Two years prior to the time he would otherwise be eligible to do so, San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan is retiring today at the age of 48, 27 years after he began with the department.
Paradoxically, as is sometimes the case with law enforcement professionals, the worse day of Burguan’s career launched him into the stratosphere of his vocation, transforming him instantaneously into a celebrity of national and even international standing.
Fate dictated that Burguan was at the helm of the department on December 2, 2015 when Syed Rizwan Farook, a restaurant inspector employed with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, approached and then went into an auditorium at the Inland Regional Center where both a training session and a pre-Christmas banquet for Public Health Department employees was being held. Wearing ski masks, armed with semi-automatic pistols and rifles and clad in load bearing vests holding magazines and ammunition, Farrok and Malik killed two pepole before entering the building and thereafter unleashed a fusillade of more than 100 rounds inside before fleeing. In the process they killed fourteen and wounded 22 of the 86 people present, virtually all of whom had been Malik’s co-workers in the Department of Public Health. Ultimately, some four hours after the initial attack and Farook and Malik had returned to their residence in Redlands and were coming back into San Bernardino, San Bernardino Police officers spotted the couple driving a vehicle rented by Farook four days before the attack, and which the department had identified. Officers gave pursuit and confronted Farook and Malik, at which juncture a shootout ensued on San Bernardino Avenue just east of Sheddon Drive. As more police units arrived to converge on them in and around their vehicles, 23 officers firing a combined total of at least 440 rounds mortally wounded the murderous pair.
Burguan was widely credited with his calm, methodical, vigilant, thorough and ultimately successful response and the coordination of his department’s resources throughout the ordeal. Thereafter, he was in great demand by other departments all over the country for input on preparation for similar emergencies. The highly articulate Burguan found himself torn between what he felt was a legitimate need to contribute to readiness and preparation among agencies throughout the law enforcement industry nationally and his duties in running his own department that was struggling under challenging circumstances that were unrelated to the December 2, 2015 attack. San Bernardino had filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in 2012, and the city’s overall financial condition complicated even further the city’s unenviable position of being what was ranked on one survey as the 16th most dangerous city in the United States with a murder rate that was more than twice the national average.
Despite the opportunities that were presented to him to take on an even more lucrative police chief’s assignment elsewhere, Burguan remained in San Bernardino, even as he was being criticized for his attention sometimes being diffused by requests for his input with regard to response readiness in other jurisdictions.
He began with the San Bernardino Police Department in January 1992, when he was 21. Throughout his time with San Bernardino, he worked in, supervised or managed units in every division of the department, while earning a bachelor’s degree and a masters degree in management from the University of Redlands. In 2012, he sojourned to Boston, where he took graduate courses and graduated from the Senior Management Institute for Police, which is part of the Police Executive Research Forum of Boston University, He also was a member of Class 53 of the California Police Officer Standard and Training College, from which he was provided with a management certificate.
In 2013, he succeeded Robert Handy as police chief.
Burguan for years has made the daily commute from Lake Arrowhead.
He took an extended leave in February to undergo knee replacement surgery. Boosted into the position of his temporary replacement at that time was Eric McBride, who had promoted to the position of assistant chief under Burguan and whom Burguan had supported in that promotion. McBride has now moved into the police chief’s position, which was not previously anticipated as McBride is four years older than Burguan. With the traditional minimum retirement age for police officers being 50, it was previously thought Burguan would most certainly remain with the department at least until he eclipses his 50th birthday in November 2020, and would perhaps remain with the department until 2025, at which point he would maximize his pension at 100 percent of his salary. In 2025, McBride will be 59, somewhat past what is considered the standard retirment age in the law enforcement profession presently.
Burguan’s return from his medical leave for the knee surgery was anticipated in May. One unconfirmed report was that his physician had not cleared him for resuming his duties. The true reason for the delay in his return has not been made clear, however. There are indications that the ascendancy of John Valdivia as San Bernardino mayor may have been a factor in Burguan’s decision not to return. It is an open secret that Valdivia is under investigation by the FBI stemming from reports that money originating from the sale of illegal drugs has been filtered into his personal banking and political campaign accounts, accompanied by reports that the largesse provided to the mayor purchased those donors protection from investigation and arrest by the San Bernardino Police Department and prosecution by the district attorney’s office, and that Valdivia had encouraged the department to step up enforcement efforts against his donors’ competitors in the sale of illicit substances out of storefronts and other businesses within the city. Burguan’s positive reputation as a consequence of his handling of the December 2, 2015 attack has opened doors for his possible employment elsewhere, including at the federal level with the Department of Homeland Security or with big city police departments such as those in Philadelphia or Cleveland, conditional only upon the formality of his making an application. He thus may have decided that returning as police chief in San Bernadino under the current circumstance is too risky and potentially damaging to his prospects elsewhere.
It is unclear whether the city had given him a special dispensation in allowing him to retire at 48.
In an email to police staff that went out on Wednesday and which has since been publicly disclosed and has come to serve as his farewell statement, Burguan wrote, “Any success that I ever had in a leadership position came as a result of good people within the organization doing good work, and I am truly appreciative of each and every one of you and the service that you have provided to the city and the department.”
–Mark Gutglueck

Judge David Cohn this morning rebuffed the coalition on the San Bernardino City Council led by Mayor John Valdivia in its effort to have the financially-challenged city it heads reduce the pay of two of its lame duck officeholders.
In June, the city council, in a move orchestrated by Valdvia and his then-chief of staff, Bilal Essayli, followed a recommendation to reduce the pay to be provided to City Attorney Gary Saenz and City Clerk Georgeann Hanna during the last nine months of their terms in office.
Both Saenz and Hanna hold office under the bylaws of San Bernardino’s municipal charter that was first put in place in 1905 and which remained in absolute effect for 111 years. In 2016, the city’s voters gave approval to Measure L, which called for a redrafting of the charter and reduced the mayor’s administrative authority, moved the city from an odd-numbered-year election cycle to an even-numbered year one, and transitioned the city attorney’s post and the position of city clerk from elected ones to staff members hired or appointed at the discretion of the city council, and dispensed with the elected city treasurer’s office altogether.
