campaigns. This was the case of both Supervisor Hagman’s former chief of staff, the late Mike Spence, and his current chief of staff, Yekaterina Kolcheva. It is equally true of Supervisor Cook’s chief of staff, Tim Itnyre, and his deputy chief of staff, Dakota Higgins, both of whom were heavily involved in the campaigns that got Cook reelected to Congress in 2016 and 2018, when they were members of his Congressional staff, as well as elected supervisor in 2020 and again earlier this month, when he prevailed against four opponents with 32,325 of the 50,536, or 63.96 percent, of the votes in the First District counted thus far.
Supervisor Rowe’s original chief of staff, Matt Knox, who was formerly a member of Cook’s Congressional staff along with Rowe, Itnyre and Higgins, worked on Cook’s Congressional races as well, playing a particularly important part in thwarting Cook’s most aggressive opponent, Tim Donnelly, in 2018. Following Rowe’s appointment to the board of supervisors in 2018, Knox was hired by Rowe to serve as her chief of staff. He then played a major role in running her successful election campaign in 2020 to retain her position as Third District county supervisor. Rowe’s current chief of staff, Claire Cozad, was indispensable to Rowe’s reelection campaign this year, in which she
bested three of those running against her with an even 41,000 of the 69,760 votes cast in the Third District a week and a half ago, equal to 58.77 percent. Previously, in Cook’s maiden campaign for U.S. Congress in 2012, Cozad was one of his precinct workers.
While the ethically questionable but yet legal practice of allowing employees working within the governmental offices of elected officials to become heavily involved in those officials’ electoral campaigns is not limited solely to San Bernardino County, it is as widespread here, or more, than anywhere else. In this way, the distinction between government and politics has become utterly blurred, and those who have decried the situation have been marginalized as unrealistic idealists or dismissed entirely as cranks. The seeming ubiquity of political operatives on the staffs of the county’s top tier decision-makers has created a situation in which policy is shaped to benefit those willing to sustain a particular supervisor in office through the provision of substantial political donations and thus perpetuate the employment of that supervisor’s staff members in high-paying positions they would be unlikely to achieve in the private sector.
Kolcheva is provided with a salary and pay add-ons of $145,892.46 yearly plus benefits of $52,996.35 for a total annual compensation of $198,888.81. Itnyre earns $143,246.79 in salary, is provided with $24,787.50 in pay add-ons plus $76,449.06 in benefits for a total annual compensation of $244,483.35. Claire Cozad’s salary is $152,288.82 with add-ons of $24,579.02, together with benefits of $66,432.21 giving her a total annual compensation of $243,300.05. Higgins is provided with a salary of $114,247.47, pay add-ons of $17,954.49 plus $57,179.14 in benefits, for a total annual compensation of $$189,381.10. The salaries and benefits provided to the senior staff members of the supervisors creates for them an incentive to keep the supervisors in office, such that they often find it expedient to assist those who are contributing to the political campaigns of their employers to assist those donors in achieving the goals they are pursuing.
Thus, Postmus has found ready allies in Kolcheva, Itnyre and Cozad, as well as Higgins, with whom he has a secondary relationship as co-coordinator of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee’s fundraising efforts.
Every bit if not more important to Postmus’s political operations targeting county government in San Bernardino County is the county’s senior staff member, County Chief Executive Officer Luther Snoke.
Though Snoke ostensibly is devoted to running the county and is supposed to be immune from political influences, he is highly attuned to political nuance. Word throughout the county governmental structure, particularly in county departments such as real estate and land use services, is that Snoke knows Postmus has delivered and is continuing to deliver political grease to supervisors Cook, Armendarez, Rowe and Hagman to get their acquiescence with regard to a whole host of projects and contracts that the board has already considered and voted upon as well as upcoming items that will be brought before the supervisors.
Snoke is cognizant of the political money laundering operation Postmus has set up and that the board majority expects him to facilitate the approval of the projects and the awarding of the contracts that Mountain States Consulting Group’s clients are pursuing. According to sources within the county, Snoke is not directly on the take and is not a recipient of the payoffs being provided to Cook, Armendarez, Rowe and Hagman. Nevertheless, Snoke is playing his part in the tangle of bribery, money laundering, no-bid contracts, foreordained project approvals, the waiving of requirements, the suspension of codes and regulations and the corruption of the basic functions of county government in order to maintain his lucrative county position.
Snoke is provided with a total annual compensation of $643,368.80, consisting of a $379,187 salary, add-ons and perquisites of $40,088.80 and benefits of $224,093.
County employees have told the Sentinel that Snoke would risk being fired if he does not facilitate the advancement of Mountain States Consulting Group’s clients in their application for project and contract approvals.
Snoke, who was formerly the county’s chief operating officer and had been functioning as the acting chief executive officer for roughly a month-and-a-half, was promoted to the chief executive officer position on September 12, 2023. Two weeks later, on September 26, Snoke was subjected to a closed session performance evaluation by the board of supervisors. Since that time, the board has held two specially-scheduled closed door meetings, on December 20, 2023 and as recently as February 21, 2024, at which Snoke’s performance was the issue under review. Such closed-door executive meetings, held outside the presence of the public, are considered confidential, and no minutes of the board’s discussion or actions is provided to the public. Knowledgeable sources have said that the performance evaluations are a tool used by the board of supervisors to keep the county’s chief executive officer in line and assure his compliance with the directives given to him through both official channels, by votes of the board that have been publicly cast during open meetings, and recorded and minuted as well as direction given to him during closed sessions, which are considered officially issue. Those performance evaluations also serve as a reminder to Snoke that he needs to adhere to directions that have been provided to him unofficially by members of the board, outside of public votes or closed-session exchanges. Given that three votes are what is required to terminate Snoke, he is acutely conscious that if he does not adhere to Postmus’s expectation that Mountain States Consulting Group’s clients are to be taken care of, insofar as Postmus holds a vice lock on a majority of the board, companies such as Alliance Building Solutions are given red carpet treatment within the San Bernardino County Government Center.
