To the plaudits of some county residents and the objection of others, San Bernardino County Supervisors on Tuesday voted to initiate a host of regulations on the short term rentals of residential properties in the county’s unincorporated areas.
In essence the ordinance applies to residential units that are rented out for 30 or fewer days in San Bernardino County’s mountains and desert, Several locations in the desert have long been, and are becoming increasingly more, popular with tourists and so-called “snowbirds” fleeing harsh winter weather elsewhere in the country as well as Canada. The mountain communities have become popular weekend getaways for wealthy residents of San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and lower San Bernardino counties who are looking for a “white weekend” during December, January and February.
There was a previous county ordinance relating to short term rentals in the mountains which the county instituted in 2015. In late 2018 it took up the issue once more with an eye to revamping and updating those regulations. A newly drafted form of the ordinance was considered in a public hearing by the San Bernardino County Planning Commission on August 8, 2019, and continued to September 5, 2019. At the first public hearing, numerous comments were received and the planning commission recommended that the item be continued to allow staff to address the concerns and issues raised by the public at the meeting. Staff made additional changes and provided clarification regarding issues related to accessory dwelling units, advertising, pet restrictions and record keeping. The planning commission met again on September 5 to consider the changes and clarifications made to the proposed amendments. In a 5-to-0 vote, the commission unanimously recommended that the board of supervisors adopt the ordinance. The ordinance came before the board of supervisors this week.
The action by the board of supervisors revises the regulations and extends them to include the desert area. Since the revamping of the regulations was first taken up, several changes to the proposal were made, including amendments that were tacked on by the board during its discussion before the vote on Tuesday.
By means of an ordinance amending Title 8 of the county code, applying to those sections relating to short-term residential rentals and accessory dwelling units, the board’s action created a permitting process by which property owners must register the property as being utilized for rentals on a less than continuous basis, meaning practically for thirty days or less. Those short-term rental permits are to be renewed every two years. The ordinance requires that registration of a property as a short-term rental and its permitting must take place in written or digital form before it is used for that specified purpose. The ordinance requires that registration materials and acknowledgment must be signed by the renter and kept on file during the term of the permit. The ordinance further mandates that owners of the units maintain records to document compliance with the applicable elements of the county code. The ordinance provides the county with the authority to revoke, based upon violations, a short-term rental permit. A permit revocation recorded against an owner will then entail a follow-up application fee of twice that for a permit to undo the revocation. A violation of the ordinance committed by a short-term occupant of the property accrues to the detriment of the property owner, which county officials believe will be an incentive to have the owners ensure compliance with the rules by their tenants. Tenant violation can trigger the suspension of the short-term residence permit for the unit in which that tenant is staying.
In most, though not all cases, short-term rental units are ones owned by so-called absentee landlords, that is, ones that are not occupied by the owners and are not proximate or co-located to the domicile of the owners. In a minority of cases, the properties in question involve accessory dwelling units, those being ones that are located on a property on which the owner resides or on which another long term residential unit exists.
While generally the ordinance, in the case of desert properties, is creating regulations that previously did not exist and in the case of mountain properties is tightening existing restrictions, in one respect the new ordinance is liberalizing the county policy.  At present, on properties containing both a primary residence and an accessory dwelling unit, which can be variously referred to as a guest house or a granny flat, only one of the units can be made available as a short-term rental. The language of the ordinance considered by the board on Tuesday called for dispensing with a restriction that called for accessory dwelling units being rented for a term of 30 days or longer, which had precluded accessory dwelling units from being utilized as short-term rentals. The new language allows accessory dwelling units to be rented on a short-term basis in both the mountain and desert regions, provided that one or more of the units on the parcel is occupied by the property owner or his or her agent. At Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe’s suggestion, the board altered that language to allow both accessory dwelling units and the primary residence on a property to serve as short-term rental units as long as the property is two acres or larger.
The new regulation calls for the units rented to have placards, signs or notices that provide the renters with county standards for the rentals in writing, including the phone number for the county’s 24/7 short-term rental complaint line.
The ordinance requires that the owners of short-term rental properties arrange to have trash service for each of the rental units. This is of some concern to many property owners, as the trash service is a windfall to the trash hauling companies with franchises in the applicable areas. In many cases, the rental units will be vacant for months during the year. Nevertheless, the owners of the units will need to pay for trash pick-up when no refuse is being generated on the properties. Trash franchisees are among the heftiest of contributors to the supervisors’ political war chests.
The ordinance provides for more variegated maximum occupancy standards than were previously contained in the county’s prior regulations, such that the three categories of short-term rental units have been increased to seven, with 20 persons being the maximum. Parking standards were expanded to provide clarification that vehicles of renters shall be parked on the property of the short-term residential rental unit. These latter elements of the code revision appears to be angled toward preventing the units from serving as a hosting ground for parties or extremely large social gatherings with scores of people or even hundreds in attendance. Moreover, road and street widths in many mountain communities are narrow, and the proliferation of cars parked at certain junctures along them has created circumstances in which the streets or roads become impassable.
The ordinance added a prohibition of outdoor fires in the mountain region, that the interior and exterior of a short-term unit be kept free of hazardous materials, and a requirement that spas/hot tubs be covered and locked when not in use and that the spas or tubs be maintained in sanitary conditions.
A somewhat controversial element of the ordinance is that the ordinance provides the county with the power to issue and serve an administrative subpoena to obtain specific information regarding short-term rentals.
The sheer numbers of short-term rentals have increased substantially in the mountain and desert communities. In neighborhoods of some communities, including Mt. Baldy, Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead, Lake Gregory, Crestline, Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley, tourist activity has mounted during certain periods. Depending on the location, a property owner can rent out a property to one or more occupants on four weekends and make two to three times the amount of money that could be made renting the property on a long-term basis over a comparable one-month period. This has created “transitory neighborhoods” in which homeowners who live on their property are at times surrounded by homes or cabins which are owned by investors and occupied by “neighbors” who are not in place long enough so their acquaintance can be made by the actual inhabitants of those districts.
While the permanent residents of these areas were supportive of the county’s efforts at regulating the short-term rental market, the rules put in place hold little promise of undoing the transitory nature of the districts in question. Conversely, some San Bernardino County property owners in these districts no longer value their mountain or desert properties as their own domiciles but are using the residences they have there as a means of generating income by renting them out at a relatively high rate for short periods of time, essentially converting their units into hotels. They resent the governmental interference in their property ownership and the fashion in which they are utilizing it.
Supervisor Dawn Rowe, more than any of her colleagues, appeared focused on reducing the new ordinance’s restrictions such that the county’s interference in the operation of short-term rentals was as unobtrusive as possible. She requested, and her board colleagues went along with, for example, dispensing with the requirement that short-term rental owners post evacuation maps on the back of every bedroom door as long as one such map was in place on the rental unit’s main door.
The rules adopted Tuesday apply only to permanent structures that are utilized as short-term rental units and accessory dwelling units, including stand alone homes, cabins, guesthouses and casitas.
The board is to consider more specialized restrictions with regard to trailers, yurts and teepees at some future date.
The ordinance is due for a confirming vote, referred to as a second reading, at the board’s November 19 meeting. The ordinance will go into effect 30 days hence, putting it in place as of December 18, time for the peak Christmas-to-New Year occupancy period in the mountain communities.