Because Saenz and Hanna had been most recently reelected in 2015 to terms that ran from April 1, 2016 through March 31, 2020, they were and are entitled to remain in office, as elected officials, for the duration of their terms, at which point their positions will be filled by the city council’s designees. As elected officials, Saenz  was being provided with $246,266 in total annual compensation as city attorney, including salary, benefits and add-ons, and Hanna was receiving $171,466 in total annual compensation as city clerk, including salary, benefits and additional pay. A committee formed by Mayor Valdivia to explore cost-saving strategies chaired by Councilman Henry Nickel and including council members Theodore Sanchez and Juan Figueroa, all of whom are Valdivia’s political affiliates, recommended that Saenz see the $184,700 he was scheduled to receive between July 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020 reduced to $100,000 and that the $128,600 Hanna was scheduled to get over the same nine-month span be dropped to $52,500.
A host of considerations attended that move. Perhaps foremost was the city’s financial circumstance. In August 2012, San Bernardino had filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection and did not emerge from that status until June 2017, during which period the city stiffed its creditors, vendors and service providers for more than $350 million. Indications this year are that two years after the city’s assumed financial recovery, it is again poised over a deepening financial abyss, with expenditures once more substantially outrunning revenue such that by October or November 2020 the city will have burned entirely through the reserves it was able to accrue while being artificially propped up by the bankruptcy court, at which point it will again face the likelihood of needing to make another bankruptcy petition. Curiously, the committee did not call for the $160,800 to be saved by the reductions in pay to Saenz and Hanna to be salted into the city’s reserve account but rather to be used to pay for lobbyists and legislative advocates. Another issue driving the pay reduction was the perception that Saenz was a member of former Mayor Carey Davis’s team. Valdivia served nearly five of his previous six-and-a-half years on the city council while Davis was mayor, and had challenged him in 2018, qualifying by finishing first in the June primary to then vie head-to-head against Davis in the November run, a race which Valdivia narrowly won. He is now intent on purging the city of any vestiges of the Davis era. Moreover, Saenz as city attorney had offered legal counsel that on occasion clashed with the direction Valdivia wanted the city council to take. Hanna, who has proven somewhat mercurial in her relationships with the city’s mayors, council members and staff over the years she has been in office, had been among those who ran for mayor in the 2018 primary. After Valdivia’s installment as mayor, she had clashed with him on the issue of city record availability.
The city council on June 11, with Councilman Jim Mulvihill absent, voted 4-to-2, with councilmen Nickel, Sanchez and Figueroa and councilwoman Bessine Richard prevailing over Councilman Fred Shorett and Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, to institute the pay reductions for Saenz and Hanna as of July 1.
Subsequently, Saenz and Hanna, represented by the law firm of Wagner & Pelayes, filed claims and a legal action against the city, including a petition for a writ of mandate challenging the pay reductions.
That matter came before Judge Cohn this morning as a predisposition hearing.
Representing the city was attorney Edward Kotkin of the law firm Lynberg & Watkins, a different firm than that of Best Best & Krieger, which the city has retained as what is essentially its acting city attorney at present and which will officially replace Saenz in April.
Saenz and Hanna were not represented by anyone from Wagner & Pelayes but rather an independent labor law attorney from West Covina, Thomas Yu.
In hearing Sanez’s and Hanna’s motion regarding the writ for mandate, Judge Cohn took judicial notice of both the 1905 and 2016 charters and ruled that the provisions of the former and current San Bernardino municipal charters were not specific in providing the city council with the authority to change the rate of pay of the city attorney and city clerk while they are serving in their elected capacities, and that the California Elections Code thus dictates that they are entitled to receive, throughout the duration of their terms in office, the salaries and further compensation that was in place for those respective positions when they were elected.
Judge Cohn reasoned that the vote of the city’s residents in 2015, when Saenz and Hanna ran unopposed and were elected with 7,601 and 7,607 votes, respectively, was tantamount to being hired through the electoral process, entitling them to the salaries and benefits then associated with the positions, and that allowing the city council to change that would in essence invalidate the election.
Judge Cohn then stated his tentative ruling, entered before the hearing, on the record. “The writ of mandate is granted,” the record of his ruling states. “Salaries which were in place remain in place till [the] end of office.”
After the hearing, Hanna told the Sentinel, “I’m glad the court agreed that the council had no authority to cut our salaries. It was an ill-advised, costly and completely unnecessary distraction. They were warned by Best Best & Krieger recently, and another law firm in 2017, that it was not advisable to do this. Going forward, perhaps the council would be well-served to heed the advice of its professional advisors.”

The invasive goldspotted oak borer (GSOB, Agrilus auroguttatus) was detected last week in recently-killed and dying California black oaks on private property in the unincorporated San Bernardino County community of Sugarloaf. Larval, pupal and adult life stages of the beetle were extracted by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and U.S. Forest Service personnel from under the tree bark. A San Bernardino County fire hazard officer, who had received goldspotted oak borer identification training, made the initial discovery while conducting hazard inspections. This is the second goldspotted oak borer infestation identified in San Bernardino County, the first discovery being in the Oak Glen area in fall of 2018. This is also the second goldspotted oak borer infestation on the San Bernardino National Forest, the first being in Idyllwild in 2012.
The long-range spread of the goldspotted oak borer from its native range in Arizona to San Diego, then Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles counties and, now, San Bernardino County, has been attributed to the movement of goldspotted oak borer-infested firewood. Therefore, it is critical to take precautions to avoid transporting potentially-infested oak firewood within, to or from the San Bernardino Mountains.
The goldspotted oak borer may already be in other portions of San Bernardino County but haven’t been discovered yet. These non-native beetles aggressively attack California black oaks, coast live oaks and even canyon live oaks, whether in mountain communities, forests, valleys or cities. To make matters worse, goldspotted oak borers prefer larger oaks, the very trees we depend on for beauty, shade and wildlife habitat.
Learn about the goldspotted oak borer at www.GSOB.org, including how to identify and report a suspected goldspotted oak borer infestation. If you have oak trees that have recently died and have been cut down, it’s critical to make sure the wood is not infested before transporting it! The goldspotted oak borer website has information on how to manage infested wood.
CAL FIRE, the San Bernardino National Forest and other collaborating agencies will develop a goldspotted oak borer response plan for the mountaintop communities in San Bernardino County. This will include determining the current extent of the infestation in the area. In the interim, at-risk communities should educate themselves about the goldspotted oak borer threat and share the information with their neighbors and friends in any San Bernardino County communities with oak trees.

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By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the August 9 edition of the SBC Sentinel.