Thrice while he was yet chief county operating officer, in April 2021, February 2022 and November 2022, the Sentinel sought from Snoke and his predecessor as chief executive officer, Leonard Hernandez, information about the county’s intentions to accommodate Postmus’s expectation that Alliance Building Solutions be provided with a series of no-bid contracts to upgrade several of the county’s facilities in terms of energy efficientization. The Sentinel inquired of both Hernandez and Snoke as to whether they would go along with providing Alliance Building Solutions be provided with those no-bid contracts; the degree to which they were aware of companies other than Alliance Building Solutions being capable of providing energy-saving technology upgrades to existing buildings and at what costs; whether the board of supervisors was pressuring them to facilitate the no-bid arrangements with Alliance Building Solutions; if they considered their jobs to be on the line with regard to whether the no-bid contracts with Alliance Building Solutions were facilitated; what the county’s plans were for modernizing/energy efficientizing a good number of its facilities and which ones were to be upgraded; what cost evaluations the county had done for such programs; whether the county was considering requesting proposals and an open public bid process for the facility upgrade work; whether they had drawn up a comparison on the amount of money Alliance Building Solutions would charge for that type of work and what other companies providing the same service charge; and what justification the were prepared to give for not conducting an open bidding process for the upgrades. Point blank, the Sentinel asked Hernandez and Snoke about the validity of claims by county employees that Postmus was delivering bribes to Cook, Rowe and Hagman and had arranged political contributions to Armendarez in exchange for his commitments on votes that were to come before him upon his installation as supervisor and whether they believed it advisable for the members of the board of supervisors to have any sort of relationship with Postmus, given his criminal history and the nature of those criminal offenses and their relationship to San Bernardino County’s governmental structure.
Neither Hernadez nor Snoke responded to those inquiries.
In February 2022 the Sentinel made a request under the California Public Records Act to obtain both Hernandez’s and Snoke’s calendars to determine whether they had meetings with Postmus and/or Chapman. The county denied those requests, maintaining the request was too burdensome, that complying with it would violate Hernandez’s and Snoke’s confidentiality and would be contrary to the best interests of the county.
According to the county, elected officials such as members of the board of supervisors are at liberty to take money in the form of campaign contributions from any potential source and the reception of such money does not disqualify the recipient from voting on a matter impacting that donor.
Public scrutiny over the Postmus’s and Chapman’s relationship with members of the board of supervisors resulted in plans to confer upon Alliance Building Solutions the first of what was to be several contracts for energy efficiency upgrades to county facilities in 2021 to be delayed. Continuing attention to the matter resulted in further postponements in 2022.
Quietly this fall, county staff put the final touches on a proposal to provide energy efficiency upgrades to the County Government Center, located at 385 North Arrowhead Avenue in San Bernardino, and another building owned by the county at 268 West Hospitality Lane in San Bernardino. The County Government Center, also known informally as the Taj Mahal, is a five story structure near the downtown 1926 San Bernardino Courthouse, which houses the offices of the board of supervisors, the county chief executive officer, the county chief operating officer, the office of county counsel, the county real estate division, the land use services department, the department of public health, the department of environmental services, the office of the clerk of the board of supervisors and the meeting chambers for the board of supervisors and other county commissions. The building at 268 West Hospitality Lane houses the offices for county treasurer-tax collector, auditor and controller as well as the headquarters for the department of behavioral health, the county code enforcement division and the county library administration.
On October 24, 2023, four days after the agenda for that day’s meeting was posted and 14 days after the notice of a hearing, the board of supervisors at its second regularly scheduled meeting for October held a public hearing with regard to awarding a no-bid contract to Alliance Business Solutions in the amount of $7,880,230 for the installation of energy-efficient measures, lighting, heating ventilation and air-conditioning, system controls, and solar power panels. In addition to the installation of the equipment, the agreement included a 20-year service agreement, for which Alliance Building Solutions is to be paid $458,085 over the life of the two-decade contract, with no charge for maintenance the first year, $15,000 for the second year, and escalated at 5% annually for every subsequent year thereafter up to 20 years.
According to the staff report for the item, the undertaking, which the county dubbed the “Energy Efficiency Solutions Project,” is desirable from the standpoint that the county through its facilities management department “is seeking opportunities to incorporate environmentally preferable products, energy-efficient county building design, and construction, and substantially reduce the costs and environmental impacts associated with operating county-owned and leased facilities. This is a noncompetitive procurement as permitted by Government Code 4217.10 through 4217.18. Alliance Building Solutions warrants that the anticipated cost to the County for the services provided by Alliance Building Solutions ($7,880,230) are less than the anticipated costs to the County for energy that would have been used by the County, which is projected to cost $18,670,797 over 30 years.”
By a vote of 4-to-0, with Supervisor Cook absent, supervisors Armendarez, Rowe, Hagman and Baca approved the contract with Alliance Building Solutions.
San Bernardino County owns more than 40 substantial buildings and leases more than two dozen others around its 20,105-square mile expanse. Chapman is confident that his company handle as many as four projects of the size and intensity of the Energy Efficiency Solutions Project per year. He believes the successful completion of the e Energy Efficiency Solutions Project will encourage the county to enter into further projects to modernize its existing buildings, a few of which date from the 1950s with some from the 1960s and 1970s.

BNSF Railroad Company On The Brink Of Pulling Plug On Barstow International Gateway Project

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad Company corporate officers, who previously committed to establishing what they said will be the largest rail facility in North America in Barstow, have begun to rethink those plans because of the State of California Air Resources Board’s adoption of newly-drafted regulations pertaining to train engines which they say will compromise the viability of the planned $1.5 billion facility or render it inoperative altogether.
In October 2022, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company announced its intention to construct a 4,500-acre integrated rail facility that would employ upwards of 15,000 people on the west side of Barstow. The undertaking, dubbed the Barstow International Gateway, is intended to accommodate both traditional and automated direct transfer of containers that arrive in the High Desert after having been taken off ships at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, lowered onto train cars and then sent by rail through the Alameda Corridor to Barstow. According to Burlington Northern Santa Fe, it was placing the highest priority on seeing the Barstow International Gateway to completion. The modernized railyard was an important element of the railroad company’s future, corporate officers said.
International Gateway will allow the direct transfer of shipping containers from ships at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports to trains for transport through the Alameda Corridor onto the BNSF mainline up to Barstow.
Upon arrival in Barstow, according to Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the train cars’ contents are to be sorted by cargo-handling cranes and other equipment and placed into rail cars on trains to be dispatched further east across the country in the railroad company’s trains. Since that announcement, Burlington Northern Santa Fe has given indication the workforce that would be needed at the Barstow facility would, upon full completion, run closer to 20,000.
