In conformance with a growing national trend and what has previously occurred in adjoining Orange County, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department yesterday retooled its radio communication system from an open analog one to an encrypted digital version. The change instantly rendered all outside monitoring of the department’s dispatch and communications activity impossible.
At least as early as the 1950s, radio ham operators or others so inclined have been using crystal controlled scanners to monitor local public safety agency radio transmissions. Doing so was possible by matching the crystal, i.e., the crystal oscillator consisting of a piece of piezoelectric material used to create an electrical signal with a precise frequency to stabilize frequencies for radio transmission, used in the broadcasting unit with that used in the receiver. Law enforcement or fire safety agencies, weighing the relative benefits and disadvantages of letting the public monitor their communications in real time, for the most part came down on the side of allowing open access.
Those advantages included an atmosphere of trust and accountability and a commensurate reduction in the suspicion and distrust engendered by secrecy, together with a built-in publicity for the safety agencies’ operations, in particular their successful ones. For media outlets such as newspapers, radio stations and television stations, scanners provided a constant window on operations which could be converted to news flashes or news reports. Additionally, there were certain practical benefits to law enforcement from the real time availability of data relating to police operations, including tips from the public with regard to the whereabouts of subjects fitting the description of suspects and missing persons, or calls alerting the department about circumstances with a bearing on ongoing operations. But the openness also exposed or entailed a certain vulnerability in the function of law enforcement, giving sophisticated criminals engaged in activity such as bank robberies, armed robberies or burglaries the opportunity to use scanners to keep track of the dispatch of units, or the response of units en route, to the location of an ongoing crime. Agencies were able to counter this somewhat by utilizing specially tailored crystals for the broadcasting of so-called priority dispatches or communications relating to activities such as ongoing bank heists, commercial break-ins, etc.
County residents who were inclined to monitor sheriff’s department dispatches and were formerly able to do so were in particular miffed at the changeover to an encrypted system, as they, as county taxpayers, paid to deprive themselves of the information access they heretofore enjoyed. The county invested $160 million in the new communication system over the past few years.
In making the change, the sheriff’s department stated, “We recognize the concern from our residents and the media regarding the system shutting out the public, some who are hobbyists.” Prior to the shift, however, the department did not engage in dialogue with those hobbyists, members of the public or the media seeking to provide feedback ahead of the change or to dissuade the department from its course.
The new system is either currently integrated, or can subsequently be integrated, with the digital dispatch systems of several law enforcement agencies in the county, in adjoining counties and throughout California. The system also allows interoperability and is a single communication platform designed to play a critical role in the event of a disaster, and mutual aid requests in and outside of the county. A number of agencies across the state have already replaced their analog communication systems with digital ones, most of which are encrypted.
One advantage is that officers from different agencies in the county using the system can communicate with one another seamlessly and in utter confidence that their exchanges are not being heard by anyone without the decryption key used by the system.
According to the department, “The improved communication platform is vital to the safety of our first responders. It will enhance coverage throughout the county, improve the voice clarity and strengthen the signal to our police frequencies. The improved system will also shut out individuals who are engaging in criminal behavior that would like to know if law enforcement is coming for them. We understand the argument that the public has a right to know what is happening around them. Our mission to serve the public is our number one priority, and the new system will help us in keeping personal and critical operational information from being broadcasted to the world.”
To make up for the public’s loss of its direct window on the real time activity of the department, the sheriff’s department said it was making efforts to remedy that. “Our agency has been pushing out more media releases today than ever before, informing the public of incidents in their communities,” according to the statement from the department on February 1 announcing the system was in place. “We will continue to notify the public by way of the media, and our various social media platforms.”
Nevertheless, department watchdogs and members of the media expressed concern that the closed system the department is now functioning with will allow it to withhold information at its own discretion and that it deprives the public of an independent means of monitoring department behavior. It has been repeatedly noted that the department and the county embarked on the change in the aftermath of the Christopher Dorner incident, in which the rogue Los Angeles police officer was run to ground in an area near Big Bear by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department on February 12, 2013. Barricaded in a cabin in a rustic area north of the community of Angeles Oaks, Dorner engaged in a firefight with members of the department before perishing in a conflagration that burned the cabin to the ground. An autopsy showed Dorner died from a single gunshot wound to the head, with evidence indicating that it was self-inflicted. In the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the cabin and Dorner’s death, San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said that his deputies did not intentionally burn down the cabin. The department maintained that the fire was the inadvertent result of pyrotechnic tear gas canisters launched into the cabin in an effort to drive Dorner outside. The devices ignited the cabin fire, the department maintained.
At the news conference announcing the results of Dorner’s autopsy on February 15, 2013, McMahon reiterated the claim that deputies had not deliberately set the cabin on fire.
In a recording of the sheriff’s department’s communications in the minutes just before the cabin erupted in flames captured by a county resident using a scanner, however, a member of the department can be heard giving the command, “Get the gas. Burn it down.”
For the time being, the old analog system is to remain in place, unused, providing the department with a redundant communication capability. Given the existence of a dozen or more “dead spots” within 20,105-square mile San Bernardino County where radio reception can be spotty, switching to the analog band will take place on occasion, most likely.
Those using a digital scanner will be able to hear and decipher fire department broadcasts, which will not be encrypted.
-Mark Gutglueck

A video of a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy kicking and stomping a handcuffed man lying face down on the ground began making the rounds on social media early this week.
Shortly after the video was brought to the attention of the department, the colleagues of the deputy seen administering the beating began a search for the videographer responsible for the 67-second visual depiction of what had occurred in an effort to carry out his or her arrest.
The incident in question took place at around 1 a.m. on January 26. The video, appears to have been shot from a distance of roughly 40 feet from the action and possibly from within a parked or unmoving vehicle in the roadway. When the video opens, a deputy is struggling with a man on the ground, using a left side half nelson to pin him to the ground. At the 11 second point in the video, a sheriff’s department vehicle is seen approaching the scene and crossing the yellow line median lane and pulling into place to stop, facing the oncoming traffic lane proximate to the struggle. At the 14 second point, the arriving deputy exits his vehicle and moves quickly to assist the first deputy in an attempt to handcuff the yet prone man, who appears to be struggling against the effort to restrict him. The second deputy’s action appears to be concentrated on holding the suspect, whose head is pointed toward the middle of the street, in place to facilitate the handcuffing. At the video’s 26 second point, the original deputy on the scene can be seen punching the suspect in the head. With the arriving deputy straddling the prone suspect, the handcuffing appears to have been effectuated at around the 37 second mark in the video. At the video’s 49 second point both deputies attempt to pull the suspect up by his arms, which are handcuffed behind his back.