-Mark Gutglueck

Just short of three-and-a-half years after the state deadline for the Yucca Valley community to do so, the initial phase of the town’s sewer system began operation.
With the inauguration of the system on November 4, Yucca Valley becomes the 23rd of the county’s 24 towns and cities with a municipal/public agency water treatment system. Twentynine Palms remains the last of San Bernardino County’s municipalities dependent on septic systems, although the Marine Corps base there has a water treatment plant devoted to the primary structures for the military-related facilities there.
Had the matter in Yucca Valley been left to local officials, the town and the entirety of Morongo Valley would not have made the transition to the sanitation system. When the town incorporated in 1991, it did so as a limited service municipality, and was  dependent upon the county for a significant portion of its public function. The town contracted with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement and with the San Bernardino County Fire Department, which operates out of Station 41 located in the heart of town and Station 42 in the Yucca Mesa area, for fire protection and emergency medical service. Another fire station, operated by the California Division of Forestry, is also present in the town. All 40.02 square miles within the town limits were devoid of any sort of water treatment facilities, and all properties utilized septic systems.
Yucca Valley underwent its first major expansion in the 1950s when Norman J. Essig improved the roads around the region’s major arterial, Highway 62, while venturing substantial capital toward that end. The community’s growth, such as it was throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and after its incorporation, has in large measure involved residents without substantial financial means, families of military personnel and retirees, those subsisting at or very near poverty level and intent on getting away from urbanization and what it represented, and people fleeing the expense of life and escalating property values elsewhere. An estimated 40 percent of those residing in Yucca Valley live on fixed incomes. Yucca Valley ranks as the second most impoverished among San Bernardino County’s 24 municipalities, as measured by median income per capita or per household.
Moreover, the town, which now stands at just under 22,000 population, has served as a magnet for the devout and politically conservative such that it boasts two heavily attended major Protestant Christian congregations in town, Grace Community Church, where Roger Mayes is the pastor, and Joshua Springs Calvary Chapel, where the Reverend Jerel Hagerman is the pastor, along with St Mary of the Valley Catholic Church.
Joshua Springs Calvary Chapel boasts a membership approaching 3,000 and Reverend Hagerman can deliver somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 votes for a candidate or for or against any measure that appears on the town ballot.
Both Hagerman and Mayes are credited with being the actual co-regents behind the throne in Yucca Valley. Their sermons set not only the spiritual and moral tone of the town, but appear to define its political tenor as well. Both pastors share a born-again zealotry and conservative political ethos that carries itself beyond the two or so hours they have the attention of their parishioners on Sunday, but into everyday life and into the halls of power down at Yucca Valley’s civic center, as well. Indeed, both Hagerman and Mayes were instrumental in launching the political careers of their sons, both of whom served on the Yucca Valley Town Council.
Isaac Hagerman, Jerel’s son, was for a short time a member of the town council that effectively ignored or resisted for so long the state’s dire warnings with regard to the deterioration in the quality of the town’s water supply, and championed the further growth of Yucca Valley by providing developers with carte blanche to build aggressively without incorporating urban land use standards.
Chad Mayes, the then-youthful mayor of Yucca Valley who captured his position on the town council in some measure because of the advantage conferred upon him by his father’s position as a leading religious figure in the community, promoted limited government throughout his tenure in office before he resigned to become a creature of government himself as chief of staff to San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford in 2010.
The town was and remains as one of the most heavily Republican areas in the State of California. At the time of the town’s incorporation, just under half of its voters were registered Republicans, which was more than double the 22 percent of the town’s residents who were registered Democrats. In 2009, when after more than three decades for the first time the number of registered Democrats eclipsed the number of registered Republicans in San Bernardino County, Yucca Valley remained a bastion of Republicanism, with 45 percent of its voters registered as Republicans, dwarfing the 25 percent who were registered as Democrats. In 2016, the town remained solidly Republican, with 4,336 or 42.1 percent affiliated with the GOP and 2,810 voters or 27.3 percent registered as Democrats. As of this week, 4,535 of the town’s 11,765 voters or 38.5 percent are Republicans, and 3,152 or 26.8 percent are Democrats.
As early as 1973, when the area’s population was hovering below 5,000, there was a push to outfit the core of Yucca Valley with a rudimentary sewer system, one that would extend only to the town’s modest commercial area and the relatively sparse residential neighborhoods that surrounded it. But for the townsfolk, the more than $5 million a water treatment facility and skeleton sewer system would cost was well beyond their fiscal means at that time.
With the growth of the area, the municipal incorporation movement culminated in the November 1991 formation of the town. Civic officials continued to reflect and embody the values of their constituents, who eschewed big government and excessive regulation and put a premium on maintaining the town’s rural character. There was little collective will to pave any roads other than the town’s main thoroughfares and many town streets remain dusty trails to this day. A modern, urban sewer system was not an imperative. Town officials paradoxically accepted with open arms most developers who expressed an interest in Yucca Valley. Over the first 25 years of the town’s history as an incorporated entity, builders were given what was essentially carte blanche to build aggressively without incorporating urban land use standards.
Thus, the septic systems that had proliferated in Yucca Valley for three-quarters of a century remained the accoutrement of homes and businesses built within the 40 square mile town limits.
Ten years after incorporation, Yucca Valley’s officials were notified by the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board that the lack of a sewage treatment system had resulted in nitrates and other pollutants including pharmaceuticals and salts accumulating in the water table that presaged health threats if the matter was not addressed. Simultaneously, the Hi-Desert Water District, which serves the Yucca Valley community, experienced nitrate traces in district wells.
With the town’s continued reliance on septic systems, the United States Geological Survey calculated that nearly 287 million gallons of untreated wastewater from septic tanks were washing into the water table beneath Yucca Valley every 12 months.
In 2007, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency responsible for protecting water quality, adopted a resolution identifying the town of Yucca Valley as one of 66 communities throughout the state with groundwater threatened by the continuing overuse of septic systems. The board further declared Yucca Valley as a top priority for eliminating the use of septic systems, meaning Yucca Valley’s was considered one of the five most seriously threatened significantly-sized water supplies in the state.
This triggered resistance from local politicians and community leaders. Paul Cook, a former Marine Corps colonel stationed at the 29 Palms Marine Corps Base who retired in Yucca Valley, was elected mayor there and then moved on to serve in the Assembly representing the then-65th District, along with Chad Mayes, the son of Grace Community Church Pastor Roger Mayes who was a Cook protégé and succeeded him as mayor, deplored the state’s effort to impose on the town an unfunded mandate.
As the region’s representative in Sacramento, Cook effectively attacked those advocating for the cessation of the Morongo Valley’s reliance on septic systems, referring to the demand that Yucca Valley transition to a sewer system as “just another unfunded state mandate.” He dwelt at length upon the cost of the project and what he considered his constituents’ inability to bear that cost.
“We have to look at this from some perspective of a cost analysis,” Cook said. “This is never going to happen. We have to remember what type of community this is. We got to be very, very careful when we start talking $125 million to people who cannot afford it because we do not have the businesses and the state’s not going to give you the money.”
Cook bragged he would stand up to then-Governor Jerry Brown and tell him, “In Yucca Valley, we want you to declare Yucca Valley a historical site because we’re going to be a ghost town!”
With both Cook and Mayes characterizing the call for the town to modernize its infrastructure as the intrusion of big government into the province of local control and autonomy, the community essentially fended off, or ignored, the looming collective responsibility facing the town.