Accordingly, Barstow officials read into the situation that Barstow, a railroad town since its modern advent in 1883 with the eastern extension of the Southern Pacific line to it from Mojave, would make strides toward recapturing its significance as what was once San Bernardino County’s fifth-largest city, and might see its population zoom from its current 24,789 to more than 80,000 by 2040.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe said that it would strive to have all of the cargo transferring equipment and conveyors at the yard powered by clean energy. That, however, did not fully satisfy the State of California, in particular the California Air Resources Board, which had previously mandated that by 2030 all railroad companies in California upgrade to train engines constructed and put into service no earlier than 2007, transition to all-electric locomotives by 2035. In order to achieve that, the California Air Resources Board is proposing to require that the two largest operators of trains in California – Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific – as part of what is termed the “In-Use Locomotive Rule,” deposit, beginning in 2026, $800 million annually into a fund to be managed by the that California Air Resources Board. That money is to be pooled and generate interest, such that by late 2034 and 2035 the proceeds can be used to purchase new electric powered locomotives for Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific.
Under its charter and the direction and oversight of the California legislature and California governor, the California Air Resources Board is entrusted with the authority to develop and codify California’s clean air rules and regulations.
The California Resources Board has consulted with the Environmental Protection Agency and is awaiting final input from that entity with regard to California’s adoption of the “In-Use Locomotive Rule.”
“The California Air Resources Board adopted the In-Use Locomotive Regulation, which would require the implementation of zero-emission locomotives in California,” according to Burlington Northern Santa Fe. “[Z]ero-emission tech, like that used in electric locomotives, is not commercially viable, and it’s not clear when it will be. Meanwhile, there are emissions-cutting projects underway right now that will be either stalled or completely scrapped if these regulations move forward. Rather than investing in efficient freight movement, railroads will be required to spend hundreds of millions per year just in California to stay compliant with the rule. Consequently, rail projects already in progress, like the Barstow International Gateway, would be canceled completely as development would become cost prohibitive. Thousands of promised and existing well-paying jobs would vanish. The cost of goods movement through California would increase to the point of being non-competitive, shifting cargo to other ports outside the state. Our national supply chain and West Coast port throughput would suffer without new rail projects that improve efficiency. Ultimately, this regulation will result in shifting freight from rail – the most efficient way to move goods over land – to trucks, increasing highway congestion.”
Burlington Northern Santa Fe appealed to members of the public to “Tell the Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board and our elected leaders to reject this ineffective and unachievable patchwork approach to locomotive regulation and support more collaborative measures that accelerate commercial viability of lower- and zero-emission locomotives.”
Yesterday, on March 14, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Executive Director of Public Affairs Lena Kent, while addressing attendees of the High Desert Economic and Real Estate Symposium & Forecast at the Victor Valley College Performing Arts Center that Burlington Northern Santa Fe will be unable “to complete the Barstow International Gateway Project. Financing would not be feasible, and we don’t even know how much we’d be able to operate in the State of California.”
-Mark Gutglueck

Bidirectional Truth & Distortion Follow Sheriff’s Deputies’ Shooting Of Autistic AV Teen

There has been a mix of verifiable and factually inconsistent statements emanating from both the sheriff’s department and the Gainer Family and the family’s support network in the aftermath of the department’s fatal shooting of 15-year-old Ryan Gainer on March 9.
According to the sheriff’s department, “On Saturday, March 9, 2024, at approximately 4:48 p.m., deputies from the Apple Valley Police Department responded to an emergency 9-1-1 call at a residence in the 13400 block of Iroquois Road. Family reported to Sheriff’s Dispatch Ryan Gainer was actively assaulting family members and damaging property at the residence. At approximately 4:54 p.m., the first deputy arrived at the residence and was confronted by Gainer, who was armed with an approximate five-foot-long garden tool, with a sharp bladed end. Without provocation, Gainer raised the bladed end of the tool and ran toward the deputy. The deputy retreated and Gainer chased the deputy in an attempt to assault him with the bladed end of the tool. A lethal force encounter occurred, and Gainer was struck by gunfire. Deputies quickly rendered medical aid to Gainer and continued until paramedics arrived. Gainer was transported by ambulance to a local hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries.”
The rapid identification of the victim, a minor, as well as his family, was significant, as the department, law enforcement agencies in California and governmental entities have a standard practice of not identifying minors involved in alleged crimes or encounters with authorities. Furthermore, the department, which has only within the last eight months begun outfitting all of its deputies with bodyworn cameras, made a rapid release of the footage of the incident from the first two responding deputies, those being on hand when the shooting took place. This represented, on multiple fronts both because such video has not been as a consequence of the sheriff’s department’s operation for any appreciable time available and because it has now created a precedent against which the department’s reaction in making releases on any future shootings will be gauged, an extraordinary development.
There was some subtle and not-so-subtle editing to the video that was released. Nevertheless, it depicted elements of what occurred that cut, or potentially cut, both ways in sizing up the reasonableness of the response.
While the department, as per Sheriff Shannon Dicus, maintains that both deputies fired their weapons, the two videos that were released do not appear to conclusively show that the first deputy on the scene, who was reacting to young Gainer advancing on him with what was described as a “hula hoe,” discharged his weapon. The first deputy to arrive, is seen parking on the right shoulder of the street near the extreme end of at the front of the typically desert-landscaped yard of the Gainer home at 13494 Iroquois Road at 4:54:28, with the perspective of the camera showing the deputy removing what appear to be his sunglasses and affixing them atop of his head. As he approaches the front door of the home while moving around what appear to be bushes that stand in the yard some fifteen to twenty feet directly before the front door, the deputy steps toward the front stoop or curtilage of the house, at which point the audio from the video activates, whether by the deputy or by the editor of the video is unclear. The deputy can be heard saying, as he approached the doorway “Where’s he at?” Almost immediately, Gainer emerges into the hallway visible from the perspective of the doorway, carrying the hoe. He advances rapidly toward the deputy, who, it appears from the perspective of the bodyworn camera, to be retreating backwards from the entrance, while simultaneously, it appears, drawing his service gun and pointing it at Gainer. The deputy can be heard saying, “Get back or you’ll get shot.” Again, from the perspective of that deputy’s bodyworn camera, it appears that Gainer is advancing on him more rapidly than the deputy is succeeding in walking backwards, at which point, it appears, the deputy turns to his right to be able to flee while running forward rather than stepping backwards in the face of Gainer advancing toward him. There is no loud report of a gunshot on the audio of the video that would be consistent with the deputy having discharged his weapon and from the movement depicted on the video and the shadowing visible on the ground, as well as the rapid movement of the deputy’s left arm and empty hand and right arm and right hand carrying his service gun, it appears the deputy is in full running mode away from the pursuing Gainer, who is no longer visible in the scope of the video’s visual field. When the deputy wheels, apparently to his right to again face Gainer, the second deputy is visible off to the left of the visual field, while Gainer is on the ground.