The deputies appear to be having difficulty in directing the suspect, whose body has gone limp, and 51 seconds into the video the deputies set him down. After again attempting to hoist him, they pivot around and set him down with his face and chest toward the ground so that the suspect’s head is angled more toward the curb than the center of the street. At the 59 second point the suspect can be heard yelling indistinctly. At the one minute point and again at one minute and 2 seconds into the video, the deputy originally on the scene when the video began can be seen kicking the suspect in the head. One minute and 4 seconds into the video he stomps on the victim’s head. Three seconds later the video abruptly ends.
The suspect has been identified as 21-year-old Garardo Bernabe Vasquez, and the location of the incident as in the vicinity of Perris Hill Park near Highland Avenue and Cedar Street. Vasquez was arrested and booked for resisting arrest.
After the video was posted to several social media sites including youtube, the sheriff’s department took notice and began a manhunt for the videographer. After at least two Los Angeles-based television stations ran the video, the sheriff’s department moved to place the deputy depicted in the video on administrative leave.
“I can assure you that we take these matters very seriously and we will conduct a thorough and complete investigation,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon. “The deputy in question has been placed on paid administrative leave. I expect our employees always to remain professional when contacting the public, who we serve.”
The department identified Vasquez, who, the department said, was acting oddly prior to his encounter with the deputy that early Friday morning. The department refused to identify either of the deputies involved in subduing and arresting Vasquez. Nor would the department consent to releasing the police report pertaining to Vasquez’s arrest.
While McMahon said his department was looking into the occurrence and would take appropriate action, the Sentinel has learned that two watch commanders in the sheriff’s department’s Central Division, which oversees operations in the unincorporated county area around San Bernardino, have authorized the arrest of the videographer, if he or she can be located. Two grounds for the arrest have been stipulated, the first being improperly standing in, or impeding vehicular flow through, a traffic thoroughfare, Vehicle Code Section 22400, and the second pertaining to obstructing a peace officer in the performance of his duty, Penal Code Section 148. According to the sheriff’s department, the video offers proof of those offenses. The sheriff’s department has asked the videographer to voluntarily come forward.
Sheriff’s department personnel believe that the arrest of the videographer, whether or not it leads to a prosecution by the San Bernardino District Attorney’s Office or the California Attorney General’s Office and whether or not such a prosecution will result in a conviction, will dissuade citizens from capturing video or photographic depictions of sheriff’s officers in the comportment of their duty in the future. Moreover, department members believe that obtaining a criminal conviction of the videographer will compromise him or her as a witness with regard to any testimony he or she may offer against the deputy or deputies involved in Vasquez’s arrest, be that in a criminal or a civil context.
The Vasquez incident came just five days before the sheriff’s department ended a more than 60-year long practice of using analog radio dispatch broadcasts, and switching on February 1 to a digital and encrypted radio system format to carry out its dispatch and communication function with and between deputies in the field. Citizens who have long monitored sheriff’s department dispatch and communication activity using analog radio scanners have objected to the switchover. The department, maintaining that the security of its operations trumps the tradition of transparency with regard to department real time communications with field officers and patrol units, offered an assurance that it would step up the number of media releases generated internally by the department to keep the public up to speed with regard to department operations. The department provided no press release with regard to the Vasquez arrest.
–Mark Gutglueck

Five-and-a-half years ago, Cadiz, Inc. finessed the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors into allowing the board of directors for an Orange County Water District to carry out the environmental certification and approval of a controversial water extraction project located in the East Mojave Desert, over 200 miles outside of the water district’s borders. The unorthodox approval process for a plan to draft billions of gallons of water from an aquifer in the East Mojave Desert for use in Los Angeles and Orange counties has fueled questions about the integrity and legitimacy of the environmental certification of the project ever since. This week, Cadiz, Inc. released a study prepared by a team of scientists it hired to review an issue tangentially related to the project’s environmental review, which offered the conclusion that a spring on higher ground than, and more than ten miles removed from, the project’s wellfield will likely be unaffected by the water extraction. The company has extrapolated on that conclusion to assert the project overall will not have a deleterious impact on the East Mojave Desert’s wildlife.
While the project was given environmental certification in 2012 through a process specified under the California Environmental Quality Act, several of the issues addressed in the environmental impact report have been disputed or controverted by subsequent reviews made by environmentalists or the federal government. The complete draining of, or lasting adverse impacts on, the natural springs in the eastern Mojave Desert has been cited by environmentalists and project opponents as a primary reason for not allowing the Cadiz Water Project to proceed.
According to Cadiz, Inc., however, the study it recently commissioned indicates the ecological havoc naysayers are predicting if the project is allowed to proceed will not come about.