In addition, the Reverend Roger Mayes was directly involved in the water quality issue, having served multiple terms, and to the present time continuing to serve, as a member of the Hi-Desert Water District Board of Directors.
By 2010, Yucca Valley’s population had zoomed to 20,700, an increase of 3,835 or 22.7 percent over the 16,865 town residents counted in the 2000 Census.
Convinced after years of neglect on the part of the town’s politicians that the local leadership would not address the water contamination problem, state officials in 2011 issued a mandate that a sewer system be constructed in Yucca Valley. The town was informed it had only five years to take a definitive step toward water quality compliance.
The Regional Water Quality Control Board at that point imposed three progressive phases of septic discharge prohibitions on Yucca Valley. Under the state mandate, phase 1 of a wastewater system was to be completed or significantly on its way to completion by May 19, 2016 or enforcement action was to be initiated. The first phase of the project was to cover the downtown area of Yucca Valley, the area most proximate to the heart of the groundwater basin. Similarly, phase 2 was to be completed or nearly completed by May 19, 2019 and phase 3 was to be completed by May 19, 2022. The last two phases lie further out where future concentrated development is most likely to occur.
If the mandates were not met, the state vowed to use draconian measures to obtain compliance, by either methodically moving to seal off every septic system in use within each of the specified areas, essentially rendering the affected homes uninhabitable, or to otherwise utilize a tactic similar to what had been employed against Los Osos, another community that failed to come into compliance after repeated warnings from the state. In Los Osos, the entire community became subject to an enforcement action, which was done in a lottery fashion, in which random property owners were selected to receive cease and desist orders with the potential of daily fines for non-compliance. They were ordered to discontinue the discharge from their septic systems, seal them off and pump them at regular intervals. If they did not, they were subjected to fines of up to $5,000 per day.
The state’s threat of action carried with it the very real possibility that Yucca Valley would be rendered into the ghost town Cook had referenced.
In 2012, Cook was elected Congress.
Just prior to leaving the Assembly, Cook acknowledged that building the sewer system was a desirable goal, but maintained the state was overstepping its authority by requiring that it be built on the local dime. Somewhat belatedly, he initiated an effort to obtain an infusion of state money to assist with the construction of the project but achieved no traction on that before he left Sacramento for Washington, D.C.
Local officials were yet resistant to taking immediate action, as they lacked the financial wherewithal to effectuate the construction of a sewer system. Nor did the town have the will to impose any kind of building or development moratorium that would stabilize the problem.
In 2012, town officials nevertheless made a gesture toward complying with the mandate by putting Measure U on that year’s November ballot. If passed, Measure U would have imposed a one-cent sales tax within Yucca Valley. Town officials said the lion’s share of those proceeds would go toward building the sewer system. Though Roger Mayes and his counterpart, Jerel Hagerman, most likely had it within their power to deliver enough votes to make Measure U pass, Measure U failed at the polls.
For a while, town and the water district officials were able to delay the imposition of state mandates by forging a memorandum of agreement with the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Hi-Desert Water District to allow interim permits for new septic systems while planning for a wastewater system proceeded. The consequences of what the town was doing could not be suspended indefinitely.
For another two years, local officials dithered, with little in the way of tangible progress being made other than determining that a water treatment plant and a collection system entailing over 400,000 linear feet of pipe would at a minimum be needed to satisfy the state demand, together with the town and water district officials having undertaken an effort to inform local residents of the problem and having completed cost comparisons on paper. The primary cost projection identified the difference between having a contractor undertake building the system and having the water district manage the project – between $133,248,401 and $140,651,089 for the design and construction work to be performed by Atkins North America and somewhere between $111,539,901 and $117,736,562 for the district to construct the project using Atkins North America’s proposed design.
One major challenge facing the town was the bifurcation of responsibility, i.e., governmental authority, particularly as applies to the delivery of water to the populace and the corresponding requirement of maintaining water quality. Yucca Valley, far from being a full service municipality, did not have its own municipal water division, with that function carried out by the Hi-Desert Water District.
In 2014, Chad Mayes was elected to the California Assembly. Up to that point, Chad Mayes had a relatively limited window on the world. His experience consisted primarily of his sheltered childhood; his college education at Liberty University, a private, conservative evangelical Christian institution in Lynchburg, Virginia where he had majored in government; his time on the Yucca Valley Town Council; and his work for Rutherford. He had been, like Cook, resistant to the concept of a mandated water treatment system in Yucca Valley. And like his father, the Reverend Roger Mayes, his religious tenets equated Godliness with goodliness and virtue with conservatism and conservatism with Republicanism. He was philosophically averse to big government imposing its “liberal” will on the individual or smaller government. The edict on high from Sacramento, was, in this view, a manifestation of big government in the form of an “unfunded state mandate.”
Once he had oriented himself in Sacramento, a thoroughly Democratic place, however, and began rubbing elbows with others outside the echo chamber to which he was accustomed, he came to realize that for the vast majority of California and its population, indoor plumbing rather than outhouses and modern sewer systems instead of septic tanks were the norm. On his trips back to Yucca Valley, he had an opportunity to speak to his father, convincing him that, all things considered, it might not be in the long term interest of the residents of Yucca Valley to continue to micturate and defecate in their water supply.
Young Mayes’ intercession with his father had a salutary effect. Ultimately, the Hi-Desert Water District would become the lead agency on the construction of Yucca Valley’s wastewater treatment system. It had taken years for the political resolve to form to move ahead, and move ahead decisively, with the project. With the May 2016 deadline  approaching and with it the prospect of the town being forced into oblivion, the Hi-Desert Water District in February 2015 awarded a $2.8 million contract to Riverside-based Carollo Engineers to manage the construction of Yucca Valley’s wastewater collection system and treatment facility. In March 2015 it acted to secure from the California Water Resources Control Board a $142,349,314 one percent interest loan to help in the financing of the construction of the sewer system in Yucca Valley.
Roughly $31 million of that was earmarked to construct the central treatment facility into which wastewater pumped in from pipes from throughout the town is subjected to ultraviolet light and then forced through a series of membranes and filters. The water thus treated is then put into aerating and settling ponds, and the water filtered one last time through the ground on its way down to recharge the aquifer. Roughly $104 million will be used to construct the pipe system through-out the town.
In obtaining the loan from the California Water Resources Control Board, the Hi-Desert Water District agreed to repay the state about $5.5 million each year with the revenue from assessments to be imposed on Yucca Valley property owners. The water board and the water district gambled by entering into the tentative arrangement for the loan, in that Yucca Valley’s property owners had not at that point agreed to the formation of an assessment district. The water district in the Spring of 2015 prepared mail ballots that were then sent to the town’s property owners. In this way, the district met the legal requirement that the tax not be imposed without the consent of those to be taxed. Under California law, the district was free to count any ballots not returned as having been cast in favor of the assessment district’s formation. When, by the deadline, the district received back fewer than fifty percent of the ballots designated with votes against the formation of the assessment district, the district was free to proceed.
While technically, the district had not completed the first phase of the project by the May 2016 deadline imposed by the state in 2011, the town was given a pass. The district’s plan to proceed with the project in three phases satisfied that state that the community was making a good faith effort toward the mandated goals. Single-family homes in phase one, which extends to the central core of the town, are now paying $100 per month, consisting of a $62 to $64 assessment and a $36 per month wastewater treatment fee. Homes in phases two and three are paying only the assessment charge, but will need to start paying the sewer treatment fee once they are connected to the system.