At 4:57:58, the first deputy radios to sheriff’s dispatch, “There are deputies who have been injured.”
The released portion of the body worn video from the second deputy to arrive at the Gainer home shows the deputy parking his vehicle on the left shoulder of the street opposed to traffic, getting out of his vehicle at 4:55:01 and walking toward the Gainer home, more to the left of the bushes in front of the home than the first deputy, who came toward the house from the right of the bushes. Unlike the bodyworn camera video of the first deputy, the second-arriving deputy’s audio is engaged from before he gets out of his vehicle. The perspective of his bodyworn camera video shows that he approached the Gainer residence from the opposite direction than the previous deputy, as his vehicle is parked on the left side of the street at the far end of the yard to the Gainer home opposite of the other deputy’s vehicle, which is at the opposite side of the Gainer home yard, such that his vehicle is facing the other deputy’s vehicle, which is at a distance close to the span of the Gainer property’s yard width. During his first few steps onto the property at 13493 Iroquois, little can be discerned in the field of vision of his bodyworn camera, as the front of the house is lost in the glare of the sun and hidden by the bushes which obscure much of what stands near the front porch. Suddenly audible is the first deputy’s warning to “Get back or you’ll get shot.” A split second later the first deputy can be seen backing away from the house’s front entrance and then turning to run away from the hoe-carrying Gainer as he emerges from the house. As the first deputy completes his turn to run forward with his back to Gainer, he is yet training his gun in his right hand toward his pursuer behind him without being able to see what it is aimed at. When Gainer fully emerges from behind the bushes at what looks to be a full gallop, the second deputy can be seen pointing his gun at Gainer, Gainer takes no more than three or four strides after the fleeing first deputy once his figure emerges unobscured by the bushes before the second deputy fires his gun three times, its seems, at 4:55:13 and 4:55:14 on the video. It appears that Gainer is immediately felled by one or more of the shots. One one of Gainer’s sisters and his mother can be heard wailing and screaming, yelling “You didn’t have to shoot him!” and “Why did you shoot him” and “Oh, my God!” and “Why’d you do that” and “You are the devil” and “Why would you shoot my baby?” and “Where was your Taser?” Both deputies tell the women, who are advancing toward Gainer, lying on the ground, to get “Get back” and Go back” and “Get back inside.” Both deputies appear to be reluctant to approach the fallen Gainer while the mother and sister are proximate to them. With the women still keening and yelling, the first deputy, at 4:55:48, says “We’re going to get him help. Get back in the residence.”
At 4:55:59, a man can be heard saying, “Check him out, guys. Check him out!”
At 4:56:01 on the second deputy’s bodyworn camera video, a third deputy, one who appears to be putting gloves onto his hands, comes into the field of vision. At 4:56:17, he walks to stand over Gainer and then bends down to examine him. At 4:56:20, the video shows that the second deputy has gone toward the prone Gainer where he bends down to pick up the hula hoe. It appears that the third deputy begins cardiopulmonary resuscitation at 4:57:13, which is just about two minutes after Gainer was shot.
Over the next several minutes, the three deputies are engaged in providing Gainer with cardiopulmonary resuscitation while pausing briefly to check for a pulse, for wounds, to put a compression patch or tourniquets in place. “Come on, buddy,” one of the deputies can be heard saying on a couple of occasions when another deputy reports that he cannot detect a pulse in Gainer.
At 5:03:15, a firefighter/paramedic team arrives.
Gainer was eventually transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
On Sunday, the day after the shooting, department announced that a fatal shooting had occurred the previous day, disclosing Ryan Gainer as the deceased and that the incident had taken place at a home in the 13400 block of Iroquois Road. Released to selected members of the media was the audio of the frantic 9-1-1 call made by one of the family members and descriptions of what was captured on the first-arriving deputy’s bodyworn video camera, specifically that Gainer was armed with a “five-foot-long garden tool, with a bladed end,” with which he attempted to attack a deputy.
Sheriff Dicus made an oblique justification of the use of lethal force, saying, “Our social safety net for those experiencing mental illness needs to be strengthened. Our deputies handle seemingly insurmountable calls daily. Most of these calls do not end in violence. However, this one ended in tragedy for Ryan, his family, and for the deputies who responded. Rapidly evolving, violent encounters are some of the most difficult, requiring split second decisions. While these decisions are lawful, they are awful in terms of our humanity. I feel for both Ryan’s family and my deputies who will struggle with this for their entire lives.”
After the initial reports of what had occurred, there were reflexive statements of support for the department and deputies, who had not been identified. Conversely, there was a round of criticism from multiple quarters suggesting that excessive force had been used and questions about why the department had not made a less than lethal response to the circumstance.
By Sunday, March 10, the Gainer family had retained Attorney DeWitt Lacy of the Beverly Hills-based law firm of Burris Nisenbaum Curry & Lacy to represent them.
On Wednesday, Lacy had made an initial statement that Gainer had autism and was exhibiting mental health issues in the events leading up to his death. Lacy was widely quoted by several media outlets.
“There are great questions as to whether it was appropriate to use deadly force against a 15-year-old autistic kid who was having an episode,” Lacy said.
At the command echelon within the department, the department’s higher-ups had the advantageous perspective of having access to the unexpurgated footage from the bodyworn video cameras of the officers who had responded to the Gainer home, together with the more than 5-minute long 9-1-1 recording of a call from Gainer’s sister giving, from her verbal perspective, a second-by-second description of the situation within the Gainer household in the time prior to the arrival of the deputies.
After some editing of those videos, Dicus convened a press conference on Wednesday. He displayed those portions of the videos that captured the confrontation with Gainer and the shooting.
Dicus sought to reinforce his previous suggestion that his deputies were confronted with a mentally ill individual, which presented demands that were beyond their level of expertise and that this created an unwinnable situation.