Beginning in the late 1980s, what was then known as the Cadiz Land Company, which had been created by Ted Dutton and Keith Brackpool, sunk a well in the Cadiz Valley in the Eastern Mojave Desert and initiated an organic farming operation there growing tomatoes, peppers, melons, grapes and citrus. Though at no time throughout its existence did the Cadiz farming operation operate at a profit, it was able to make an assertion, based upon the irrigation of the crops at the Cadiz farm, to water rights from the Cadiz/Fenner aquifer. In 1997 the Metropolitan Water District tentatively bought into Cadiz Land’s proposal to convey up to 1.5 million acre-feet of what was referenced as “surplus” Colorado River water to Cadiz and “store” that water by pumping it into the water table. In “dry years” the Cadiz Land Company proposed allowing the Metropolitan Water District to extract water from the aquifer and conduct it through a 35-mile pipeline that was to be constructed between Cadiz and the Metropolitan Water District’s existing Colorado River aqueduct. In August 2002 the federal government gave approval to the project but two months later the Metropolitan Water District’s board of directors rejected the project after conservationists raised concerns over possible environmental damage, given the pristine nature of the aquifer beneath the floor of the Cadiz Valley, which contains ancient water that has been accumulating there through natural means since before the Pleistocene Era. The concept lay dormant for six years but in 2008, the Cadiz Land Company, by then known as Cadiz, Inc., revived the plan in modified form, emphasizing less the drawing of water from the Colorado River and instead proposing to obtain water from sources feeding the desert area’s dry lakes that Cadiz, Inc. claimed are subject to evaporation. The revamped project, to entail the sinking of 34 wells into the desert and construction of a 44-mile pipeline to meet up with the aqueduct carrying Colorado River water to the Los Angeles and Orange County metropolitan areas, was given a tentative budget of $536.25 million. Cadiz, Inc. first arranged to find potential buyers of the water, lining up the Santa Margarita Water District in Orange County; the Three Valleys Water District, which provides water to Pomona Valley, Walnut Valley, and Eastern San Gabriel Valley; the Golden State Water Company, which serves several communities in Southern California, including Claremont; Suburban Water Systems, which serves Covina, West Covina and La Mirada; and the Jurupa Community Services District, which serves Mira Loma in Riverside County. Then, to obtain environmental certification of the project, Cadiz, Inc. turned not to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, but to the Santa Margarita Water District, which was to be the largest recipient of the water. The Santa Margarita Water District is the second largest water district in Orange County, serving the affluent communities of Rancho Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo, Coto de Caza, Las Flores, Ladera Ranch and Talega.
A contingent of San Bernardino County residents protested the Santa Margarita Water District’s assumption of lead agency status on the plan, officially known as the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation and Recovery Project, based on the consideration that the district lies 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley across the county line from San Bernardino County. San Bernardino County could have contested that arrangement in court, but Cadiz, Inc. effectively muted that by providing then-San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, in whose First District the Cadiz and Fenner valleys and much of the East Mojave were located, with $48,100 in political donations as he attempted to vault from his position as county supervisor to Congress. In the June 2012 primary, Mitzelfelt proved unsuccessful in his effort to get into the 8th Congressional District race runoff in November 2012, placing a distant fifth among thirteen candidates, in no small part because his support of the Cadiz Project was so unpopular with his constituents that the hefty political contributions from Cadiz, Inc. proved to be of no avail to him. In seeking to transition into Congress in 2012, Mitzelfelt had to forgo seeking reelection as supervisor that same year. Thus, he was consigned to leave office later that year. He was still in office as a lame duck when on July 31, 2012, the Santa Margarita Water District’s board of directors certified the environmental impact report for the Cadiz Water Project, clearing the way for Cadiz, Inc. to extract an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water per year – more than 16 billion gallons of groundwater annually – for the next century from the eastern Mojave Desert and send it via pipeline westward to Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties.
In the more than five years since, a succession of environmental challenges and lawsuits have delayed the implementation of the project. Cadiz, Inc. has succeeded in overcoming those lawsuits, nearly all of which were heard in Orange County Superior Court.
Legal and administrative sparring over the project continues, with the Donald Trump administration having issued a blanket memo revoking a Bureau of Land Management’s 2015 decision preventing Cadiz Inc. from using existing federal railroad right-of-way for the water pipeline it intends to construct to convey water drawn from the aquifer to the Metropolitan Water District’s aqueduct. Simultaneously, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, who was the lead sponsor of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act signed into law by President Bill Clinton and a longtime opponent of Cadiz, Inc.’s designs on desert water, has united forces with California Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, in forging legislative efforts to prevent the Cadiz Water Project from proceeding. In November, Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit against the federal government for approving the project.
That lawsuit challenges what the plaintiffs term “an illegal determination by the Trump Administration” alleged to allow “a for-profit corporation called Cadiz, Inc. to construct a 43-mile pipeline through Mojave Trails National Monument and other public land while circumventing laws enacted to protect human health and the environment” and “allow Cadiz, Inc. to sell billions of gallons of groundwater mined from ancient desert aquifers to urban water districts.” The lawsuit further holds that “construction and maintenance of the pipeline [will] disrupt wildlife and worsen pollution in and around Mojave Trails National Monument.” The suit asserts that “the U.S. Geological Survey has warned the pipeline will make it possible for Cadiz, Inc. to extract far more groundwater from the desert aquifers than is replenished naturally. The resulting draw-down of the water table will cause many freshwater springs of critical importance to desert plants and animals to go dry. The retreating aquifer will also desiccate desert “playa” lakebeds, resulting in toxic air pollution from windswept sediments akin to what has plagued the Owens Valley to the north ever since Los Angeles dried Owens Lake a century ago.”
The study commissioned by Cadiz, Inc. and announced on the company’s website this week deals with that latter point. According to Cadiz, Inc., the study, co-authored by geologist Miles Kenney, Ph.D. and California State certified hydrogeologist Terry Foreman, supports a disputed determination contained in the California Environmental Quality Act report done for the approval process of the project and entered into the public record in 2012 that the project is hydraulically disconnected from Bonanza Spring, one of the most verdant spots in the project area and also the closest perennial natural spring to the Cadiz Water Project at 11 miles away and an elevation separation of 1,000 feet.
According to Cadiz, Inc. the study was completed “after extensive field work, site observation, and geologic mapping, as well as a peer review conducted by other hydrology, geology, and hydrogeology experts. The report cites as “facts” that “Bonanza Spring occurs in fractured crystalline mountain bedrock in the southwestern Clipper Mountains at 2,100 feet elevation. The spring exists entirely in bedrock. Bonanza Spring is 11 miles northeast of the northern end of Cadiz Water Project’s wellfield. The Cadiz Water Project wellfield water table in the alluvial aquifer occurs at approximately 1,100 feet elevation, 1,000 feet lower than Bonanza Spring, which indicates ‘disconnection’ between the two systems.”
Furthermore, according to the study, “The alluvial groundwater aquifer is also three miles to the east of the Bonanza Spring. Bonanza Spring is located at the intersection of two extensive bounding faults, which exhibit evidence of being groundwater barriers. The two bounding faults create a spring catchment area that extends over 4 miles north of the Bonanza Spring. Recharge to the catchment area is delivered by precipitation and runoff that infiltrates the porous, fractured rock formations up gradient from the spring. This fractured rock system is effectively hydraulically separated from the alluvial regional groundwater system in Fenner Valley. Long-term climate conditions, not regional groundwater conditions, control recharge of Bonanza Spring.”
