By Mark Gutglueck
In December 2015, what had been more than a four-year running battle between the City of Ontario and the City of Los Angeles over the ownership and management of Ontario International drew to a close, with Los Angeles capitulating and agreeing in writing to surrender both the title and operational responsibility for the aerodrome.
Ontario City Councilman Alan Wapner was hailed as not only the prime mover of that victory by which Ontario restored to itself status as the master over its own fate and possessor of what is thought of as its own and the region’s primary economic engine but as the architect of that coup and as someone who had done the heavy lifting by convincing the sophisticated political leadership of one of the world’s major cities that it could not afford a scorched earth war with the much smaller city 37 miles to its east in an adjoining county.
At that point, Wapner had been a member of the city council for more than two decades and was the dean of that panel, having been in office for four more years than the member with the next greatest number of years of seniority, Mayor Paul Leon, who had been appointed to the council four years after Wapner was first elected. Despite Leon’s title and official position wielding the mayor’s gavel and officiating over council meetings, many close to Ontario government perceive Wapner as Ontario’s true leader and the backbone of the community.
Indeed, the airport is Ontario’s proudest and arguably its most valuable asset. In 2012, when the Ontario International Airport Authority was formed in anticipation of Ontario ultimately wresting ownership and control of the airport from the City of Los Angeles and its corporate entity, Los Angeles World Airports, Wapner was chosen to serve as the president of the authority’s board of directors. He has remained in that position ever since. Continue reading →

The Redlands City Council’s unanimous move to extend the city’s employment agreement with City Manager Charles M. Duggan Jr. for three years is generating controversy, with one of its provisions being questioned as an unabashed conflict of interest.
In the aftermath of a tempest that came about with the 2018 suspension and eventual firing of the city’s longtime city manager, Nabar Martinez, the city gravitated toward and on November 5, 2019 hired Duggan, formerly the city manager of Auburn, Alabama and at that time the administrative services division manager and treasurer for the Marin Municipal Water District in Northern California, with an effective start date of January 13, 2020.
Duggan’s current contract is set to expire in January and the council this week moved to secure his services for another three years. Continue reading →

By Bobbi Jo Chavarria
Mayor Acquanetta Warren is using her authority and status to manipulate the political landscape in 208,393-population Fontana to maintain the ironfisted sway she has over City Hall. To keep her ruling coalition intact, she has flooded several electoral zones with ersatz Hispanic candidates to dilute the Latino vote and gerrymandered districts to insulate her handpicked candidates from their strongest rivals. In doing so, she has created pockets of residents who will need to go six years before they will have the ability to choose the member of the city to council to represent them.
Machiavellian though her tactics may be, Warren has played within the rules of politics as they exist under California law.
Remarkably, Warren, a Republican who heads up a ruling council majority that includes three Republican men, has carried this off in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. Continue reading →

 Former Ontario Planning Commissioner Gabe Chavez, who was subsequently appointed to the San Bernardino County Planning Commission, was involved with former Baldwin Park Councilman and West Valley Water District Assistant General Manager Ricardo Pacheco in a bribery and laundering scheme related to the granting of marijuana-related business operating permits, it has been revealed.
Previously, there was a degree of mystery over what the circumstances were and why Chavez had abruptly resigned as a county planning commissioner almost two years ago, in the immediate aftermath of an FBI raid upon his home and office 29 months after he had been appointed to the county land use authority panel.
Chavez has agreed to plead guilty to a federal criminal charge for funneling bribes through his company to a corrupt Baldwin Park politician in exchange for the politician’s votes and influence over his city’s cannabis permitting process, the Justice Department announced today.
Chavez, 65, of Upland, agreed to plead guilty to a one-count criminal information charging him with bribery. Both the information and Chavez’s plea agreement were filed today, Friday October 7, in United States District Court, and Chavez is expected to enter a guilty plea in the coming weeks. Continue reading →

While it is doubtful that the comprehensive mix of water users who fall under the aegis of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority will meet the goal of reducing water drafting in the region by all entities to 7,650 acre-feet by 2040, projects being undertaken by that joint powers authority will bring the area much closer to the idealized balance of water use envisaged by the state.
In 2015, in the aftermath of a four-year running drought and a determination by the California Department of Water Resources that the Indian Wells Valley is one of the 21 basins throughout the State of California in critical overdraft, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority was formed, pursuant to a joint exercise of powers agreement involving Kern County, San Bernardino County, Inyo County, the City of Ridgecrest and the Indian Wells Valley Water District as general members and the United States Navy and the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management as associate members. Continue reading →

Former Adelanto Councilman Jermaine Wright, who sought to use his elected position to personally profit when he and his council colleagues moved to transform the city they led into the “marijuana capital of California,” was sentenced on Monday, October 3 to 60 months in federal prison.
After a six-day trial that began in late spring, Wright was convicted in federal court on June 22 of accepting a $10,000 cash bribe and hiring a man to burn down his restaurant so he could fraudulently collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance proceeds. His offenses qualified as prosecutable under federal statutes in that the city had received federal funds and the attempted arson he was involved in involved an insurance company doing business nationwide, such that his action potentially affected interstate commerce.
Wright, 46, of Riverside, was sentenced by United States District Judge Jesus G. Bernal, who had also presided over his trial. Continue reading →

Two men involved in the public educational system in San Bernardino County were recently convicted of sexual crimes that targeted students.
Former San Bernardino City Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Perry Philip Wiseman on September 29 pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography after prosecutors consented to dismissing a parallel felony child pornography distribution charge that was lodged against him three years ago.
Wiseman, now 45, was the assistant superintendent for human resources when he was arrested at his Highland home on August 16, 2019, based upon evidence developed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department that he had downloaded from the internet sexually explicit images of children. He was placed on administrative leave and later resigned his position with the district.
According to investigators, in his administrative role dealing with the hiring of district personnel, he did not have regular contact with students. Nor did the images found on his computer appear to depict students with the district. Continue reading →