Sentinel 08-09-19

By Mark Gutglueck
Discontent over the City of San Bernardino’s approval of the placement of a county welfare office in a residential neighborhood hit a crescendo this week. With both the processing of the project application and the project description marred by incomplete or misleading language, a significant number residents of San Bernardino’s Muscupiabe District already upset at the prospect of being saddled with what they consider to be an incompatible use in their neighborhood expressed suspicion that city officials may have deliberately misled them about the nature of the project to minimize opposition at a critical earlier point when the project’s approval could have possibly been prevented.
It now appears that the politically well-connected developer, who has already laid out millions of dollars to move the project along to its initial construction phase and who has secured financing to proceed with millions of dollars more in bringing the project to fruition, will, if the approval of the project is rescinded, embroil the city in litigation that would result in the city potentially being on the hook for at least $14 million, the value of the county’s lease on the building.
At the board of supervisors’ last meeting in 2017, held on December 19 of that year, the board was presented with a recommendation from the county’s director of real estate services, Terry Thompson, and the director of the county’s transitional services department, Gilbert Ramos, that the county enter into a $14,036,184 lease agreement with 27th Street TAD, LLC, for approximately 38,150 square feet of office space to be located at the northwest corner of 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive in San Bernardino, also described as Assessor Parcel No. (APN) 0148-021-66-0000, for occupancy by the transitional assistance department for the ten-year period beginning August 1, 2019 and running through July 31, 2029.
The transitional assistance department, which is sometimes referred to by its acronym TAD, provides a wide array of federal and state-mandated social services and income assistance programs to the residents of San Bernardino County, particularly those whose loss of jobs or income has put them at risk of becoming, or has rendered them, homeless.
A principal in 27th Street TAD, LLC is Scott Beard. For a generation, Beard has been a major player in development and property ownership circles active in the Central and Eastern Valleys of San Bernardino County, particularly the cities of Rialto and San Bernardino. As a consequence, he has been a major donor to the political campaigns of elected officials at the municipal and county level.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, the approval of the 38,150-square foot building at the northwest corner of 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive was considered and given go-ahead not by the city’s planning commission or the city council, but by the city’s development and environmental review committee, consisting of various members of city staff, primarily department heads and those from the community and economic development department.
At the county level the project was clearly defined as what it was – a building to house an office of the transitional assistance department, a division of the San Bernardino County Department of Human Services, referred to by some as the welfare department. At the internal city level, the project was also defined as being intended for use as a transitional assistance department office, but at one stage the city utilized an architect’s description line on a rendering for the building which substituted “resources” for services in the heading human services. This changed the implication to suggest that the building was intended to house the county’s human resources or personnel department.
A second misnomer unrelated to the blurring of services/resources nuances occurred when in the disclosure notifications to the residents living in proximity to the project, the building was referred to in the planning profession jargon as “office professional,” which in common parlance was taken to mean the structure would be a professional office building, which rubric, technically, a transitional services office falls within. Ultimately, however, a significant segment of the populace, including many people living within the Muscupiabe District were unaware of the actual intended occupant of the building.
There had been nevertheless, numerous public indications that the transitional services department would occupy the building. The January 5, 2018 edition of the Sentinel, for example, featured a front page article in which the county approval of the lease for the yet-to-be-completed building was referenced, together with the description of the project location at the northwest corner of 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive, along with the assessor’s parcel number.
While the intent of both the county and 27th Street TAD, LLC was for the building to be completed by late June or early July of this year so that it would be certified for occupancy by the first of this month, there were delays. It was only relatively recently that local residents took stock of the situation as construction got underway, and word spread throughout the surrounding neighborhoods that a “welfare office” was being erected at West 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive.
When City Hall was inundated with complaints, city officials posited the hurried and not fully thought-through defense that they were under the impression the building was to host a county human resources center, which was something of a prevarication.
Meanwhile, the anger and dissatisfaction of the residents of the Muscupiabe District were festering. The Muscupiabe neighborhood is nestled between the triangular intersection of the 210 freeway and 215 freeway in northwestern San Bernardino. A historic neighborhood, Muscupiabe’s entryway features large pepper trees and medium size homes, some of impressive architectural character.
The project, which actually lies within he city’s Second Ward, is very close to the confluence of wards Two, Five and Six, represented by council members Sandra Ibarra, Henry Nickel and Bessine Richard, respectively. Ibarra was not elected to the council until November 2018 and did not take office until December, by which time the project was approved by the city.
In recent weeks, Councilman Henry Nickel has emerged as the member of the council most animated about the pending project, and the one militating most heavily on behalf of the residents who have recently been galvanized against allowing the project, as it was approved, to proceed. Indeed, statements Nickel has made have been construed to imply that the county should be forced to utilize the building as a human resources center.
Nickel’s stance with regard to the project has, on multiple levels, provoked consternation within the county, which has $14 million riding on the project’s completion. First and foremost, the city in November gave final go-ahead to the project. Second, Nickel is a county employee. Third, Nickel is employed specifically as an analyst with the County of San Bernardino Workforce Development Board, a position that would very likely have clued him in to any project that would have involved the creation of a county human resources center, had there actually been plans for such a project. Moreover, Bessine Richard, the councilwoman in the Sixth District, which is a stone’s throw from the project site, has for three years been the manager of the County of San Bernardino Workforce Development Board and was for two years and eight months before that a supervisor on the County of San Bernardino Workforce Development Board’s staff. She, too, would have undoubtedly been aware of any county human resources center being built in San Bernardino.
At the August 7 Wednesday night San Bernardino City Council meeting, the first held at the newly established meeting chambers at the Norman Feldheym Library, Nickel asserted that on August 4 he had been provided with documents a constituent had obtained through a California Public Records request relating to the approval of the project which described it as a “human resources facility.” Pointing out that the applicant on the project was not the county but rather a private developer, 27th Street TAD, LLC, Nickel made a motion to “direct our city manager to issue immediately a stop work order on this project and take appropriate corrective action.” That motion was seconded by Ibarra, but before a vote was taken a discussion ensued in which Councilman Fred Shorett said, “I empathize and understand the concerns of the community.” Nevertheless, he said, “I think we’re setting ourselves up for some real trouble if we stop this,” indicating that he believed a stop work order would trigger litigation from Beard. Shorett said the situation presented the council with a “real conundrum.” City Manager Teri Ledoux said she had directed staff to “gather documentation and go over it with the city’s legal department,” indicating that issuing a stop work order might be premature at this point. “We’re certainly not ready to talk about it this evening,” she said.