In releasing the report, Cadiz, Inc. Chief Operating Officer Scott Slater acknowledged that the 2012 environmental impact report for the project had come under attack, but asserted the findings of the recent study allayed those concerns.
“While the extensive body of work to date has already assured that the project will not harm any desert resources, we commissioned Miles’ peer-reviewed geologic investigation to address lingering questions as to whether the project could impact Bonanza Spring under any circumstance,” said Slater. “That question has now been answered definitively no. The new study confirms that project operations cannot affect the spring, or plants and animals that may rely on it. This conclusion is reached based on important geologic findings by Dr. Kenney, principally the identification of two convergent fault zones that are blocking, or ‘damming,’ upstream groundwater flowing in fractured bedrock above the spring. These faults intersect exactly at the Bonanza Spring, and groundwater is surfacing from the fractured rocks and spilling over the faults to form it.”
Slater continued, “This fractured rock is at a limited depth and does not extend to the downstream aquifer in the Fenner Gap, known as the ‘alluvial aquifer,’ where the water project will operate. The faulting and limited depth of the fractured rocks and the extensive exposure of these permeable rocks upslope of Bonanza Spring have created a catchment area that provides a long-term source of water to the spring from above that is independent of, and not influenced by, conditions in the alluvial aquifer at the Cadiz area miles below. These observed physical data points provide incontrovertible evidence that the spring will not be affected by project operations. Dr. Kenney is the geologist most familiar with this watershed, and this report well documents his conclusion – and that of those who peer reviewed the report – that faulting and the geologic nature of the fractured rock creates physical barriers that prevent the project from ever impacting Bonanza Spring.”
Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the consideration that Bonanza Spring feeds either entirely or partially off of a water source that is geologically isolated from other portions of the aquifer does nothing to vindicate the overall advisability of the project.
“There is no real new information to take away from what they have in this study as to what is going on in the aquifer there,” Anderson told the Sentinel. “The meaningful issue is how much natural recharge there is to the water table in that region on an annual basis and how much water will this project remove in the same time frame and on a continuous basis. The U.S. Geological Survey and other scientists have debunked entirely Cadiz, Inc.’s claims of the recharge rate. Their plan calls for removing an incredible amount of water from a significant ancient aquifer that accumulated when that surface area was a grassland and not a desert. The operative issue is that annual rainfall throughout that area is much less than what Cadiz, Inc. says is recharged into that aquifer each year. Nothing has changed since those studies were done, except that with the drought there has been even less recharge. That data is reliable, coming from the U.S. Geological Survey. A determination of whether this project should move forward should be based on reliable data that is provided by members of the scientific community who do not have a stake in this project moving forward.”
The scientists hired by Cadiz, Inc., Anderson said, have couched their findings in a narrowly drawn framework which is calculated to ignore the “plundering of the desert for its resources. It doesn’t make sense to suggest that you can pump 16 billion gallons of groundwater out of the Mojave Desert every year and not do irreversible damage to wildlife and seriously imperil the regional water supplies.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein referred to the data and conclusion reached by Kenney, Foreman and their team as “dubious Cadiz-sponsored findings. Cadiz can keep peddling these ridiculous claims, but we’re still not buying it,” Feinstein said. “Objective, independent studies show Cadiz is an unsustainable scheme that will devastate an entire ecosystem. Unbiased scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service have consistently disputed Cadiz’s findings and repeatedly stated the project would drain vital desert aquifers. Nothing in this study, bought and paid for by Cadiz, changes those facts.”
     -Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
The team of FBI agents assigned to the High Desert have obtained evidence suggesting that the graft infesting the City of Adelanto’s move to a largely cannabis-based economy was not limited to former councilman Jermaine Wright, who has been charged with seeking and arranging bribes in conjunction with his efforts to act on behalf of marijuana-related ventures in the city, information available to the Sentinel indicates.
In many of the cases, federal agents needed to do little if any digging, as action taking place or statements made in public places implicate certain city officials. Moreover, assertions tantamount to a description, or even confession, of collusion involving public officials and cannabis industry interests are available in public documents.
Since late 2016, the presence of federal agents in Adelanto has been palpable. At that time a series of actions – primarily in the form of land use decisions – by the city council caught the attention of the FBI, agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, a November 29, 2016 decision by the Adelanto Planning Commission done at the behest of the Adelanto City Council to rezone a considerable amount of acreage within the city such that marijuana cultivation could legally take place there raised suspicions that something was amiss. This was accompanied by other zone changes that made commercial sales of marijuana possible in places where previously it was to be prohibited. This put members of the planning commission, the city council, the principals in the companies benefited by these decisions, and the city’s economic development director who was a consistent go-between linking the city council with those companies in the crosshairs of the federal task force.
Two cases in point for the FBI and Securities Exchange Commission were zone changes that attended land acquisitions by David Serrano and Industrial Integrity Solutions.
On October 3, 2016 in a seeming rush, David Serrano, an attorney whose brother Manny Serrano was the spokesman for the High Desert Cannabis Association, entered into escrow to purchase the Jet Room, a one-time cocktail lounge that sat dormant and dilapidating on a 2.25 acre lot located at 17499 Adelanto Road just south of Joshua Avenue from Dmitri Manucharyan for $450,000. Just a little more than six months earlier, on March 23, 2016, Manucharyan had bought the property for $239,000. The transaction was completed on October 11, 2016. Serrano, who purchased the property in conjunction with his wife, Julia, said he intended to convert it into a law office.
The broker on the deal was John Woodard, of Woodard Realty in Adelanto. Woodard is a member of the Adelanto City Council first elected to that post in 2014, and a key vote in the coalition of council members driving the cannabis liberalization phenomenon in Adelanto. Seven weeks after Serrano closed escrow on the Jet Room, the Adelanto City Council held a public workshop, the upshot from which was a tentative proposal to re-zone two areas within the city in a way that would make them eligible to host medical marijuana dispensaries. With the passage of Proposition 64 three-weeks earlier, that meant that the dispensaries would very likely at some future date be selling marijuana not just to those with medical prescriptions under the 1996 Proposition 215 Compassionate Use Act, but marijuana for recreational smoking purposes under 2016’s Proposition 64. Whoever had an inside track on setting up a pot shop in one of the proscribed areas stood a substantial opportunity to get rich. As it would turn out, one of those zones the council decided to designate was the area between Pearmain Street, Air Expressway, just west of Mesa Linda Road and Rancho Road. Contained within that area was the Jet Room.