The commercial property assessment is similar to that levied upon residential properties but is adjusted upwards on heavier users of the system.
Groundbreaking for the facility, located on land south of Twentynine Palms Highway and west of La Contenta Road, was held in October 2016. Chad Mayes and Cook were present at the ground-breaking, perhaps the most significant public event in memory relating to the community where their political careers began. Also on hand at the groundbreaking was then-California State Senator Jean Fuller. Fuller is a Republican who had achieved election by tapping into the same anti-big government sentiment that was used by Cook and Chad Mayes in their successful campaigns for state and federal office. Nevertheless, Fuller had not staked quite as much publicly in assailing the sewer system as had Cook.
Without saying so in so many words, Fuller told the people of Yucca Valley they should congratulate themselves for setting aside their anti-government and anti-tax philosophies to embrace the project.
“Thank you for doing this,” she said. “You are leading the path for the future and you are truly saving your children.” Fuller called the project Yucca Valley’s “legacy for the future.”
The members of the Hi Desert Water District’s board, including Roger Mayes, were lauded for their “vision, community-mindedness and teamwork.”
This week, on Monday, at the home of Jason Mahaffey on Indio Avenue at the eastern end of town, the inaugural first flush into the system was made. Mahaffey was given the opportunity to christen the system in part as a consequence of his ownership of Acton Pumping, which is active in constructing the plumbing and completing the hook-ups for the first set of residences tying into the system.
With that first use, the town’s sewer system, meaning the core, central component consisting of the wastewater treatment plant and the piping extending into what is now a limited set of neighborhoods, went online.
Estimates are that at present up to a dozen homes per day can be added to the system. That number will escalate. The Hi-Desert Water District has qualified 25 licensed contractors to install connections to the system and seal off old septic tanks. Homeowners who utilize one of those contractors certified by the Hi-Desert Water District to make the septic to sewer transition are eligible for a state-sponsored 30-year 1.8 percent interest loan available to finance the connection, as long as they obtain at least two bids on the project. Connection estimates generally run between $2,500 to $4,000, depending largely on the distance of the domicile to the street. Most of the contractors are prepared to apply with the town for a septic system abandonment permit. In some cases the septic tanks are removed from the ground entirely. In other cases, the contractor will leave them in place but pump them out, puncture the bottom and remove the top or cap.  A trench is dug across the homeowner’s property to lay in pipe and make the sewer line hook-up. The installations have to be scheduled ahead of time so a town code enforcement officer is on hand to inspect and sign off on the integrity of the pipe and connection before the trench containing the pipe is filled.
-Mark Gutglueck

The Mojave Water Agency yesterday initiated operation of its Deep Creek Hydroelectric Clean-Energy System.
The facility, located on the grounds of the Mojave Water Agency’s Central Operations Center on Deep Creek Road in Apple Valley, utilizes gravity and the constant flow of water at that point traveling through the California Aqueduct and diverted to it by a series of pipelines to generate 820-kilowatts of electricity.
The water rushes through a 32-foot-by-40-foot building, in which is contained a hydroelectric turbine generator. The hydroelectric system, which cost $4.3 million to design and construct under the direction of Mojave Water Agency Engineering Director Darrell Reynolds, will reduce the electricity provision need that would otherwise be met by the burning of fossil fuels, thus reducing by 4,540 metric tons the carbon dioxide that would have been emitted into the atmosphere by a generating station elsewhere in the Victor Valley.
Seen in other terms, the hydroelectric system will reduce the volume of air pollution equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from 972 passenger vehicles, while it supplies .0009879518072289157, slightly less than one-thousandth of the 830 megawatts generated at the High Desert Power Plant in Victorville.
Mojave Water Agency officials participated in the project with an eye toward reducing the agency’s carbon footprint and reaching the State of California’s stated target of having half of all of its energy supplied by renewable sources by 2030.
The electrical power generated is conveyed into Southern California Edison’s grid. Mojave Water Agency officials maintain the cost of the project will be recouped over the coming decade through reduced outlays for energy purchases.

Velvet really explodes during fall, and it pops up in different forms. There are striped velvet pieces, metallic, and ribbed velvet. And as it starts to cool down, velvet tops can keep you warm. A pair of velvet boots with jeans are a bonus to any outfit. From dresses to trousers, velvet is fun to wear,  even on your feet. Glamour and elegance are combined when you add velvet to your outfit. It’s splendid at parties and great as an accent day piece. Velvet is holiday perfect and can be worn through romantic  February.  So this season, whether you suit up or dress down, get your velvet on. The season is full of cozy, and with velvet in tow it is sure to be chic!

“I loved ‘Blue Velvet.”  Sheryl Lee

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the November 1 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 11-01-19

By Mark Gutglueck
In a mind-bending turn of events, former Adelanto Mayor Rich Kerr is being sued by the lawyer who less than a month ago was representing him in a lawsuit.
The lawyer and the law firm of which he is a member bear a relationship to one of the principals involved in the political corruption and bribery scandal pervading the four-year-long and yet ongoing effort to transition Adelanto to a marijuana-based economy.  Precisely what bearing the falling out between Kerr and that law firm will have on the still-ongoing investigation into public corruption in Adelanto is yet unclear. An unverified report is that Kerr has crossed over to begin a dialogue with federal investigators, one in which he is revealing the depth of depredation that has bedeviled Adelanto for the last four years, in an effort to insulate himself from reprisals and gain for himself lenient treatment from prosecutors.
Kerr, a former Marine, in his maiden sojourn into politics in 2014 was successful in ousting incumbent then-Adelanto Mayor Cari Thomas, Accompanying Kerr’s victory were those of real estate agent John Woodard and Charley Glasper, who defeated then-incumbents Steve Baisden and Charles Valvo. That clean sweep came less than a year-and-a-half after the Adelanto City Council in June 2013 made a declaration of fiscal emergency, a move considered preparatory toward a declaration of municipal bankruptcy.
Shortly after the troika came into office, Kerr and Woodard, in cooperation with then-City councilman Jermaine Wright, embarked on an aggressive program of economic revitalization in Adelanto, the initial centerpiece of which was that the city would welcome cultivators of medical marijuana to set up operation within a circumscribed area in the city’s industrial zone. The city’s policy started out as one which limited marijuana-related businesses to indoor agricultural operations. With Councilman Ed Camargo in constant opposition and Glasper’s lukewarm support, the city council rationalized the approach as one that was on the cutting edge of accepting California’s manifesting liberalization of its cannabis-restriction laws toward the legalization of marijuana first for medicinal purposes and then subsequently, in 2016, for use as an intoxicant. By getting in on the floor of the marijuana revolution, Kerr, Woodard and Wright maintained, Adelanto could allow local businesses to get a corner on the marijuana market and simultaneously, through a taxing and permitting regime, create a revenue stream by which the city could eradicate its deficit.
Ultimately, the city amended its approach from permitting just indoor marijuana farms within city limits to licensing medical marijuana dispensaries, cannabis product derivation and manufacturing concerns, packaging and delivery operations, as well as pot shops where the end product is to be sold to consumers.