Former City Attorney James Penman, speaking earlier as a member of the public,  said, “The city needs to preserve the status quo and freeze the situation. You protect the city from liability by issuing a stop work order. You also protect the developer, because he doesn’t continue to build and spend money.”
Penman said Beard would continue with the project based on the permits that were issued, whether they were lawfully issued or not. “You have to preserve the city’s position,” Penman told the council. “You have to stop and freeze everything in order that you can do a proper investigation to determine what happened. If you don’t issue the stop work order, the developer continues to build and acquires vested rights. Later [when] the residents get a writ of mandate and make him stop, he is going to sue the city for allowing him to continue to build and spend money. It’s a Catch-22 situation.”
Ibarra attempted to usher the council toward action before Beard proceeds with actual building activity beyond the grading he has done so far. Ibarra asserted that the nearby property owners “were misled by the notices they received in October. I think it is fair that we ask that property owner to apply for a conditional use permit and allow for a public hearing allowing the residents who are going to be greatly affected by what’s going to happen with that project being put up in their neighborhood.”
She said Beard had opposed a social services office being built across the street from his office in Rialto because of how it would negatively impact property values in that area. “But then he’s doing this to our city, right across from the only and last good neighborhood I have in the Second Ward,” she said. “We were highly misled. I don’t know how it goes from a human services building to a human resources admin building. The traffic is going to change drastically in that neighborhood. There is a preschool across the street and maybe two or three blocks over is Davidson Elementary, so a traffic study is needed. If he can apply for a conditional use permit the right way as it should have been, I have no objection, but it has to be done the proper way, noticing the residents in that area properly as well, not changing one word or a typographical error. That is unacceptable. We’re talking about litigation.”
Short of the council having the city manager slap Beard with a stop work order, Councilman Jim Mulvihill suggested that Beard be prevailed upon to voluntarily impose on himself a “good faith stop work order.”
City Attorney Sonia Carvalho cautioned the council against imposing a stop work order on Beard after the city had given him approval to proceed with the construction of the building. She advised the council that it could yet seek to impose on his tenant – the county – the need to obtain a conditional use permit to operate a social services office at that location. Putting Beard and his tenant on notice that the transitional services facility may not meet the city’s codes and standards could potentially give the city the leverage to head off the eventuality of the operation setting up at that location.
Sensing that there was not will on the council to move ahead with the stop work order, Nickel made a motion that the city council direct Ledoux and city staff to proceed with the ongoing investigation and in one week, on August 14 at 5 p.m. report its findings back to the city council.
The following day, the Muscupiabe and Blair Park Neihborhood associations held a joint meeting in a large classroom at Davidson Elementary School in which an overcapacity crowd of 179 attendees in addition to 14 city and county officials as well as Beard and one of his associates participated.
The joint meeting was coordinated by Muscupiabe  Neighborhood Association Chairwoman Lynn Wear and another local activist, Kathy Mallon. Emilia Lopez officiated the proceedings, using written speaker cards from the attendees to apportion them time to speak. The speakers were given two minutes to pose questions to the public officials present or to Beard or otherwise make comments. On occasion, Lopez articulated questions of her own. Among the public officials present were County Supervisor Josie Gonzles and two members of her staff; County Spokesman David Wert; San Bernardino County Redevelopment Director Terry Thompson and his assistant, Jim Miller; San Bernardino County Transitional Services Director Gilbert Ramos; San Bernardino City Manager Teri Ledoux and Community & Economic Development Director Michael Huntley.
The residents expressed anger and frustration at being saddled with the nearby presence of the welfare office, asking why the county had chosen to locate it in a residential neighborhood. Thomsposn and Miller sought to explain that the county had solicited proposals from potential landlords and that of the three responses, the bid for the Little Mountain location best met the county’s needs, and the city’s zoning at the site allowed the transitional assistance office to be built there. They and Ramos met the crowd’s questions about the decision to close the county’s exisiting San Bernardino Transitional Services Office on Massachusetts Avenue by explaining that the existing building is aging and of insufficient size to handle the growing caseload. Thomas said “This site was selected because it was best in comparison” to the alternatives. Ramos insisted that the facility was not intended to house homeless but serve as a venue for providing services to those in need between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Various residents of the neighborhood expressed their views, complaining that representing the project as a professional office building was both calculated and misleading, and that they were being treated like “peons” by a wealthy developer and well-heeled city and county officials who would never consider locating a welfare office in their own residential neighborhoods. Thomas angered the crowd when he avoided answering pointed questions about why the the county had not considered other locations away from residences such as existing vacant commercial buildings. When he did answer the question after considerable prompting, he focused on an empty Lowes hardware store, which he said could not be utilized because the owner was unwilling to entertain the county’s offers. Miller said the Carousel Mall was tied up with an ongoing proposal for its conversion to a mixed use residential and commercial project.
More than one resident said having the welfare office in the district would serve as a magnet for criminal activity. Officials said there would be security at the facility, around which there would be fencing, and that the clients would be cleared out after closing and the campus gate would be locked. Residents responded that the officials were more concerned about security for the building than they were for the safety of the community into which it was being inserted. Ramos said there will be no clients at the facility at night. “We will have security there,” he said. “The plan for this building is it will be fenced all around. The locked gate will not allow traffic in or out [after hours].”
“That will stop them from being in your building,” one resident shouted. “It’s not going to stop them from walking down our streets.”
Ramos insisted that the goal of the transitional assistance department was to reduce the social problems that lead to unsafe neighborhoods. “The services we offer are to serve families and get people back to work,” he said. “We supply the services they need to get to being self-sufficient.”
One woman complained that putting significant numbers of people at a transitional phase of their lives into the neighborhood was “saying to people that they will just have to stay in their homes” to avoid the danger the transitional assistance facility’s clients will represent.
When asked what the city’s response to the controversy was, San Bernardino City Manager Teri Ledoux said her office was conducting a seven-day investigation into the approval of the project, and that she was not prepared to provide answers until the probe was finished.
Other residents brought up the proximity of the office to a school, voicing concerns that there would be individuals at the social service office transitioning into the local community from institutions. They said the presence of such people was incompatible with a school setting.
Several expressed the view that the Muscupiabe District was a nice neighborhood that was going to be invaded by an undesirable element. One resident said the Muscupiabe District should be valued by the city as one of the “very few pockets left of what was a great community.”  Another called it a “hidden gem.”