Ultimately, David Serrano submitted plans to the city calling for the conversion of the Jet Room into a cannabis sales business.

The City of Adelanto has an interesting arrangement with its economic development director, Jessie Flores. Flores is not a city employee, per se, but rather a contractor. His contract calls for him to represent the city in its efforts to attract developers and businesses and economic development in general. His contract does not prohibit him from developing a relationship with, or working for, or accepting money from, those businesses he is seeking to attract to the city or in fact convinces to locate in the city. To hear it from city officials defending the arrangement with Flores, there is nothing at all wrong with any city, or Adelanto in particular, contracting with a vendor for services, and it is only incidental that for nearly the entire duration of Flores’ time with the city, Adelanto has been attracting cannabis-industry entrepreneurs. Up until the 2014 election – in which voters tossed out the three incumbents up for election, Mayor Cari Thomas and councilmen Steve Baisden and Charles Valvo, and put into office Mayor Rich Kerr, and councilmen John Woodard and Charlie Glasper – Adelanto prohibited marijuana, refusing to allow it to be sold in the city, even though under California’s 1996 Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act it could have allowed medical marijuana clinics to operate. It was only after Kerr and Woodard joined with Wright on the council that they, with the oftentimes reluctant support of Glasper, changed course in a gradualized set of stages to embrace marijuana liberalization. Initially, the city maintained its ban on allowing medical marijuana clinics to operate but resolved in November 2015 with councilman Ed Camargo dissenting to allow marijuana to be cultivated in indoor nurseries located within the city’s industrial park district. Subsequently, the council mutated the city’s stance further, consenting to let dispensaries set up operation as well. And with the passage of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act contained in 2016’s Proposition 64, the council, again with Camargo in opposition, went the whole nine yards and has resolved to transition the city, which in June 2013 stood on the brink of bankruptcy to the point that it had declared a fiscal emergency, into the marijuana capital of California.

The federal government yet classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 narcotic and many within its law enforcement structure are looking for an opportunity to demonstrate that federal law trumps state law with regard to drug use policy and drug use tolerance. For them, Adelanto represents an attractive target, not simply because of the presence of drugs there but because the activity in accommodating the New Age drug culture is teeming with indicators that it is corrupting the city’s normal governmental and social functions, such as land use policy and priorities, not to mention the integrity of standard governmental processes and operations.
To obtain damning information, investigators need do little more than attend public meetings. A recent example was when Shad Boyd came before the city council and openly acknowledged that he had purchased property in Adelanto based upon assurances given to him ahead of time that the property would be rezoned to accommodate a cannabis-related use. He expressed disappointment that the city had yet to come through with that commitment.
In other cases, the investigative spadework FBI agents need to engage in consists of nothing more than a trip to the courthouse, where a review of lawsuits against the city document that the prospect of marijuana riches coming their way has compromised the judgment of Adelanto city officials.
On December 21, 2017, Irvine-based attorney Rick Augustini filed a lawsuit against the City of Adelanto on behalf of American Scientific Consultants, LLC over what Augustini alleged was the city’s breach of an agreement to sell the city’s public works yard. The language in that suit, including the concessions Augustini makes with regard to his client’s motivations and actions, shows the degree to which the power city officials yield in making zone changes that literally overnight will increase the value of property ten-fold to twenty-fold has debased the city. That debasement includes city officials involving themselves in discussions relating to selling off city assets to interested buyers at market price and then engaging in zone changes which subsequently escalate the value of that property into the stratosphere.
According to the American Scientific Lawsuit, “ln or about mid-2016 ASC [American Scientific Consultants] decided to enter the medical cannabis business and started looking for real property to purchase in the City of Adelanto, including making offers on property owned by defendant. In late 2016 and early 2017 ASC spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars securing medical cannabis permits and licenses from the City of Adelanto. Sometime prior to March 30, 2017, defendant decided to sell the real property located at 17451 Raccoon Avenue Adelanto, CA 92341, the subject property, as part of its effort to generate additional revenue to pay for infrastructure and resolve a budgetary shortfall. On or about March 30, 2017, ASC offered to purchase the subject property from defendant. Over the next several months ASC and defendant negotiated the terms of the sale of the subject property in an arms length transaction.”
The property at 17451 Raccoon Avenue was the city’s public works yard.
Noting that the manager of American Scientific Consultants, C.B. Nanda, negotiated on the company’s behalf and Adelanto’s interim city manager, Mike Milhiser, negotiated on the city’s behalf, the suit continues, “Between March 30, 2017 and July 3, 2017, the city council discussed the sale of the subject property in closed session in the presence of the city attorney on multiple occasions, including on March 30, 2017, June 14, 2017 and June 28, 2017. Following the meeting on June 28, 2017, the defendant advised ASC that it would sell the subject property to it for $1,000,000.00. On or about July 3, 2017, ASC submitted a written offer to purchase the subject property for $1,000,000.00. On or about July 13, 2017 defendant accepted ASC’s offer and entered into [a] written agreement. ASC thereafter assigned its rights to AMN, LLC [a company affiliated with ASC] and entered into an agreement with Canniatric, LLC [a company which makes tinctures of cannabis] at the specific request of defendant because of its national reputation in the cannabis industry. Mr. Nanda signed the agreement on behalf of ASC and Mr. Milhiser signed the agreement on behalf of defendant. At the time ASC and defendant entered into the agreement the subject property was outside the cultivation zone that defendant had established for the manufacturing, testing and distribution of medical cannabis pursuant to its municipal code. On or about September 8, 2017, plaintiffs are informed and believe that defendant decided to expand the cultivation zone to include the subject property. Plaintiffs had no involvement in or foreknowledge of defendant’s decision to expand the cultivation zone to include the subject property.”
The lawsuit continues, “Before defendant decided to expand the cultivation zone, it consisted of approximately 663.35 acres. After defendant decided to expand the cultivation zone, it consisted of approximately 2,214.5 acres. The decision by defendant to expand the cultivation zone to include the subject property increased its value significantly. At some point after the cultivation zone was expanded to include the subject property, plaintiffs are informed and believe that defendant decided to renege on the agreement in the hope of selling it to someone else for more money.”