Dicus said, “It was certainly my hope that to keep the community together when these things happen that we’re transparent, that we release the information so they understand why the deputies on March 9 used force. Since then, I received a number of questions from both media outlets and certain civic groups that there are questions as to whether we prevented or didn’t immediately treat the victim in this case or the suspect in this case and it goes both ways and I’ll explain that and qualify that. It is something we hate to have to show that law enforcement deals with on a day-to-day basis. I believe our social safety network needs to be strengthened. In this case, since January, we’ve been to this residence in Apple Valley five times. Out of those five times, the 15-year-old juvenile, Ryan, was taken to a mental health facility both by ambulance and by law enforcement and there was no force that had to be used in any of these incidents. That’s my point of saying our social safety network is not working and needs to be strengthened. There is no reason that law enforcement should be the ones that end up having to get involved in these crises specifically when we’ve off-ramped these individuals to social services that are supposed to be designed to take care of their mental health needs.”
Dicus said, “There are no winners or losers in situations like this. The reality is that Ryan’s family and the deputy sheriffs that were involved in this case will have to remember this for their entire lives. I think it’s important that we remember this and we stay united as a community. What in my opinion is happening here is there were plenty of times to offramp Ryan and get him the health care and mental health care that he needed. In my opinion, based on the frequency of times in which law enforcement had to be involved for Ryan’s family’s sake and Ryan’s sake prior to the shooting, I think that’s the important piece that we have to talk about here.”
With regard to the actual shooting, Dicus offered an estimate of the number of shots fired – three – which did not seem to correspond with what was depicted on both bodyworn camera videos. Of the seven individuals who observed the videos in the Sentinel newsroom, six said it appeared and sounded to them that only a single shot was fired. One said that perhaps two shots were fired. At the press conference, Dicus qualified his statement to say, “Right now this is preliminary information.” Dicus did not touch on whether the audio of the videos may have been altered or manipulated to lessen or eliminate the sound of at least two of the gunshots.
“Both the deputies arrived on scene,” Dicus said. “We believe that both of them shot and a total of three rounds were fired. That’s all preliminary at this point. I may be able to come back and report different things later, but preliminarily right now, that’s what we have.”
Dicus sought to explain why his deputies had not used non-lethal rounds against Gainer.
“You actually hear [on the audio of the first deputy’s video] Ryan’s family say, ‘Why didn’t you use a taser?’” Dicus noted. “In training what we do with our deputy sheriffs, they are exposed to being tased. They are exposed to pepper spray. The other thing they are exposed to and the reason they do is we have to fight through that. We have to teach them to fight through that, heaven forbid, any of those use-of-force techniques were used against them. With that being said, those techniques don’t always work. When you’re talking time and distance and making these critical life-threatening decisions, particularly with somebody coming down with a deadly weapon on you and having the second deputy come up and see what his partner is being threatened with, the use of a taser in this situation with the amount of time or the use of pepper spray would not have been something that we would have been able to react to. Even law enforcement officers, they are not required to be hit over the head with something. What happens when that happens and they get incapacitated? They also bring firearms and a number of other things that can be used against them. So, you have to take in the totality of their training and really isolate in, what’s the best thing to do in this case given. I think it’s important [to keep in perspective] our law enforcement officers have obviously responded five other times in this case with absolutely zero force used.”
“What really boils down here is the first deputy arrives on scene, it’s about 30 seconds before he immediately encounters the suspect and that instance where he’s running away and trying to gain distance from the suspect and warning him that he’s going to shoot lasts seven seconds,” Dicus said. “My point in bringing that up: A lot of people ask, ‘Well, you know what happened before this.’ and we don’t know if the deputies knew that. Obviously, we have a number of shifts. Maybe the deputies had never been at Ryan’s family’s home. What we need to really look at is even if we had the best healthcare, the best psychologists, in that immediate interaction and those seven seconds, there are no magic words. We pay law enforcement officers to stop threats and to stop violence. The deputy hadn’t even made it into the house to investigate the claims that were made of assault with somebody injured. There’s just a number of things they have to encounter. I think we need to understand in this circumstance — whether we knew, didn’t know, had the best resources available to us — this is a reactionary time. If we are looking at this in the scope of being a human being and what they’re trained for, the deputies followed through with what their training protocols are.”
Dicus offered his assessment that under such circumstances encountered by his deputies on March 9, “lethal force is perfectly appropriate. We can give you plenty of cases where certainly juveniles can be dangerous. He is large of stature, of course. He is physically fit There are a number of those things going on here. Each deputy is trained to take the totality of circumstances in which they’re dealing [into consideration]. Unfortunately, in this case it was immediately being confronted with extreme violence. It’s not just a hula hoe that you are seeing. You’re also seeing a frying pan. When you overlap that that to the 9-1-1 call that we’ve already released, you hear the family making these claims of windows being broken, being assaulted and a number of things. We have to understand that law enforcement officers are our fists. We are civilized. They go out and do this work for us and they need to be supported. This is why I think it’s critical that we be very transparent about what goes through here, what goes through their mind and really have these what are complex conversations as to why we do the things we do. These are unfortunate events.
Despite Dicus’s pronouncement that lethal force was an appropriate response by his deputies on March 9, which was a reiteration of his earlier assertion that the decisions by his deputies to use lethal force were lawful, Dicus insisted that a fair and independent investigation was taking place.
“We’re still involved in an investigation,” Dicus said, one which is being conducted by Detective Shawn Thurman and Sergeant Justin Giles at the Specialized Investigations Division under the watchful eyes of the department’s senior officers. “Any time officers are involved in a lethal force encounter, officer-involved shooting, we do a full-blown homicide investigation,” Dicus continued, saying the “case will go to the DA’s office, and they will certainly look independently as to whether or not what the officers did is lawful and constitutional. That is our normal course and process. Also, during the investigation representatives from the law enforcement division of the DA’s office as well as prosecutors are on scene for that independent eye.”
Dicus acknowledged that some of the audio from the video after the shooting took place was dropped out of a portion of the video while the officers were performing CPR and other “life-sustaining” efforts because at that point they were discussing how many shots had been fired so they could ascertain the extent of Gainer’s wounds and other injuries, which Dicus said was information relating to the investigation that should not yet be released.
According to Lacy, Gainer sustained three gunshot wounds to his abdomen, which he claimed would not have been fatal if the deputies had rendered medical aid in a timely manner. This was because, Lacy maintains, Gainer expired because of respiratory failure.
The sheriff’s department claims that Lacy’s assertion has no basis, as an autopsy has not yet been performed and that a deputy performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Gainer until the arrival of paramedics.