Officials’ assurances that the City of San Bernardino would provide police services to combat any uptick in criminal activity perpetrated by the clientele of the welfare office as well as Ramos’s and Supervisor Josie Gonzzles’s statements to the effect that the communites in Ontario, Chino and Chino Hills coexist satisfactorily with the transitional assistance facilities there provoked from the crowd unfavorable comparisons between San Bernardino’s police department and its lengthy response times to the police departments and sheriff’s department contingent in the other cities.
One man, asserting that the neighborhood had already been plagued by a homeless encampment near the top of the hill beyond Mountain Drive, asked, “Who will be there after four o’clock if people are still camping and hanging out at midnight?”
He then demanded to know the identities of the city’s development and environmental review committee. “Who are the seven who reviewed this, the ones who decided what is going to happen in our neighborhood?” he asked. “Who are they?”
One resident accused the county and city officials of speaking in platitudes. “Give us real solutions,” she shouted. “Don’t give us vague words.”
Residents expressed anger at Mayor John Valdivia not being at the meeting, and they jeered Gonzales when she stated that the project was one that was legitimately approved, and that the residents were represented by their mayor and ward councilwoman.
Residents shouted that Valdivia was on the take. “San Bernardino does not have the best reputation,” One said. “The mayor’s shady.”
“You’ve totally abandoned us,” a resident shouted. “You should not be spending bankrupt money on building a new facility. Look at the abandoned buildings around here. Put it in one of them.”
One woman warned the officials, “This is a good neighborhood. I don’t want to be forced to move because I have homeless sitting on my curb. What plans do you have to guarantee safety for us? Our police department is overloaded with calls. We might have to take things into our own hands.”
When Gonzales said that what was being done was the best that the city and county could do, and “if you don’t like it, help us bring about something better,” a woman responded, “This isn’t problem solving. This is malarkey.”
Ibarra said that the project was already approved when she came into office. She called upon the city and county officials to take a close look at the existing transitional assistance facility in the city. “Visit the Massachusetts location,” she said. “You will see what they are talking about. That is what they are afraid of.”
Thompson was asked why the Massachusetts facility could not be expanded to accommodate the greater demand now being put upon it. He gave a less than clear response to that question. He was then asked what was to become of the building after the county left it, and would it become another empty eyesore.
“That is a question for the landlord of that building,” Thomas said.
One resident, picking up on Councilman Mulvihill’s suggestion from the previous evening, asked Beard if he had been asked by the city to impose on himself “a good faith stop work order.” Beard responded that he had not.
The moderator, Emilia Lopez, expressed her view that the approval process for the project was “flawed.”

By Gail Fry and Mark Gutglueck
Next month, a dozen years will have elapsed since charges were brought against the two alleged perpetrators in what was represented as being the most extensive misuse of public education money in the history of California. While the case remains active, the matter has yet to go to trial.
Between the turn of the millennium and 2004, according to prosecutors, Charles Steven Cox and Tad Honeycutt diverted some $23 million in public money that was intended for educational purposes to their own use, spending it on a lavish lifestyle for themselves and their associates and families, investing it in stock and bonds or whisking it into offshore bank accounts.
For reasons that are less than clear, the criminal case against them has languished. In the meantime, both defendants have, in one fashion or another, replicated diversions of public education money separate from their original depredations and converted at least $3.2 million more in public education money to their own use and that of their associates.
Charter schools exist as efforts in public asset privatization, and are semi-autonomous public schools that operate using public funds with only minimal oversight by the state school system. They are granted operating permits or are “chartered” in most cases under a written contract with a specific school district, and on rarer occasions under the authority of the California superintendent of schools or a county school superintendent, which are referred to as the authorizers or sponsors. Such a contract – or charter – details how the school will be organized and managed. The ostensible justification for charter schools is that charter schools can function outside the parameters of normal schools and can offer a curriculum and educational smorgasbord unavailable in traditional public schools while meeting the requirements of both special needs students and accelerated scholars.
Offering gullible parents the promise of an educational alternative that would allow their children to be educated in a wholesome and Christian environment free of the liberal claptrap espoused by teachers under the sway of the state’s teachers’ unions, Charles Steven Cox founded the ostensibly non-profit California Charter Academy in 1999. Using parent support and enthusiasm for his undertaking, Cox convinced the school board with the Snowline Joint Unified School District, consisting of 11 schools including two high schools, three middle schools, five elementary schools and one kindergarten through eighth grade school, to sponsor one charter school. The Snowline District exists in the San Bernardino County Victor Valley, Mojave Desert and northeastern San Gabriel Mountain communities of Victorville, Phelan, Pinon Hills and Wrightwood. Cox then utilized the enthusiasm garnered from that formation to get Snowline to charter another academy. Thereafter, based on expressions of parent confidence in the educational model he had developed, he obtained two more charter sponsorships, one from the Orange School District in Orange County, and one from the Oro Grande School District further north in the desert of San Bernardino County, to expand the academy into the largest charter school operation in California, with 51 campuses located throughout the state, including one as far removed from Southern California as San Joaquin County.
Simultaneous to his founding of the non-profit California Charter Academy, Cox created Educational Administrative Services Corporation, a for-profit company which was then hired by all four charter schools to manage the day-to-day operations of the charter schools and provide academic supplies such as books, paper, pens, pencils, chalkboards, desks, chairs, projectors, computers, etc. Cox inspired Tad Honeycutt, who in 2000 successfully ran for a position on the Hesperia City Council and in time acceded to the position of mayor, to work with the California Charter Academy as well and create his own set of companies, Maniaque Enterprises and Everything For Schools, which like Educational Administrative Services Corporation delivered educational materials and services to the non-profit charter schools at a profit.
Those for-profit companies greatly inflated the prices they charged for delivering those services and supplies. In some cases, educational materials that were paid for by the charter schools were never delivered. Instead, the money was used for a host of purchases that had no conceivable connection to the operation of schools.
By 2003, teachers at several of the schools were going public with accounts of how students’ educations were being neglected and books and other educational materials were not being provided. According to some of those teachers, Cox and Honeycutt, emboldened by the political connections they had in San Bernardino County, which was the base of operations for the California Charter Academy, Educational Administrative Services, Everything For Schools and Maniaque Enterprises, went so far as to take financial advantage of the teachers themselves in keeping the academy functioning while pocketing the state education system money being provided by the various sponsoring school districts.