Very soon after the city reversed its long extant restrictions on any activity relating to marijuana availability, significant numbers of city staff made an exodus from City Hall, either voluntarily because they disapproved of the direction in which the city was headed and they felt the city was cutting corners in the manner in which it was undertaking the legalization process, or they were terminated outright because the ruling coalition of Kerr, Woodard and Wright considered them to be obstructing the city’s new polices.
Accompanying the shift were suspicions that some among the influx of marijuana and cannabis entrepreneurs into the city were paying certain city officials for favorable positions and treatment within the incipient Adelanto marijuana marketplace. In 2017, Wright, after he accepted $10,000 in cash from an undercover FBI agent holding himself out to be a marijuana distribution business applicant and in return offered an assurance he would assist in warding off the city’s regulators, was arrested and charge by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with bribetaking.
Suspicions dogged Kerr and Woodard, as well. Those suspicions were steeped in circumstances that suggested quid pro quo arrangements existed by which some of the city’s elected leaders were being given money in exchange for approving cannabis-related business license applications or for rezoning property owned or tied up by those applicants to allow businesses involving the cultivation or sale of marijuana to legally operate there.
Among these were the circumstances involving Kerr and David Serrano.
At the April 27, 2016 council meeting, Kerr  signaled that the city might allow an alteration of its policy to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to set up operations in Adelanto in the future. Present at that meeting was Manny Serrano, who was the spokesman for the High Desert Cannabis Association and the brother of David Serrano, an attorney affiliated, variously, with the Law Offices of David Serrano and the Professional Lawyers Group, San Bernardino.
On September 22, 2016, David R. Serrano and his wife, Julia Orama-Serrano, initiated the purchase of the Jet Room property, consisting of a 2.23 acre lot and an existing structure at 17499 Adelanto Road, the northeast corner of Adelanto Road and Joshua Avenue. The Jet Room had formerly been a bar that catered to airmen stationed at nearby George Air Force Base prior to the base being shuttered by the Department of Defense in December 1992. The Jet Room had struggled thereafter and went out of business in the late 1990s, laying fallow for nearly two decades. On October 3, 2016 David and Julia Serrano entered into escrow with the owner, Dmitri Manucharyan, paying $450,000 for the property. Their declared intention at the time was to convert the building into a law office.
On October 26, 2016, the Adelanto City Council gave initial approval to Ordinance 553, which allowed medical marijuana dispensaries into the City of Adelanto. A series of delays kept Ordinance 555 from coming up for the second confirming vote it needed to go into effect until May 2017. Prior to that second reading of the ordinance, on November 29, 2016, the city council held a public discussion relating to the pending passage of Ordinance 553 allowing the sale of medical marijuana in Adelanto, in particular the boundaries of the city’s marijuana dispensary overlay zones, which were to govern where dispensaries could be located. As a result of that discussion, the council articulated the intent to expand the marijuana dispensary overlay zone to include the  property at 17499 Adelanto Road. The same day, November 29, 2016, David Serrano’s wife, Julia Orama-Serrano, cut Kerr a $5,000 check drawn against the Law Offices of David Serrano Real Estate Trust Account, with the designation “Adv Xmas Fund” in the memo line. Kerr deposited the check into one of his accounts and did not report receiving the money on his campaign fund reporting documents filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission.
On January 14, 2017, the Adelanto Grand Prix was staged at and around Stater Bros. Stadium in Adelanto. The promotional event involved a number of local entrepreneurs and had as four of its sponsors Malcolm Smith Racing, American Motorcycle Association, Grand Prix Series and So. Cal. M.C. Many local personages and officials took part in the festivities, including Kerr. That afternoon, Kerr, who was reportedly intoxicated, was riding his own dirt bike outside Stater Bros. Stadium in Adelanto and was being trailed by his children and grandchildren within the Grand Prix area when his front wheel hit a soft spot in the dirt and he was thrown from the cycle. He broke his left collarbone, cracked several ribs and suffered a partially collapsed lung. Kerr was laid up for several days thereafter, but was able to go to City Hall and function out of his office there within ten days of the mishap.
On February 16, 2017, David Serrano submitted $1,000 in fees to the City of Adelanto, in conjunction with a “comprehensive plan” for the Jet Room at 17499 Adelanto Road which envisioned the premises to be used as a marijuana dispensary.
On February 27, 2017, a check for $10,000 was made out to Kerr against the Professional Lawyers Group, San Bernardino account bearing the indication “Plaintiff Advance” in the memo line. Kerr deposited the check into one of his bank accounts on February 28, 2017. Kerr did not disclose the $10,000 from the Professional Lawyers Group on any of his campaign disclosure filings for 2017.
On March 31, 2017, another check drawn against the Law Offices of David Serrano Real Estate Trust Fund, this one for $1,348, was written to the City of Adelanto with the phrase “Jet Law 17499 Adelanto Road Adelanto” in the memo line.
On May 17, 2017, a revised version of Ordinance 553 relating to allowing marijuana sales to take place in Adelanto, which updated the version of the ordinance first voted upon on October 26. 2016, was given its first reading, passing by a vote of 3-to-1, with Kerr voting in support of the ordinance. That version of the ordinance included a general plan amendment, which expanded the marijuana dispensary overlay zone to include the Jet Room property in the district where the operation of marijuana dispensaries is permitted. Kerr did not disclose having received, at that point, $15,000 from David Serrano and his wife or the entities with which David Serrano is affiliated. Nor did he make an effort to recuse himself from the vote which had benefited David Serrano and the entities with which Serrano was affiliated.
On May 24, 2017, the second and final reading of and the vote on the revised version of Ordinance 553 took place at that evening’s city council meeting, passing 3-to-1, with Councilman John Woodard abstaining and Councilman Ed Camargo voting no.  That vote included the acceptance of the dispensary overlay zones in which the Jet Room property was included. Kerr again supported the ordinance allowing the operation of marijuana dispensaries in the city and ratifying the marijuana dispensary overlay zones, benefiting David Serrano.
At the same May 24 meeting, the city council passed Resolution 17-12 on a unanimous 5-to-0 vote, establishing the Adelanto Cannabis Dispensary Permit Committee to be charged with determining which applicants for medical marijuana dispensary permits would be granted any of what was then supposed to be a limit of four such permits.
On June 16, 2017, another check for $10,000 written against the Professional Lawyers Group, San Bernardino account was made out to Kerr, bearing “Advance” in the memo line. Kerr deposited the check into one of his bank accounts on June 21, 2017. Kerr did not disclose the $10,000 from the Professional Lawyers Group on any of his campaign disclosure filings for 2017.
On August 23, 2017, then-City Manager Gabriel Elliott publicly announced how the Adelanto Cannabis Dispensary Permit Committee was too be fleshed out. The committee, Elliott said, would consist of the mayor and the mayor pro tem, the city planner and two members of the public to be chosen by the city manager. That same day, August 23, 2017, a check was written for $10,000 against the Professional Lawyers Group, San Bernardino account to Kerr, bearing the memo “Advance”  and was deposited into one of Kerr’s bank accounts. Kerr did not disclose the $10,000 as a campaign contribution on any of his Fair Political Practices forms for 2017.