At the Adelanto City Council meeting on November 8, the council voted to back away from the deal with American Scientific Consultants. According to the suit, “The day after the meeting, November 9, 2017, another attorney representing defendant, Ruben Duran of Best Best & Krieger, purported to terminate the agreement by among other things falsely claiming the interim city manager, Mr. Milhiser, lacked the authority to enter into the agreement and the agreement was the result of a conflict of interest.”
The Sentinel is told by an informed source that American Scientific Consultants had a side arrangement with members of the Adelanto City Council of which Best Best & Krieger had learned. Terminating the deal with American Scientific Consultants was meant to prevent from being actuated a criminal act which would have involved city officials, the Sentinel was told.
Reasoning that the city’s public works yard has become worth $5 million as a result of the zone change, Augustini asserts that American Scientific Consultants is entitled to the profit it would have been able to realize by acquiring the property and then liquidating it in accordance with the greater value that would have been assigned to it by the council’s action. Consequently, Augustini is seeking for his client a judgment “for damages according to proof at trial but in no event less than $5,000,000.00 plus prejudgment interest at the legal rate.”
What is apparent is that members of the Adelanto City Council routinely discuss with land speculators their future intent with regard to zoning changes.
Also apparent is that the city council can no longer rely on any of several current or former city employees to maintain loyalty to the council and its individual members, as the FBI has already completed or is in the course of scheduling or carrying out dialogues with Milhiser, current suspended city manager Gabriel Elliott, city clerk Cindy Herrera, former city attorneys Todd Litfin and Julia Sylva, former senior planner Mark de Manincor, former public works superintendent Nan Moore, former senior management analyst Mike Borja, conservation specialist/administrator Belen Cordero, and public works maintenance worker Jose Figueroa.
Kerr engaged in an effort to oust Elliott, who had been city manager for the four months since August 2017, in December, primarily as a consequence of Elliott’s cautious approach in licensing marijuana-related businesses and the delays this was causing. When accusations of sexual harassment were lodged against Elliott, he was suspended just prior to Christmas. An examination of those allegations has been carried out. The Sentinel is told that investigators were unable to sustain the charges against Elliott, and he will likely be restored to his position as city manager on February 14. Elliott’s return to command at Adelanto City Hall will facilitate investigators’ open access to city files.
The FBI has delved into payments made to Jessie Flores and the various entities in which he is financially involved, as well as charting any payments that may have been made by him directly or from the entities he controls, in particular to any employees or officials with the city.
The council’s headlong pursuit of cannabis industry-related development was blunted by the arrest, charging and continued incarceration of Wright, who last month was stripped of his council position after missing all regularly scheduled city council meetings for the 60 consecutive day period ending on December 24, 2017. Wright’s travails have severely chastened council member Glasper, who has begun to seriously rethink the wisdom of supporting the pro-cannabis availability strategy that was championed by Kerr, Wright and Woodard. With council member Camargo consistently resistant to that course, the council finds itself in a 2-2 deadlock on all issues relating to further institutionalizing and increasing cannabis availability in Adelanto. The council must await upon a special election to be held in June that has been consolidated with the Gubernatorial Primary balloting for the city’s voters to replace Wright before there can be any prospect that Kerr and Woodard will be able to further their agenda.
Simultaneously, with each day Wright remains incarcerated the likelihood increases that he will decide to cooperate with his jailers, offer up information about what he knows of activity in Adelanto that was ongoing while he was still at large there and involved intimately in taking the city in the direction envisaged by Kerr and Woodard. In the meantime, both Kerr and Woodard are carrying on as though what occurred to Wright had nothing at all to do with them and that their advocacy of a wide open policy of facilitating the cultivation, processing, wholesale and retail marketing and mass shipment of marijuana is simply a forward-looking acceptance of the new social reality in California and an earnest effort to get Adelanto in on the ground floor of the cannabis-related entrepreneurial wave that will rejuvenate the city’s economy and generate tax revenue to move the city’s governmental structure out of the red and into the black. They curtly dismiss, or ignore completely, any suggestions that there is a venal element to their activity.
Still, there are signs that behind the brave facade, they are nervous. One is the city’s recent move to remove all of the videos of its public meetings from the city’s website, the same public meetings where would-be cannabis millionaires who have permit or licensing requests or applications before the city have let slip, perhaps in not so many words, that city officials are on the take. But that action, coming as it does well over a year since the FBI has begun its probe of Adelanto in earnest, resounds as the closing of the corral gate after the mounts have left the ranch. There is a growing belief among Adelanto’s citizens that Wright will not be the only city official collared by the FBI.

More than eleven years after members of the board of supervisors conferred a $102 million payout on the Colonies Partners development consortium to settle a lawsuit that company had brought against the county’s flood control district over storm water drainage issues at the Colonies at San Antonio residential and Colonies Crossroads commercial subdivisions in northeast Upland, a Philadelphia-based investment advising company continues to rake in money as a consequence.
In 1999, after the City of Upland gave go-ahead to the Colonies Partners’ plan for the first phase of a residential development project known as the Colonies at San Antonio which was being carried out on property purchased two years previously from the San Antonio Water Company, the San Bernardino County Flood Control District assented to the project. The property had been used historically by the San Antonio Water Company for percolating rain water into the water table at the base of the foothills of Mount San Antonio. The property, consisting of roughly 440 acres before the Colonies Partners sold some 40 of those acres to the California Department of Transportation to be used as right-of-way for the 210 Freeway, was encumbered by flood control easements that the San Antonio Water Company had granted to the San Bernardino County Flood Control District in 1933, 1934, 1939 and 1962. The 1999 agreement with the county allowing the Colonies Partners to proceed with the project called for the company to construct a flood control retention basin in exchange for the county granting the company an unimpeded right to proceed with the development of the property.