According to Christopher Casey, who had been hired by Cox to run one of the academy’s vocational schools, “Steven Cox started out as if he was interested in improving education. Tad talked up the charter school idea to get more students and more schools, telling everyone charter schools were dedicated to better education. But when it turned into just a money-making venture, Tad didn’t have the personality or character to handle it and he just went along with everything Cox was doing.”
The California Charter Academy fell crucially short in the provision of key educational materials, Casey said.
Casey said, “With my own money – my credit card – I set up a home builders school in San Bernardino. I had thirty or forty students signed up. We had the class schedule set and I couldn’t get books. I was working with Jim Melton. I asked for the materials. We never got one book. I pleaded for the books. I didn’t see any results. I couldn’t get books. They weren’t focused on that. I said to them, ‘These are the texts I need.’ I asked them to provide resources. They never did. They just prolonged it and prolonged it and put it off. I started the school hoping they would be seriously focused on education, but when I found out what they were really doing, I lost heart and got out of it.”
Melton was one of then-San Bernardino County Supervisor Bill Postmus’s associates.
It was dishonest and reprehensible, Casey said. “A lot of money went into it,” he said. “They had a tremendous opportunity and instead they just used it to take money out of it. They had some outstanding people who wanted to do the job, but their hands were tied.”
Part of Cox’s formula, Casey said, was to “get heavy into politics. [Former California Assemblyman] Keith Olberg went to work for the California Charter Academy. Bill Postmus was their major political asset.”
Very early on, political angles with regard to the California Charter Academy manifested. In 2001, Bill K. Postmus, the father of Bill Postmus, who had been elected county supervisor the previous year, went to work for Cox as the director of/lead instructor in the academy’s criminal justice and leadership program.
In 2004, the superintendent of the California Department of Education, Jack O’Connell, suspecting financial irregularities, launched an investigative audit into California Charter Academy. The preliminary findings from that audit created sufficient concern for state education officials to signal to the sponsoring school districts that the California Charter Academy appeared to be grossly out of compliance with the regulations relating to charter schools.
In June of 2004 as the state was withdrawing funding from the California Charter Academy, Supervisor Postmus’s father was in danger of being thrown out of work. At that point, Postmus induced his colleagues on the board of supervisors to vote with him to have the county forward a $77,000 Workforce Investment Grant to the California Charter Academy in an effort to keep the school where the older Bill Postmus was the principal in session.
It was also at Supervisor Postmus’s insistence that Cox had previously hired former California Assemblyman Keith Olberg and had the Charter Academy and Educational Administrative Services Corporation pay him more than $375,000 over three years, ostensibly to develop an “honors program” for the academy’s schools. Olberg, however, did virtually nothing on that project and the so-called honors program was never instituted.
Postmus similarly insisted that Cox endow political action committees he and his chief of staff, Brad Mitzelfelt, controlled with money to support Mitzelfelt’s future political candidacies as well as those of another Postmus ally, Anthony Adams, who served two terms in the California Assembly.
In August 2004, more than four years after California Charter Academy’s creation, it ceased operations abruptly, throwing teachers out of work and forcing students to hurriedly matriculate back into public schools.
O’Connell intensified and broadened the audit, obtaining search warrants to seize the available financial books kept by the California Charter Academy, Educational Administrative Services, Everything For Schools and Maniaque Enterprises, and detailing investigators to speak with those involved in the academy, administrators, teachers, students and parents. The state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Team, augmented by an auditing firm hired by the California Department of Education, MGT of America, pored over the documents obtained.
On April 14, 2005, MGT of America and the California Fiscal Crisis and Management Team released their joint financial audit of the California Charter Academy, showing $23 million in taxpayer money provided to Cox through the academy and then largely paid out to the private management companies Educational Administrative Services Corporation, Maniaque Enterprises and Everything For Schools was misappropriated. Among the findings were that Cox had hired several of his family members into what were essentially do-nothing clerical and non-productive administrative positions, that Cox, his family members, other Educational Administrative Services Corporation and Charter Academy employees and Honeycutt were provided with luxury automobiles, and that among the expenses accumulated by the Charter Academy were accommodations in Las Vegas, at Disneyland and the Disneyland Hotel, studio musical recording equipment, spa visits, fishing trips and jet skis.
Cox made $5.5 million in payments to Honeycutt’s for-profit subsidiary without a vote by the academy board to approve the disbursements. Cox’s take was more substantial, around $17.5 million.
The audit detailed multiple conflict-of-interest violations, the improper conversion of private schools to public charter schools, and the falsification of documents and claims to receive public funds.
“The magnitude of waste of precious education funds outlined in the audit was appalling,” said O’Connell.
In late July 2007, a grand jury was impaneled and began inquiries into the California Charter Academy’s operations. On September 4, 2007, Honeycutt and Cox were arrested after being indicted by that special grand jury for their alleged roles in the collapse of the California Charter Academy.
Cox was indicted 55 felony counts of PC 424 embezzlement/misappropriation of public funds, each with six enhancements, 55 felony counts of PC 487 grand theft, all of which carried six enhancements each, another count of PC 424 misappropriation of public funds with no enhancement, another count of PC 487 grand theft with no enhancement, one count of violating California Revenue and Taxation Code 19706 and and six enhancements relating to the California Revenue and Taxation Code 19706 crime that Honeycutt was involved in.
Honeycutt was charged with 16 counts of PC 424, misappropriation of public funds, each with four enhancements; one count of PC 424 with no enhancement; 14 charges of of Pc 487 grand theft, each with four enhancements; three charges of California Revenue and Taxation Code 19706 tax evasion, each with two enhancements; and one charge of California Revenue and Taxation Code 19705 filing a false tax return, with two enhancements.
Cox’s bail was set at $1 million, while Honeycutt’s was logged at $500,000. Both were able to post bail. Law enforcement officials froze their domestic assets, but little of the missing money that officials thought might be recovered was present in their accounts in local banking institutions. It is known that Honeycutt had made multiple trips to Vanuatu, Spain and Argentina in the early and mid-2000s. Some of the taxpayer money provided to the California Charter Academy was used to fund lawsuits brought by Cox and Educational Administrative Services Corporation against public entities. In one case, Cox and Educational Administrative Services Corporation filed suit against the California Department of Education, contending the state had illegally withheld funding from the California Charter Academy. Cox and Educational Administrative Services Corporation did not prevail in that suit. Cox brought another unsuccessful lawsuit alleging impropriety and political motivation on the part of public officials whose actions led to the closure of the California Charter Academy.