Less than three months later, Councilman Wright was arrested by the FBI. The following year, on May 8, 2018, FBI and IRS agents armed with search warrants descended upon Adelanto City Hall, the Jet Room medical marijuana dispensary, Kerr’s Adelanto home and the San Bernardino Offices of the Professional Lawyers Group, in which a portion of David Serrano’s legal practice is based. Though Kerr was handcuffed while the search of his home was ongoing, he was not arrested.
While Kerr, Woodard, and the woman they succeeded in installing as Wright’s replacement on the council in a special election held in conjunction with June 2018 California Primary Election, Joy Jeannette, continued to dominate municipal function in Adelanto in the summer and most of the fall of 2018, on November 6, 2018, Kerr and Woodard, both of whom had sustained considerable adverse publicity over the fallout from Wright’s arrest and reports of irregularities attending the marijuanification of Adelanto, failed to gain reelection and were turned out of office. Glasper, who at that point was in the throes of senility, did not seek reelction. Three newcomers, Gabriel Reyes Stevevonna Evans and Gerardo Hernandez, were elected in their stead, the second time in four years that there was a clean sweep in the Adelanto City Council race.
The FBI probe into issues of public corruption was yet ongoing. Difficulties for Adelanto officials were manifesting, in no small measure because the tax revenue that Kerr, Woodard, Wright and subsequently Jeannette vowed would accompany the start up of dozens of marijuana-based and cannabis-related businesses had not manifested, with indications that the payment of permit and licensing fees had been waived for many of those businesses at the direction of the city’s politicians.
There was intense scrutiny of David Serrano. When he and his wife had made the purchase of the Jet Room, Woodard had served as the broker on the sale, picking up a substantial commission. Woodard had then participated in the discussions and council decisions that expanded the city’s zoning for marijuana-based businesses to include the Jet Room property. Many saw this as an open-and-shut-case of a violation of California Government Code Section 1090, which prohibits an elected official from participating in a governmental decision in which he or she has a financial interest. There were other questionable city actions during Kerr’s tenure as mayor which had a beneficial impact on Serrano’s business prospects.
The MJRX Corporation is a creature of David Serrano. MJRX owns the building at 1300 N. Mountain View Avenue in San Bernardino where Professional Lawyers Group is located. David Serrano is, or at least was, the general counsel of Professional Lawyers Group. MJRX is also the parent company of the Jet Room Dispensary. In addition to the application for operating the dispensary at the Jet Room, David Serrano through the Professional Lawyers Group incorporated six corporate entities with the California Secretary of State’s Office on June 12, 2017, each with the general stated purpose of medical marijuana cultivation or manufacturing. Those six corporations are Beaver Farms East Inc., Beaver Extraction East Inc., Beaver Farms South Inc., Beaver Extraction South Inc., Beaver Farms North Inc. and Beaver Extraction North Inc. All six corporations used the address of Professional Lawyers Group, 1300 N. Mountain View Avenue in San Bernardino as a mailing address and used addresses at 16175 Beaver Road, 16179 Beaver Road and 16173 Beaver Road in Adelanto as their operational addresses. On September 26, 2016, David Serrano and Julia Orama-Serrano purchased the property located at 16177 Beaver Road in Adelanto for $1,825,000, with the sale recorded at the San Bernardino County recorder’s office on October 4, 2016. On November 20, 2017, several gift deeds were filed to reallocate ownership of the land to David Serrano and three individuals, Lisa Marie Guerro, Marcella Christine Castaneda and Jennifer Nicole Serrano. Guerro, Castaneda and Jennifer Serrano are believed to be David Serrano’s daughters. Fifty percent of the ownership remained with David Serrano and 16.6666 ownership was allocated to Guerro, Castaneda and Jennifer Serrano. The six corporations created and registered with the California Secretary of State’s Office on June 12, 2017 have as their incorporating agents and officers Philip Rios, who is an attorney with the Professional Lawyers Group; Manuel Serrano; Julia Orama-Serrano, also known as Julia Serrano; Jennifer Serrano; Lisa Guerra, also known as Lisa Galvan, and also known as Lisa Serrano; Marcella Castaneda; Hector Orama; Luis Orama; and Miguel Orama. Philip Rios has consistently represented the Jet Room as its legal counsel.
On January 14, 2019, the last day before the two-year statute of limitations following Kerr’s motorcycle accident at the 2017 Adelanto Grand Prix elapsed, Kerr, represented by Philip E. Rios and Keith A. Adesko of the Professional Lawyers Group, sued the Adelanto Grand Prix organizers with regard to the injuries he had sustained on January 14, 2017. According to that suit, “As a promotional gimmick, defendants encouraged plaintiff, the then-Adelanto mayor, to participate in the event and promoted his participation. Plaintiff, though an avid and experienced motorcycle rider, at 60 years of age is not physically capable of participating in a dangerous and physically demanding activity like motocross racing. Defendants knew, or should have known, of the demanding nature of the activity and should not have allowed plaintiff to compete in a race, much less promote and exploit the plaintiff’s participation for monetary gain. As a direct and proximate result of defendants’ negligence in allowing plaintiff to compete in a race, plaintiff crashed during the race and suffered serious injuries, including a fractured clavicle, for which plaintiff spent 10 days in the hospital.”
The suit was roundly perceived as a means of offsetting the FBI’s working theory that the $35,000 in payments made to Kerr by the Law Offices of David Serrano and the Professional Lawyers Group, San Bernardino were bribes. In the sworn affidavit in support of the petition for the search warrants that were served at Adelanto City Hall, Kerr’s home, the Jet Room and at the San Bernardino office of the Professional Lawyers Group on May 8, 2018, FBI Agent Kevin Boles referenced the $35,000 received by Kerr from the two law firms associated with David Serrano, and stated, “I believe the payments originating from David Serrano were, in fact, bribe payments to Kerr in return for his official acts of voting on ordinances that directly benefitted the Jet Room. I believe it is likely Kerr maintained his communication with Manny Serrano who, in turn, used David Serrano’s law firm to make the bribe payments as advance payments associated with a fictitious lawsuit in which Kerr is a plaintiff.” The lawsuit filed by Rios and Adesko on Kerr’s behalf against the Adelanto Grand Prix sponsors thus appears to have been intended to establish, as the memo lines on some of the checks originating with David Serrano that went to Kerr indicated, that those payments were advances on the settlement to be obtained from Malcolm Smith Racing, American Motorcycle Association, Grand Prix Series, So. Cal. M.C. and Adelanto Grand Prix with regard to the injuries Kerr sustained in the crash.
The difficulty with that defense strategy in the face of any criminal charges pertaining to bribery that might be filed is that the first $5,000 of the $35,000 paid to Kerr by the Law Offices of David Serrano on November 29, 2016 came two-and-a-half months before the motorcycle accident. Nevertheless, the lawsuit was filed and remained in play, without going to trial, for more than eight months.
On October 10, 2019, Philip Rios filed with the San Bernardino County Superior Court to have Kerr’s case against Malcolm Smith Racing and the other defendants dismissed with prejudice, the same day he filed suit against Kerr for breach of contract.
It is not not known what precipitated the sudden show of hostility against Kerr by Serrano’s law firm. Precisely what the falling out between Kerr and his lawyers will mean in terms of the former mayor’s willingness to expose the nature of the illicit dealings between the proponents of marijuana-based and cannabis-related businesses and Adelanto city officials is at this point an open question. One unsubstantiated report was that Kerr, now out of office and without the protection of the Adelanto city attorney or the general machinery of government extended to public officials, has made a practical and tactical decision to cooperate with the FBI, prompting Serrano and his affiliated entities to end their relationship with him.