By 2001, disagreements had arisen between the Colonies Partners and the county over the county’s expectations with regard to the construction of the basin and the company’s expectations with regard to the progression of the project. Litigation ensued the following year, and the project hung in limbo. The Colonies Partners, meanwhile, began casting about for a political solution to the dilemma, backing, to the tune of an initial $70,000 and more money subsequently, Rancho Cucamonga Councilman Paul Biane in his quest to dislodge then-incumbent Second District Supervisor Jon Mikels, in whose district the Colonies Partners’ project was located and who disapproved of the use of public money to defray the cost of flood control infrastructure needed to complete a development project on land traditionally used for flood control purposes. Biane prevailed against Mikels in the 2002 election. The Colonies Partners thereupon began investing heavily in the political career of then-First District Supervisor Bill Postmus, pouring into his political campaign coffers over the next four years and seven months, both directly and indirectly, $440,000. In 2004, the Colonies Partners heavily supported then-Ontario Mayor Gary Ovitt in his successful run for Fourth District supervisor against Chino Mayor Eunice Ulloa. The litigation drug on for two years further as county staff, including those at its highest administrative level and its internal set of attorneys known as the office of county counsel, along with the county’s outside attorneys, consistently advised against settling the case. In the November 2006 election Postmus was elected to the county assessor’s post. Prior to his having left the board, in one of his last acts as a supervisor, Postmus on November 28, 2006, joined with Biane and Ovitt in a vote of the board of supervisors, acting as the governing board of the county flood control district, to approve in a 3-2 vote, with supervisors Dennis Hansberger and Josie Gonzales dissenting, settlement of the litigation with the Colonies Partners in the amount of $102 million. $22 million of that amount was payable immediately and the remaining $80 million payable within 180 days.
The $102 million exceeded by a considerable amount the money then available in the flood control district’s budget as well as what was available over the next several years. Thus, the county was in need of some creative financing to make good on the lawsuit settlement and continue to cover the expenses of ongoing flood control district functions. On December 19, 2006 the board of supervisors approved a sole source contract in an amount not to exceed $150,000, plus expenses, with Los Angeles-based Gardner, Underwood and Bacon LLC to serve as financial advisor on the financing transaction to fund the settlement with the Colonies Partners.
On April 24, 2007, the board of supervisors, acting as the governing board of the San Bernardino County Flood Control District, adopted a resolution authorizing the issuance and sale of up to $120,000,000 in San Bernardino County Flood Control District Judgment Obligation Bonds, while authorizing the treasurer’s office to use some of those proceeds in investing in tax-free municipal bonds.
County staff worked with the finance team to prepare the required bond and disclosure documents related to the issuance and sale of the bonds. Because of the extraordinary circumstance created by the $102 million drain on the funding available to the flood control district as a result of the lawsuit settlement, the board granted the district an exception to the county investment policy allowing the district to withdraw funds from the county treasury pool on an annual basis, reserving five percent of the money for district operations and investing the remaining 95 percent of those funds pursuant to an indenture arrangement debt serviced by the profit achieved by the bond dealing. This was done to create a financing structure that provided the lowest overall borrowing cost to the district. Federal Treasury regulations limited the amount of tax-exempt obligations that can be issued for working capital purposes based on cash levels maintained by the agency issuing the obligations. Because of the nature of the services provided by the district, county staff determined that cash balances in excess of those allowed by the regulations had to be maintained to ensure that the flood control district could continue to provide the proper level of service relating to its basic function, i.e., building and maintaining flood control channels. Previously, all flood control district funds had been invested in the county treasury pool. In order to comply with Federal Treasury regulations, any district funds in excess of what the regulations allow must be segregated from other funds in the county treasury pool and invested in certain tax-exempt securities.
Though there was an authorization to issue up to $120 million in bonds, only $103,780,000 in bonds were issued.
The indenture arrangement required the district to make a calculation of excess cash on an annual basis. The county in 2007 made an exemption to its investment policy allowing the annual segregation and investment of the calculated amount pursuant to the indenture that was to be ongoing for as long as the bonds remain outstanding, and no further approval of the exception by the county board of supervisors has been required. Without that exception the flood control district would have been required to borrow funds on a taxable basis resulting in significantly higher annual interest costs, according to the treasurer’s office’s representation to the board of supervisors at that time.
The constant reinvesting of the proceeds from the investments have required a degree of expertise with the bond market that the county does not have among its staff members.
The county entered into an investment advisory agreement with Philadelphia-based PFM on September 18, 2007. On January 29, 2008 the board of supervisors voted to approve extending the treasurer-tax collector/public administrator’s existing non-competitive arrangement with PFM Asset Management, LLC for accounting services and approve a non-competitive $188,000 per year agreement with PFM Asset Management, LLC to provide investment advisory and accounting services.
The county’s contract with PFM required that PFM work in conjunction with the auditor-controller/treasurer/tax collector; Gardner, Underwood and Bacon at one time worked for the county administrative office. At some point the supervision of the indentures segued to the auditor-controller/treasurer/tax collector and PFM became the financial advisor with regard to the $103,780,000 bond issuance prompted by the settlement with the Colonies Partners.
At present the county no longer uses Gardner, Underwood & Bacon as an investment advisor. According to a January 11, 2011 article in the Bond Buyer, a securities industry publication focusing on bonds, Gardner, Underwood & Bacon was acquired by Loop Capital Markets.
As the result of a competitive procurement, on July 8, 2014, the board of supervisors approved an agreement with PFM for investment advisory services for the San Bernardino County Flood Control District at an annual fee of 12 basis points (0.12 percent) for the period of July 8, 2014 through January 28, 2017, with two one-year options to extend the term of the contract. On January 24, 2017, the board approved a first amendment to that agreement, exercising the first option to extend the agreement through January 28, 2018.
Last week, at its January 23, 2018 meeting, the board of supervisors complied with a recommendation by auditor/controller/treasurer/tax collector Oscar Valdez to approve an amendment to its 2014 agreement with PFM Asset Management, exercising the second option to extend the contract for a one-year period from January 29, 2018, through January 28, 2019, at an annual fee of 12 basis points (0.12 percent) for investment advisory services for the San Bernardino County Flood Control District.