A series of miscues, procedural and judicial, along with the corrosive pull of political influence prevented the criminal case against Cox and Honeycutt from being fast tracked from the start.
Honeycutt, through his parental connections as well as his affiliation with Bill Postmus, was active in Republican politics, and was involved in raising money that was used by a number of officials, including judges, to get into office. Honeycutt’s father, Theron, was Hesperia’s mayor in the 1990s. His mother, Kathleen, was California Assemblywoman from 1992 until 1994. Several judges at the Victorville Courthouse declined to hear the case involving Honeycutt or any of Postmus’ political allies, recusing themselves.
Cox and Honeycutt came before Judge Margaret Powers for arraignment. The case was then handed over to Judge Eric Nakata. An effort to recuse Nakata ensued, however, and at the intervention of then-Presiding Judge Larry Allen, the case was transferred back to Powers. Subsequently, the case was heard by judges Miriam Morton, John Tomberlin, Jules Fleuret and Arthur Harrison. Eventually the case went to Judge Jon Ferguson in Rancho Cucamonga. In more recent years, motions have been ruled upon and proceedings overseen by Judge Jon Ferguson, before whom it is anticipated the trial will take place, as well as judges Charles Umeda and Ingrid Uhler.
The trial timetable suffered a setback in November 2010 when Cox’s attorney, Earl Wade Shinder, committed suicide. That was more than eight years ago, however, and the delays continued. Attorney Grover Porter, who has represented Honeycutt for more than ten years, and Geoff Newman, Cox’s fifth lawyer, are sufficiently up to speed on the case to proceed to trial. Nearly five years ago, Porter made a motion to withdraw as Honeycutt’s attorney of record. That motion was denied by Judge Ferguson, who said there was no legal basis for the withdrawal. On occasion since that time, attorney David Goldstein has made appearances in court for Honeycutt.
There are roughly 52,000 pages of discovery and 459 anticipated trial exhibits. Some 80 witnesses testified before the grand jury, including Postmus, his successor as supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, Hesperia School Board Member Eric Swanson, and then-Victorville Councilwoman Joanne Almond.
Based upon multiple witness statements and the documentation in the MGT of America/California Fiscal Crisis and Management Team audit, the case against Cox and Honeycutt is a strong one, with bank records, receipts, hotel and resort registrations, airline ticket records and vehicle registrations demonstrating that millions of dollars in funding intended for educational purposes was diverted to pay for vacations, vehicles, recording and video equipment, jet skis, leases on or payments for real estate or to cover political campaign expenses.
The prosecutor on the case is Michael Fermin, who was a deputy district attorney when he was assigned to carry it forward in 2007. After the retirements of former assistant district attorneys Dennis Christy and James Hackleman, Fermin was elevated to the position of assistant district attorney under then-District Attorney Mike Ramos, a postion from which he oversaw a major portion of the office’s administrative duties, including its budget and human resources. Fermin remains as a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office following Ramos’s defeat in his 2018 reelection attempt and the ascension of Jason Anderson to the position of district attorney.
Today, Fermin remains as the lead prosecutor in the case involving allegations of $23 million intended for educational purposes being diverted to unauthorized, improper or illegal use, one of the most intensive white collar criminal cases in San Bernardino County history. Fermin has deferred a number of the district attorney’s office’s appearances in the case to deputy district attorneys John Thomas and Lynette Grulke.
For reasons the district attorney’s office has chosen not to clarify, it has delayed again and again and again and again in moving the case to trial, despite its potential for boosting Fermin into the legal stratosphere. Among various and sundry other motions and in-court actions, there have been 64 pretrial hearings scheduled and begun, abbreviated, postponed, suspended, partially held or delayed, without the matter coming to trial.
The case originated at a time when there was a much different political lay of the land than exists now. The shift in the political pecking order, and the degree to which the district attorney’s office shielded the now-defunct political dynasty that ruled the roost in 2007 when the case was filed, explicates at least in part the cause for the delay.
By 2004, Bill Postmus had acceded to the position of chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. Almost simultaneously, he had become the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, exercising control over Republican Party endorsements and the delivery of GOP money to local Republican candidates for political campaigning purposes. In 2006, with two years left on his second term as supervisor, Postmus ran successfully for county assessor against the incumbent, Donald Williamson. Postmus thus acceded to the position of the highest ranking tax official in San Bernardino County, with virtual autonomy over how property and assets were to be assessed throughout the entire San Beranrdino County jurisdiction.
In 2007, while Postmus was yet one of the most powerful political figures in the county, Fermin made a politically-driven decision to leave Postmus out of the indictment. Since that time, information implicating Postmus that was then available to the district attorney’s office has become widely known to the public, information which shows Postmus was embroiled in the California Charter Academy Scandal at multiple levels.
Cox emerged as one of Postmus’ major early political supporters, having contributed $25,450 to his political war chest when Postmus was running for supervisor in 2000, utilizing California Charter Academy money to make those donations.
Early on, Postmus was appointed by Cox to serve as a member of two of the boards of the charter schools functioning under the aegis of the California Charter Academy. Postmus then used his status as a charter school board member as a feature in his resumé when he first ran for supervisor.
Action Postmus took, based upon his actual authority as a board member or carry-over authority as a former board member and close affiliate of Cox, became the focus of the grand jury that was impaneled in 2007 and which indicted Cox and Honeycutt. Irrefutable evidence emerged to show Postmus made efforts to ensure that members of his family as well as his political supporters were rewarded with jobs or contracts at or with the California Charter Academy.
Evidence was produced to show that Postmus directed Cox or otherwise arranged, both while he was a charter academy board member and afterward, for money to be diverted to Brad Mitzelfelt, who was Postmus’ chief of staff when he was supervisor, and Keith Olberg, a former state assemblyman who was a key Postmus political ally, in the form of questionable or illegal payments. Postmus worked as district director in Assemblyman Keith Olberg’s High Desert office from 1995 until 1999.
In 2002, Postmus was provided with an all-expenses paid trip to Florida by Cox, who used California Charter School funds to pay for the trip, accommodations and spending cash, which totaled more than $17,000. No explanation of what the trip was for was ever provided.
In 2001, Bill K. Postmus, Bill Postmus’s father, was given a lucrative position as the principal/director/lead instructor in the academy’s criminal justice and leadership program.