According to Lacy, on March 9, Ryan’s parents had required that he perform some household chores before he would be allowed to play video games or listen to music on his computer, which triggered an intemperate reaction from the 15-year-old, which included his destruction of some items and his hitting one of his sisters. That is what precipitated the call to the sheriff’s department, Lacy said. The deputies’ response was disproportionate to the threat Gainer posed, according to the attorney. Prior to the arrival of the deputies, Lacy claimed, Ryan’s father had managed to calm his son. Lacy acknowledged that when the deputy approached the front door, Ryan Gainer came toward him, bearing the gardening tool. Lacy said that based upon the sheriff’s department’s previous encounters with Ryan, the deputies through the department’s information and dispatch system should have known “this was somebody that had some mental health issues at times. They knew or they should have known that Ryan was an individual, a teen, with autism, as the sheriff’s department had come to that residence before to give assistance. This time they decided to depart from that training and immediately jump to lethal force. Shots were inappropriate and uncalled for. Law enforcement are trained to encounter persons who might be experiencing some type of mental health episode like Ryan and one of the main tactics they utilize is time and distance. One of the officers began to do that as he retreated from Ryan. The other chose to use deadly force.”
Ryan Gainer was, Lacy said, a “charming kid,” despite his behavior late in the afternoon of March 9. He had hopes of becoming an engineer, Lacy said. He called for a thorough and independent analysis of the deputies’ action. ode,” Lacy stated, emphasizing the need for a thorough examination of the incident and the moments leading up to the shooting.
According to Lacy, “As the case unfolds, the Law Firm of Burris Nisenbaum Curry & Lacy is committed to seeking justice for Ryan Gainer and his family. Use of lethal force was not warranted.” Lacy said the community and society in general should pursue “accountability and reform in law enforcement practices, especially in how officers engage individuals with mental health challenges.”
While previously deferring all comment to Lacy, the Gainer family put out a statement yesterday. “We are lost navigating this traumatic experience, battling feelings of devastation and unimaginable despair,” the statement said. “Ryan was a great kid, our world; he didn’t deserve this!”
According to the Gainers, “Ryan was very active in our community, involving himself with tutoring kids after school, assisting with robotics programs, community clean up and so much more. He was a super intelligent, kind, generous, respectable, thoughtful, funny, goofy, charismatic person, who always saw the good in people. Our hearts continue to break at the thought of him being robbed of his bright future.”
Setting respect for a grieving family and the need for the sheriff’s department to minimize its liability aside, members of the community observing the spectacle could not help note elements of the entire matter that are incongruous with the assertions by Dicus, the Gainers and the family’s lawyer, in addition to some inconsistencies within the statements themselves.
Dicus’s insistence that the shooting, perpetrated by at least one and potentially two of his deputies is being fairly, impartially and thoroughly investigated by investigators employed by his department even as he, their collective boss, has pronounced that, based on the circumstances surrounding the shooting, the use of force was by the book, in accordance with protocol, consistent with the deputies’ training and both legal and constitutional, raises questions as to the whether the conclusion to be reached will be one based upon the full gathering and honest and unbiased evaluation of evidence or whether it is one that was predetermined. Even if Dicus’s observation that his department is ill-cast in the role of responding to those in the throes of a mental health crisis and such tasks should be left to psychological and psychiatric professionals has merit, the circumstance involving Gainer and his department on March 9 and the sheriff’s assertion that the use of deadly force was a legitimate reaction to it raises questions about how the safety of those psychological and psychiatric professionals, who carry none of the weaponry available to law enforcement officers, can be ensured.
The Gainer family’s touching remembrance of their son and brother as someone who was kind, generous and always saw the good in others clashes with individual depicted on two sheriff’s deputies’ bodyworn videos, wielding a large bladed tool with malevolent intent, just minutes after his sister had phoned the sheriff’s office, telling the dispatcher that deputies “got to take him in” because he was engaged in an “assault and battery” and “hitting” his sister, had “done broke the house, a door and a window” and was menacingly walking about with a shard of glass in his hand. The family’s characterization of him as a “charismatic person, who always saw the good in people” and was socially and civically active and who mentored and “tutored other students” starkly clashes with the description of “autistic” provided by the family’s attorney. Autism is defined as social and behavioral disorder or spectrum condition which renders communication and maintaining relationships difficult and problematic.

County Passes Through $5M Subsidy To Burum’s Plan To Construct Low & Moderate Income Housing In SB

The San Bernardino County Housing Authority will pass through $5 million in federal HOME funding to subsidize National Community Renaissance in its construction of 92 affordable housing units and a community center, what is to be phase four of Arrowhead Grove Inclusive Redevelopment Project.
Arrowhead Grove is the follow-on development to replace the Waterman Gardens, which was originally completed in 1943 on 38 acres at the southeast corner of Baseline Avenue and Waterman Avenue as a 252-unit housing complex for military personnel stationed at San Bernardino Army Air Field, which later became George Air Force Base.
Waterman Gardens would evolve into public housing that was managed under the auspices of the San Bernardino County Housing Authority.
Over time, those homes fell into disrepair, with many of the residents living in squalor. Criminal activity proliferated there.
In 2014, the City of San Bernardino acquiesced in the county’s intention to complete the Arrowhead Grove Neighborhood Revitalization project, a $200 million undertaking by the Housing Authority of the County of San Bernardino to be completed in cooperation with the developer National Community Renaissance, known as National CORE, a nonprofit organization that develops, builds, finances, and manages affordable housing communities. The parameters of the project were set at 411 units overall, with 252 affordable units, 74 senior units, 47 market rate units and 38 homes to be available for purchase.
By very late 2014, demolition of the former Waterman Gardens had begun. In February 2015, ground was broke for the first phase, Valencia Vista, to be comprised of 76 affordable units. Those residence became available in 2016.
In September 2018, the next phase, Olive Meadow, a 62-unit apartment complex on Olive Street, was opened for rentals.
In 2019, a Head Start facility was completed.
In 2021, Crestview Terrace, the next phase, consisting of 184 mixed-income family apartments, opened.
The county, through its housing authority, maintains title to the 38 acres. It has subdivided the land into separate parcels corresponding to each phase.
With the first 322 affordable housing units now completed, the effort will turn to Phase IV, which is to consist of 22 single-bedroom, 46 double-bedroom and 24 three-bedroom units, totaling 92 new affordable units. The targeted income levels for prospective occupants are 80 percent below the area median income.
Given the abject poverty of those who are homeless in San Bernardino, it is not likely those on the streets will be able to get into those domiciles, however, without some other form of assistance.