Efforts to obtain input from the entities involved – Kerr, David Serrano or any of those involved with him in his entrepreneurial undertakings, or the FBI – were unsuccessful.

Tim Donnelly, who in 2014, gave up what was considered to be a safe seat in the California Assembly to make a quixotic but surprisingly strong effort to capture the  Republican nomination for governor, is now making yet another foray to capitalize on his right wing bona fides by again seeking election to Congress in the 8th Congressional District.
Donnelly’s entrance into the race perpetuates his role as an outcast among the sometimes loosely-knit and sometimes more closely-tied alliance of GOP officeholders in San Bernardino County, one of the last bastions of Republicanism in the Golden State.
Donnelly’s appeal to a contingent of the GOP that is more strident in the propounding of his party’s basic values and core beliefs while resisting in principle and practice the policies and approaches favored by the Democrats is seen as a threat to the element of the Republican Party now in control in San Bernardino County and its ability to remain on top politically in this region because of the danger that he might awaken and galvanize the Democrats, who have in the past been unable to drive a sufficient percentage of their superior numbers to the polls to offset the greater force the Republicans can muster in terms of energetic turnout of their party faithful.
In the March 3 California Primary Election, Donnelly will be going head-to-head against Jay Obernolte, the incumbent in the 33rd Assembly District who filled that void when Donnelly made his unsuccessful 2014 gubernatorial bid. This will be the first time Donnelly and Obernolte have vied against one another, as they have steered clear of a direct confrontation until now. How contentious the race between them will get is not yet clear. Two years ago, Donnelly challenged the incumbent 8th District Congressman, Paul Cook, provoking a bitter and what many considered to be an underhanded internecine attack from Cook’s political operatives. Obernolte, who covets the Congressional office Cook holds, showed greater respect and patience in maintaining the Republican order, such as it is, then did Donnelly. Obernolte was willing to remain in the California Assembly until such time that Cook willingly departed, rather than seeking to wrest the prestigious office from him in a revolt against that order.
Since the 1990s, all state legislators in California have been constrained by term limits. Previously, Assembly members were held to three-two year terms in the lower house and California state senators were restricted to two four-year terms in Sacramento’s upper legislative house. Beginning with state legislators first elected in 2014, California reduced its mixed 14-year limitation to a blanket limitation of 12 years, meaning an individual could serve three senatorial terms and renounce ever being a member of the Assembly, or could serve two senatorial terms and two Assembly terms or four Assembly terms and one senatorial term, or six Assembly terms. Under the previous rules, Obernolte would have been obliged to leave the Assembly after his current term, but coming into the Assembly for the first time in 2014, he had the luxury of remaining in the Assembly, if he wished and could succeed in getting reelected therein, until 2026. Thus, Obernolte was considering running again for the Assembly in the 33rd District next year. In September, however, Cook, a former Marine colonel who had served two tours of duty in Viet Nam and had entered local politics as a member of the Yucca Valley City council and then went on to become mayor there before achieving election as a member of the Assembly in the 65th District, announced he would not seek reelection to Congress, to which he had first been elected in the 8th Congressional District in 2012, essentially replacing longtime Congressman Jerry Lewis, who had retired just as reapportionment following the 2010 Census redrew California’s Congressional districts, creating the 8th District from most of what had been Lewis’s 41st District. Cook made that decision following an announcement by First District County Supervisor Robert Lovingood that he would not seek reelection as supervisor, whereupon Cook resolved to forego constant travel between Washington, D.C. and Southern California in favor of remaining at home, and run to replace Lovingood as supervisor. Obernolte immediately declared his intent to replace Cook as Congressman.
While there was a belief that Lovingood would then run to claim Obernolte’s Assembly seat, that did not occur. Rather, Lovingood endorsed former Hesperia Councilman and Mayor Thurston Smith in his run for the 33rd Assembly District post.
When campaigning among an exclusively Republican crowd, San Bernardino County’s establishment Republicans do not hesitate in lambasting the Democrats as lily-livered unChristian coddlers of criminals who advocate open borders, tolerance of illegal immigration, taking guns away from law abiding citizens and profligate spending of hard-earned tax dollars, who never miss an opportunity to raise taxes or create new ones that did not previously exist. In mixed crowds, however, they seek to tone that criticism down, as the number of registered Democrats in San Bernardino County eclipsed the number of registered Republicans in 2009, and the Democrats have widened that registration gap in their favor ever since. Thus, Republicans have cultivated the art of highly selective campaign targeting, appealing to voters in isolation,  based upon factors known about them, including political affiliation, area of residence, ethnicity, responses to survey inquiries, and any further information that can be gleaned.
As a Marine veteran and Republican state legislator before he  moved on to Congress, Cook had established himself as a solid Republican with so-called conservative leanings. In 2018, Donnelly challenged Cook in the primary election, as did three others, all of whom were Democrats – Ron O’Donnell, Marge Doyle and Rita Ramirez-Dean. When the dust of the June 5, 2018 balloting had cleared, Cook had prevailed by what appeared to be a comfortable margin – 41,585 votes out of 100,116 cast for 41.54 percent. The Democrats together managed to get 35.28 percent of the vote, with Doyle finishing in the top spot among them with 20,153 votes for 20.13 percent. Donnelly brought in 23,214 voter endorsements, or 23.19 percent, for second place. Under California’s open primary rule, the top two finishers, regardless of party affiliation, move on to the November general election. Thus, Cook found himself in a showdown against Donnelly in a district that leaned heavily in favor of the Republican Party.
That circumstance represented some difficulty for Cook, however. In a literal shootout against another Republican, without the interference of a candidate appealing to the so-called liberal vote, the issues were very likely to boil down to hardcore right wing elements. In this respect, Donnelly had Cook at a disadvantage. Donnelly had taken a diamond-hard stance against illegal immigration, going so far as founding the California Chapter of the Minuteman to patrol the border with Mexico. A die-hard Second Amendment advocate, Donnelly had lived up the principle he espoused, such that while he was yet a member of the California Assembly he would routinely carry a concealed gun onto the floor of the statehouse while the legislature was in session. He took an aggressive stand against a 2011 bill restricting the open carrying of handguns in California by labeling the measure “a form of tyranny.”
Donnelly topped that when, on the way back to Sacramento after the Christmas and New Year holidays for the first state legislative session in 2012, he was stopped by Transportation Security Administration officers at Ontario Airport for having a Colt .45 handgun loaded with four rounds of ammunition and five addition rounds in his carry on baggage.
The gun was taken from him and he was cited for possession of a loaded firearm. It turned out that Donnelly, who had purchased the gun roughly five years before the incident, had never registered it in his name. He was not charged with failing to purchase the gun through a licensed dealer, which is prosecutable as misdemeanor under California’s gun laws. Ultimately, Donnelly pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of carrying a loaded firearm in public without a concealed weapons permit and possessing a gun in an airport. He was fined $2,125 and placed on three years’ probation, but was not prohibited from carrying a concealed weapon thereafter, as long as, under the terms of his probation he did not “use, own or possess any firearm that is not registered to him.” Donnelly maintained he had done nothing wrong, going on record as saying, “I didn’t do anything other than exercise my 2nd Amendment rights as a free American.”