Ten years ago, Postmus fell from grace, having been downed by drug use, extortion and bribery scandals. In 2009, he resigned from the county assessor’s office. In 2010, he was indicted. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to 14 felony corruption-in-public office charges unrelated to the California Charter School case, along with a single misdemeanor narcotics violation. In November 2018, his sentencing having been deferred for more than seven years, the court considered and rejected a motion made on his behalf by his attorney Jeffrey Lawrence to vacate his 2011 pleas. Thereafter, he was sentenced to three years in state prison, where he is currently in custody.
Of note is that as the California Charter Academy prosecution languished, both Cox and Honeycutt repeated what they had carried off with the California Charter Academy, albeit on a less grand scale.
In 2009, the Postmus Political Machine was in its last throes, its leader having been exposed as a drug addict, a revelation which resulted in his February 2009 resignation as county assessor. But those who had manned his political machine were yet angling for money, even as political power was slipping from their grasp.
Cox, working as a quiet adviser functioning from the shadows, put together another charter school proposal, this time selling the idea to the Adelanto School District. Participating in the free-for-all were Cox; Postmus; Postmus’ one-time chief of staff, Brad Mitzelfelt, who had succeeded him and at that point remained as First District supervisor; Dino DeFazio, a friend of Postmus and the owner of D & D Real Estate and other real estate businesses, including Tri-Land, Inc, in which he was a partner with Postmus; Jessie Flores, a former field representative for Postmus and a then-field representative for Mitzelfelt; Adam Aleman, who was formerly one of Postmus’s field representatives and later one of Postmus’ assistant assessors; Hesperia Unified School District Trustee Anthony Riley, a Postmus political ally; Sentry Home Loans owner and Adelanto Boys and Girls Club President Helene Harris and her husband Hendon Harris; Mitchel E. Pullman, a principal in Arrowhead Properties, IV, LLC; and Peggy Baker, Charles Steven Cox’s sister-in-law.
After Cox prepared the articles of incorporation, the Adelanto Charter Academy was chartered by the Adelanto School District on August 19, 2009. Functioning on a model not very different from that used by the California Charter Academy but on a smaller scale, Cox, Postmus, Mitzelfelt, DeFazio, Flores, Aleman, the Harrises, Pullman and Baker utilized the position of trust they had been vouchsafed to funnel money to themselves or the companies they controlled. In the roughly 15 months the academy was running without any oversight, they managed to loot the operation of more than $2 million that should otherwise have gone toward the education of students but instead was diverted to activities, purchases and disbursements having no conceivable academic application, such as the provision of limousines to the participants by Flores, the owner of Diamond Limousine. The Adelanto Charter Academy contracted with Professional Charter Management, Inc. to have the latter perform administrative services in return for 15 percent of all Adelanto Charter Academy revenues.
According to the California Secretary of State, Professional Charter Management, Inc. was a corporation with Jessie Flores as its chief executive officer and Dino DeFazio in the capacities of chief financial officer and secretary and Kari Murdock as agent for service of process. Kari Murdock is a niece of Charles Steven Cox.
In December 2010, Jessie Flores filed, under penalty of perjury, a certificate of dissolution for Professional Charter Management, Inc. Records, however, show that Professional Charter Management, Inc. continued to receive payments from the Adelanto Charter Academy after that dissolution.
According to records obtained by the Sentinel, the Adelanto Charter Academy contracted with Educational Development, Inc. to perform administrative services in return for 5 percent of all Adelanto Charter Academy income from September 1, 2009 until June 30, 2014. It is not clear whether or how the administrative activities carried out by Educational Development, Inc. either meshed, or conflicted, with the administrative services provided by Professional Charter Management, Inc.
In November 2010, an audit cataloging significant shortcomings in the school’s operations was released, showing the academy had diverted some $2.2 million from educational purposes to the coterie of Postmus’ one-time political hangers-on. On May 17, 2011, the Adelanto School District revoked the charter it had granted to the Adelanto Charter Academy. The Adelanto Charter Academy immediately appealed the decision to the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, who upheld the Adelanto School District’s decision on August 1, 2011. The Adelanto Charter Academy appealed that decision to the California Department of Education and continued to operate until notified on April 17, 2012, that “your administrative remedies are exhausted” and “any further appeal of revocation must be sought in a court of local jurisdiction.”
Recognizing that moving the matter into such a forum might well lead to indictments, those behind the operation threw in the towel, having diverted somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.1 million to their own pockets and bank accounts.
The brazenness with which those involved acted is further illustrated by Honeycutt’s seemingly nonchalant behavior in the aftermath of the indictment, as well.
In 2012, a half decade after his indictment but with the case remaining in interminable limbo, Honeycutt sought to again exploit the loopholes in California’s charter school regulations to recreate what had been the most lucrative run of his life. Changing the vowel in his first name from a to e, and adopting his mother’s maiden name, Viera, Honeycutt founded Innovative Academies, billing it as “a learning network platform for private schools in the USA to globalize and connect to students throughout the world.”
Under the guise of “Ted Viera,” and assuming the modest titles of manager and then director of field operations, Honeycutt did not hesitate to think big and go beyond the confines of California to cash in.
“We are actively seeking key ‘Sister School’ partnerships globally with schools, tutoring centers, student recruitment firms, and other education organizations,” he wrote in making his pitch.
The company had 17 employees and was actively pursuing partnerships with schools in mainland China and Taiwan, arranging to accredit students for classes taken in venues outside of the country where the academic institution they were attending was located.
The company offered, Viera told his prospective clients, specialized academic services such as a “dual diploma program, globalization, education management, and English learning.”
Students signing up with Innovative Academies could access the institution’s “Learning Network Platform,” its website claimed, and through it students could earn “a second high school diploma from an elite private school in the United States.”
The company’s website, InnovativeAcadamies.org, is no longer functional.
When California authorities learned of the operation, Honeycutt shut it down.
Last Friday, August 2, a pretrial hearing was held before Judge Jon Ferguson. There was no indication in the court record when the matter is scheduled for trial.
Fermin told the Sentinel he is constrained by the prosecutor’s canon of ethics from making any comment on the substance of the case. He said, simply,  “What I can tell you is I am involved in active negotiations with counsel for both Mr. Cox and Mr Honeycutt to resolve the matter. I would not say I am confident this will be settled short of trial, but I am hopeful we can reach an appropriate disposition.”