Phase IV is to further include a community center, which is to lease office space to nonprofit organizations to provide nearby services for low-income residents. One of the tenants of the planned community center is Dignity Health, a California healthcare provider in California. Dignity is tentatively scheduled to occupy the west wing of the building, which will serve as a federally qualified health center,” according to the county. Congressman Pete Aguilar, (D-San Bernardino), last year secured $3 million in state funding for the construction of the community center. In addition to the Dignity Health quarters, the center will serve as a forum for public gatherings and provide a community kitchen and community garden.
The county government has not released this year’s figures from its most recent “point in time” tallying of the homeless completed over a single 24-hour period in January 2024. Last year, on January 26, 2023, that survey recorded 4,195 throughout the county, with the county seat, i.e., the City of San Bernardino, logging more destitute than any other city in the 20,105 square mile county, with 1,502 living on the streets, in alleyways under overpasses, beneath, in or around the Santa Ana River bed, flood control channels, within the city’s sewer and drainage system, within the flood plain and hidden in the landscaping along the freeway or near the confluence of I-10 and I-215.
Certain elements with regard to the county’s coordination with National Core for Phase IV have to be lined up, such that it is anticipated construction on the project will begin by March 2026, with a completion target set for the fourth quarter of 2027.
National CORE was founded in 1991 by Jeff Burum. He remains as National CORE chairman of the board. Michael M. Ruane is the organization’s president; Robert Diaz its executive vice president and general counsel; Doretta Bryan its senior vice president of operations; Michael Finn its chief financial officer; Chris Killian its senior vice president of construction; Dan Lorraine its senior vice president of property management; Barry Oglesby its senior vice president of finance and acquisitions; Jill Van Balen its senior vice president of marketing and communications; Alexa Washburn its senior vice president of planning and acquisitions; and Ashly Wright its senior vice president of development.

Yucaipa Solons Rethink $10K Campaign Donations, Signaling Anticipated Growth

Intensifying already heightened concern that Yucaipa’s elected officials are intent on embarking on an intensive round of residential development, the Yucaipa City Council last month signaled that it would dispense with the campaign contribution limit it had moved toward putting in place in January.
On January 22, the Yucaipa City Council demurred upon encountering city staff’s recommendation that it pass an ordinance which would allow elected city officials – that is, the city council members – to accept contributions of any amount of money with no limits.
Because of existing state legislation, any municipality that does not adopt its own ordinance specifying campaign donation limits defaults to the current $5,500 campaign donation limit. In response, the council, with some of its members expressing reluctance to adhere to any limitation, acceded to Councilman Bobby Duncan’s motion to impose a $10,000 limit so as to appease those casting aspersions on the council relating to their acceptance of money from development interests and others with a financial interest in the city council’s action. With Councilman Jon Thorp absent and Councilman Chris Venable dissenting, Duncan, Mayor Justin Beaver and Councilman Matt Garner prevailed in a vote approving an ordinance to be finalized by city staff in which a $10,000 campaign limit.
With that ordinance having been approved in what is referred to as a first reading, it needed to undergo a second vote of approval, whereupon 30 days from the so-called second reading it would go into effect.
On February 26, despite the city council’s January 22 vote, the council was presented with a staff report by City Attorney Steve Graham which proffered two versions of the new ordinance, one of which was designated as Ordinance No. 440, tweaking the Yucaipa Municipal Code to add Section 1.08.070 and establishing no campaign contribution limits; and another delineated as Ordinance No. 443, altering the Yucaipa Municipal Code to establish campaign contribution limits.
Further down in the report, Graham wrote, “As the City of Yucaipa has historically not had campaign contribution limits, and after several months of correspondence seeking guidance and clarification from the Fair Political Practices Commission, staff brought forward an item on January 22, 2024, recommending that the city council adopt an ordinance setting the limit to “no limit.” Per direction from the city council, staff has drafted an ordinance setting the limit to $10,000 and is included as Attachment 2. Staff recommends that the city council review both ordinances and approve the introduction and first reading of either one.
Graham gave a brief presentation in which he represented that at the January 22 meeting he had been instructed not to finalize an already approved concept of imposing a $10,000 limit on donations to the city council but had been directed draft a version with that limit to be considered anew that evening. Yucaipa resident Kevin Miskin told the council that in the most recent election cycles the members of the council had received donations well below the $10,000 threshold and that “I am concerned about the fact that a number of the donors have contracts or have contracts that have been voted on by this city council. I propose that there be an ordinance to change that to make sure that council members actually notify us who they’re voting for.”
Mayor Beaver motioned for the council to adopt Ordinance No. 443, with the $10,000 limit, whereupon Councilman Garner motioned for the council to adopt Ordinance No. 440, with no limit.
Thorp said, “I’m going to second item number one, which is the one for 440 and I want to give an explanation why. I think if we set it as unlimited, it helps with or lends itself to more transparency. People then report it properly. People can pull that information. They can tell you what’s been donated. When you set a limit, if people want to go above that limit, then what happens is a lot of times they will go through a PAC [political action committee]. And it is very difficult at that point to see who and where that money is coming from. So that is my jusitification or my reasoning behind why I would vote for one or why I’m seconding it.”
With Beaver in opposition, Garner’s motion passed 4-to-1.
Some Yucaipa residents expressed concern that a move is on to have property that heretofore has not been developed, including former agricultural land, as well as land that has lain dormant for some time along with as many as seven or eight of the city’s existing mobile home parks, undergo a radical transformation into high-density residential development, such that the population in the 27.8-square mile city will nearly triple from its current 53,834 to 150,000 within the next twenty years. This will, those residents say, greatly profit landowners, land speculators, developers, the building industry, construction material suppliers and those involved in the real estate profession. Garner and Duncan are among those who draw their income from the latter two sectors of the economy. City Manager Chris Mann, who was hired at the instigation of Beaver, Duncan and Garner early last year, has double covalent bonds with the building industry. Residents have told the Sentinel that they believe Graham, under instruction from Mann, arranged to present both versions of the ordinance – that containing the $10,000 limit and no limit – to the council at the February 24 meeting to give the council another opportunity to set the stage for its members’ reception of political donations in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and beyond a million dollars so they can be induced to go along with alterations to the character of the city that will result in certain interests profiting at levels exceeding one hundred million dollars apiece.