His action did not hamper him politically, as he was seen by gun owners as having stood up to unreasonable liberal efforts to curtail gun ownership. He prevailed against two opponents in the June 2012 California Primary election with 52.06 percent of the vote, and then convincingly defeating his Democratic opponent in the November 2012 General Election, John Coffey, 73,836 votes or 59.04 percent to 51,215 vote or 40.96 percent.
Cook, his backers, his allies and the employees in his office saw Donnelly as a formidable opponent, one who might very well end the incumbent Congressman’s political career by his appeal to the so-called conservative base of their party.  Donnelly’s political persona, anchored to his identification as the most conservative politician in California and one who is unrelentingly faithful to bedrock ultra-right principles, matched perfectly with a solid plurality if not an outright majority of the voters in the overwhelmingly right wing 8th Congressional District. Of particular concern to the Cook political machine was that there are large numbers of gun-toting constituents in the 8th District, which covers a large swath of the Mojave Desert and the San Bernardino Mountains, where gun ownership is a way of life for a majority of those living in isolated rural areas.
Two of Cook’s political operatives, Dillon Lesovsky, who had previously been employed in Cook’s Congressional office, and Matt Knox, who was yet employed by Cook as the 8th District director and was also functioning as Cook’s 2018 campaign manager, earnestly set about untracking Donnelly’s candidacy. They formulated what was called the “Dirty Donnelly” attack. Consisting of a website and signs to promote the website, dirtydonnelly.com utilized doctored photos to paint Donnelly in the most negative of light, and dwelt at length on a number of derogatories relating to the former assemblyman, including that he had a criminal record, which was an unspecified reference to his gun-carrying conviction; accusations that he was scamming senior citizens; that he had deserted his family; that he had engaged in “political fraud,” which was again unspecified; that he stole from his own wife; and that he was unemployed. In violation of state law, neither the website nor the signs directing voters’ attention to the website had any identifying California Fair Political Practices registration number nor the indicia required under California law for campaign signs and materials to show what entity, organization, committee or campaign paid for the materials. The campaign on behalf of Cook directed by Knox and the hit perpetrated by Knox and Lesovsky proved highly effective, as Cook trounced Donnelly in the November 6, 2018 election, 108,414 votes or just under 61.33 percent to 68,370 votes or 38.67 percent.
Knox and Lesovsky have gone to work for Dawn Rowe, another former Cook staffer, who was appointed in December 2018 by the board of supervisors to serve the final two years of James Ramos’s term as Third District San Bernardino County supervisor following Ramos’s election to the California Assembly in the 40th District in the same November 2018 election in which Cook defeated Donnelly. There have been indications given that Knox, in his capacity as Rowe’s chief of staff, and Lesovsky, as Rowe’s policy advisor, are running multiple 2020 election campaigns from inside of Rowe’s office, including Rowe’s electoral effort for Third District supervisor, Cook’s campaign for First District supervisor, Obernolte’s campaign for Congress and now Thurston Smith’s effort to capture the 33rd Assembly District position that Obernolte is abandoning in vying for the House of Representatives.
In deciding to run once more for Congress this year, Donnelly was looking past his defeat by Cook last year and an unsuccessful bid in 2016 when Rita Ramirez-Dean, with 23,959 votes or 21.48 percent in the primary captured second place and nosed out Donnelly, who finished in third place with 23,671 votes or 21.22 percent, before Ramirez-Dean went on to be defeated by Cook that November. In the upcoming election season Donnelly could have run instead for the 33rd Assembly District position Obernolte is giving up to run for Congress and which Donnelly himself forsook to run for governor. A question attends as to whether Donnelly, if he were to regain election to the Assembly, would be able to remain in California’s lower legislative house for more than a single term under the term limit rule that was in place when he was originally elected to the Assembly in 2010, which limited him to three terms in the Assembly, or whether the term limitation structure in place since 2014 would apply to him, allowing him to run for another three terms beyond that to serve a total of 12 years as Assemblyman. Based on the consideration that he might be limited to just one more term in the Assembly, Donnelly resolved to run for Congress now, calculating that his name recognition and conservative reputation will stand him in good stead against Obernolte, who has the power of incumbency in the California legislature, a fair share of name recognition himself, and the support of the Cook/Rowe/Knox/Lesovsky political machinery.
Whether Donnelly’s calculation is an astute one will prove out with the upcoming primary election and the general election. In California, races for state office cannot be decided in the primary, even if a candidate manages to capture more than 50 percent of the vote. In those races for state office, the November election is a runoff between the first and second place finishers in the primary, irrespective of the party or parties of the candidates and the margin of victory and defeat between the top two vote-getters.
Even before the primary, which is to be held in March in 2020, the Cook/Rowe/Knox/Lesovsky political machine, and by extension the Obernolte campaign, have sustained setbacks. In September, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Janet Frangie ruled that the board of supervisors in selecting Rowe as Third District supervisor last December violated the State of California’s open public meeting law, the Brown Act. Frangie ordered that Rowe’s appointment be rescinded. That ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of Democratic Party activists, challenging the Republican Rowe’s appointment. The county board of supervisors then ordered the county’s stable of in-house lawyers, known as county counsel, to appeal Frangie’s ruling. The appeal stayed the rescission of Rowe’s appointment, so she yet remains in the capacity of Third District supervisor. Unless the appellate court reviews Frangie’s ruling before the March 3 Primary Election, Rowe will be able to run for election as an incumbent. Nevertheless, the ruling has compromised Rowe’s authority to a certain degree, and it has galvanized Democratic voters in the Third District, which has historically, with a few notable exceptions, leaned in favor of Republican candidates.
Moreover, there has been considerable attention focused on the political activity emanating out of Rowe’s office involving Knox and Lesovsksy, as well as another political operative Rowe hired as part of her Third Supervisorial District staff, Suzette Swallow. Such political activity being run out of governmental offices is technically illegal under California law, though largely ignored as a privilege and perquisite of holding political office. Still smarting from what Cook, Knox and Lesovsky did to him last year, Donnelly is sensitive to what they are now trying to pull off in 2020 in favor of Cook, Rowe and the select group of political hopefuls with whom they are associated, including Obernolte. Donnelly is not without resources of his own, and the opportunity will present itself over the next several months and then perhaps again in the run-up to the November election to make a major issue out of Obernolte’s participation in and association with an illegal effort to utilize public facilities, equipment and employees for partisan purposes, a manifestation of the abuse of  governmental power and authority that Donnelly has a long history of advocating against.
At this point five candidates, including Obernolte and Donnelly, have declared they are running in the 8th Congressional District race in March. The others include Democrat Chris Bubser, an engineer and former biotech executive; Peter Mathisen, who has no political affiliation and is the proprietor of Law’s Oak Glen Coffee Shop; and Republican Jeremy Staat, an Iraq war veteran and former NFL player.
In announcing his bid, Donnelly essentially ignored Bubser, Mathisen and Statt, taking aim at Obernolte by implying the five years he has spent in Democratic-dominated Sacramento has rendered him into a typical tax-and-spend politician, incapable of exercising fiscal discipline.
“It’s time we stop electing the same losers who got us into this mess and expecting them to bail us out,” Donnelly said. “At the rate we’re spending, we’re sentencing the next generation to financial Armageddon. The only solution the politicians come up with is raising our taxes. We’re being taxed to death.”
-Mark Gutglueck