It is said that Beaver, who was induced to go along with Duncan and Garner in displacing former City Manager Ray Casey in favor of hiring Mann in January 2023, was somewhat chastened by a recall effort that was launched against him, Duncan and Garner by no fewer than 194 Yucaipa residents last year. That recall effort failed. More recently, Beaver appears to have broken with Duncan and Garner in terms of the coalition they had formed in the earliest stage of Beaver’s mayoral administration. That break came, according to a detailed indication that is extant among various officeholders throughout Southern California, upon Beaver, who is employed as a detective with the Azusa Police Department, learning, through Azusa Police Chief Rocky Wenrick, that the FBI is scrutinizing the City of Yucaipa very closely with an eye to payoffs being provided to city officials. Beaver is highly conscious of the optics that grew out of the sacking of Casey and the hiring of Mann, and is intensely militating to prevent himself from being associated with his former allies, those close to the situation say.
Today, March 15, just prior to press time, the Sentinel received from one of its spies in Yucaipa a report that fast moving developments with regard to the inquiries into allegations of graft at Yucaipa City Hall have resulted in Beaver and Duncan, who must stand for reelection in November to be able to remain in office beyond December, deciding it would be best for them to leave office when their current terms expire.
“The word is Duncan and Beaver aren’t running for Council again,” the well-placed observer told the Sentinel, and then asked, “Does that mean Yucaipa will get a new city manager?”
-Mark Gutglueck

Munsey Tells Congress Of County’s Costs In Fighting Fires On Federal Desert & Mountain Land

San Bernardino County Fire Chief Dan Munsey earlier this year testified before U.S. Congress’s Federal Lands Subcommittee. While the precise matter he testified with regard to did not expressly deal with federal reimbursement to local agencies or governments such as the County of San Bernardino and its fire department for services rendered to and on federal land, the forum did provide Munsey with an opportunity to make the point that local taxpayers are funding fire prevention and other safety-related services on federal land. Munsey also used the time he was in the nation’s capital to lobby some Congress members to consider reimbursing the county for its expenses in fighting wildfires on federal land.
Munsey had gone to Washington, D.C. at the request of Congresswoman Young Kim, who, with Congressman Doug LaMalfa, sponsored House Resolution 6994, also known as the ROUTES Act, which calls for the restoration and maintenance of federal trails, roads, campgrounds, and recreation sites that have been damaged by natural disasters.
The bill addresses emergency hazard tree removal in recreation sites so that those recreation sites can be reopened within two years following the end of the natural disaster that resulted in the land closure. The bill gives a categorical exclusion with regard to environmental rules that apply to projects that repair and restore access to recreation sites damaged by a natural disaster; as well as the removal of hazard trees for the purpose of public safety or improving access to a recreation site; mitigating and reducing soil erosion impacting a recreation site; and or restoring drainage patterns to support a recreation site.
In his remarks, Munsey took the position that restoring access to public lands would facilitate the fire department’s effort to respond to emergencies on federal lands within San Bernardino County. In his appearance on January 31 before the Congressional Agricultural Committee’s Subcommittee on Natural Resources, chaired by Chairman Tom Tiffany, Munsey testified or otherwise stated that there are “12,800,000,000 [twelve billion and 800 million] federal acres within San Bernardino County. We serve 20,000 square miles, 80 percent of our land mass is federal. We respond with seven different federal agencies. We responded to 8,133 calls on an annual basis into federal land. This is $13 million of local funds that are spent on this expenditure. We are an all-hazard fire department. Your U.S. Forest Service and other fire departments by charter, unless there is a FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] declaration, can only respond to wildfire. We found that out during our February [2023] storms that buried our communities in ten feet of snow as we asked for assistance. I want to thank Congresswoman Young Kim along with Congressman [Doug] LaMalfa for introducing this act.”
Munsey noted that “We’re fairly large. We responded to 196,000 all-hazard calls. Our men and women are amongst the hardest-working in the nation. They are often rated in the top ten busiest companies, but see, 196,000 calls are also 196,000 failures because my job, my primary job, isn’t to respond to calls. My primary job is to prevent those calls. This act is important to recreation, certainly, but it’s more important to your local fire service who is responding after hours, who’s responding off-season into federal lands. If we cannot access fires, fires will continue to grow. If we can’t get in there and mitigate certain things like flood control channels, then secondary emergencies will occur.”
Munsey said, “We are known in San Bernardino County for having large destructive wildfires. Last year we had the largest fire in California with the York Fire. The Old and Grand Prix fire destroyed 993 homes and cause six civilian deaths. Then in 2020, the El Dorado Fire resulted in a federal firefighter fatality. Each one of these fires, like fires throughout our nation, has damaged roads, trails, campgrounds and other infrastructure. When I was on the Ranch Two Fire in the Angeles National Forest, I spent four days trying to open a road so I can access the firefighters’ edge. This year [i.e., last year, 2023] when we had our snowstorm, because the road was not maintained to repeated 9-1-1 calls, we were forced to send in helicopters with fuel to fuel back-up generators. We need the ability to get in there and fix these roads. If the federal government is not able to do that, we will certainly undertake that task to prevent emergencies. Debris flow’s a common example of secondary emergencies that we try to prevent. A great example occurred in Forest Falls, California within our communities after the El Dorado Fire. Our wildland crews removed 60 tons of debris from natural flood channels to prevent blockage. However, there still was several instants that resulted in flooding. In September 2022, the flooding unfortunately buried a house and a civilian. In August of 2023, a similar incident occurred in the nearby Seven Oaks community, and an elderly resident was swept away.”
Munsey emphasized that “It has been frustrating to watch fires get bigger and it has been frustrating to not allow local resources to respond to assist the federal government in preventing these emergencies. In San Bernardino county We represent 66 communities. Eighty percent of our land mass is federal land. These communities are surrounded by your land areas. It is very important to us that we have access to these federal lands in order to effectively respond to and prevent emergencies.”
At the time that Munsey made his pitch to Congress on behalf of Congreswoman Kim’s bill, the March 5 vote of the county’s residents with regard to Measure W, which called for rescinding the fire tax imposed on the residents of the unincorporated county areas as well as the cities of Upland, San Bernardino, Twentynine Palms and Needles was pending. Opponents of that tax, known as FP-5, maintained that the county having imposed that tax without a vote of the residents on whom it was imposed, was unconstitutional. Measure W was brought forth by a coalition of government reformers known as the Red Brennan Group. It was opposed by the union for the county’s firefighters. Ultimately, Measure W failed by a margin of 38,023 of 87,392 total votes cast, or 43.51 percent, in favor of the measure to rescind the tax to or 49,369 or 56.49 percent.
In the weeks and months prior to the March 5 vote, in his sojourn around the county, Munsey repeatedly made the point that the county fire department was the primary or indeed the only agency responding to fires on federal land.