Prior to the board’s vote last week, Valdez told the board of supervisors, of whom only Josie Gonzales was a member of the board in 2007, “As a result of the issuance of judgment obligation bonds in 2007, a portion of the [flood control] district’s funds are held outside of the county treasury pool and invested pursuant to the bond indenture of trust. Per the indenture, these funds must be invested in instruments that are not permitted under the county’s investment policy. The requirement to invest the district’s funds in this manner allowed the district to achieve the lowest overall borrowing cost while also allowing [it] to maintain sufficient cash balances to respond to flood emergencies. On April 24, 2007, the board of supervisors approved an exception to the county investment policy to allow the investment of these funds as required in the indenture. The recommended amendment with PFM Asset Management LLC will allow for the investment of the district’s funds as specified in the indenture as the county does not possess the in-house expertise and brokerage relationships to invest and monitor the district’s funds as required. This item supports the goal of operating in a fiscally-responsible and business-like manner as it allows the district to continue to manage and invest its assets in a cost-effective manner pursuant to the requirements stipulated when the judgment obligations bonds were issued.”
-Mark Gutglueck

In a rematch from 2014, Gloria Negrete-McLeod this year will challenge incumbent Curt Hagman for Fourth District San Bernardino County supervisor.
Swimming upcurrent, Hagman four years ago was able to outdistance Negrete-McLeod in a race that many considered was hers to lose. While Hagman was at that time a member of the California Assembly, Negrete-McLeod was an incumbent congresswoman. In addition to having been higher up the political evolutionary chain at that point, Negrete-McLeod also boasted a stronger past political track record. Prior to his coming to the state Assembly, Hagman had been a member of the Chino Hills City Council, where he had acceded to the post of mayor. He could also lay claim to having once been a member of the county’s workforce advisory committee. In contrast, beyond being a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Negrete-McLeod had been an assemblywoman herself, a member of the California State Senate, and both a member and then the president of the Chaffey Community College Board of Trustees. More significant than all of that, however, was that Negrete-McLeod was a Democrat and Hagman a Republican. Voter registration numbers in the Fourth Supervisorial District heavily favored Democrats in 2014. Going into the election, 64,477 or 40.8 percent of the Fourth District’s voters were Democrats, while 50,387 or 31.9 percent were Republicans.
To offset that seemingly critical disadvantage, Hagman had to hustle, and hustle he did. Well in advance of the race, even before anyone other than he and members of his circle knew he was going to run and while he was yet engaged with state politics in Sacramento in 2013, Hagman worked behind the scenes at both the state and county level within the Republican Party to provide himself with the leverage he would need. His first move was to solidify his friendship with former state Assemblyman and state Senator Jim Brulte, who was moving in 2013 to become the chairman of the California Republican Party and initiate a multi-pronged and long range effort to wrest, over a period of a decade or longer, political control of the Golden State from the Democrats. Having formed an alliance with Brulte, Hagman then moved to depose Robert Rego as the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. Rather than engaging in a knock down drag out donnybrook with Rego, Hagman and his forces arranged to mollify Rego, offering him important roles in the party both locally and statewide down the road if he would simply agree to step down at the county level. Through this use of tact and politesse, Hagman and Brulte preserved the upside of Rego’s direction of the party, by which the Republicans in San Bernardino County turned out at the polls in far greater numbers than their Democratic counterparts despite the burgeoning Democratic registration countywide. Rego had previously sought to smooth over rivalries between locally competing Republicans. And even though Hagman and Brulte eased Rego out the door, they managed to do so without having Rego turn on the party or on them, and Rego continued to assist them in the first order of business, which consisted of convincing party donors that they should continue to stock the party’s coffers with money.
Hagman had reached the end of his eligibility as an assemblyman, with California’s term limits preventing him from seeking reelection in that capacity. The only state or federal elected position to which he could realistically aspire in 2014 was that of Congressman in the 39th District, a route not open to him, given that the incumbent there was Ed Royce, another Republican
From his enhanced position as county party chairman, Hagman then prevailed upon Gary Ovitt, another Republican who had been Fourth District Supervisor since 2004, to go quietly into the good night and opt out of running for reelection. Negrete-McLeod had at that point firmly resolved to leave as Congresswoman, she said, because she had grown to dread the bi-weekly California-to-Washington D.C. commute. She, too, coveted the Fourth Supervisorial post.
Both Hagman and Negrete-McLeod filed to run for the Fourth District supervisor’s post. They were joined by James Na, a Republican member of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees and Paul Vincent Avila, a Democrat and member of the Ontario City Council.
In the June primary balloting, Negrete-McLeod prevailed, capturing 10,180, or 41.93 percent of the total 24,376 votes cast. Hagman pulled down 9,982 votes, or 41.12 percent; Na captured 2,313 or 9.53 percent, and Avila polled 1,801 votes or 7.42 percent. Negrete-McLeod’s plurality of the vote did not capture the supervisor’s position for her, as a majority of the vote was needed to gain the seat. Rather, the outcome resulted in qualifying the two top vote getters – Negrete-McLeod and Hagman – for a runoff in the November 2014 election.
It was against a backdrop of the Democrats widening their voter registration advantage statewide, in Southern California, regionally, in San Bernardino County and in the Fourth Supervisorial District, that Hagman and his political team needed to project his candidacy – a daunting task. But Hagman had a few things going for him, the foremost being that his chief of staff, Mike Spence, was heavily invested in keeping Hagman in office.
In addition to being Hagman’s chief of staff when Hagman was in the Assembly, Spence had previously been the chief of staff for then-assemblyman Joel Anderson (R- El Cajon). And Spence was a politician himself, having been elected to the West Covina City Council, from which perch he had been elevated to the post of mayor. There was every prospect that if Hagman were to capture the supervisor’s post, Spence would remain as Hagman’s chief of staff, moving his office some 350 miles closer to home, from Sacramento to San Bernardino. Serving as the de facto chairman of Hagman’s supervisorial campaign, Spence utilized his knowledge of how to activate grassroots support for a candidate combined with more straightforward conventional campaigning tactics involving mailers, handbills, phone banks, electronically programmed phone calls, i.e., so-called robocalls, and radio and newspaper advertising, all of which was funded by the treasure trove of money, much of it coming from the Republican Party, that Hagman had access to. Spence garnished that with negative ads targeting Negrete-McLeod. In the meantime, Negrete-McLeod and her supporters ran a lackluster campaign. She lost a further element of her political edge when San Bernardino County’s Democratic Party, led by Democratic Central Committee Chairman Chris Robles, seemingly took for granted that the strong Democratic registration numbers in the Fourth Supervisorial District would carry the election, and failed to conduct an effective effort to inspire large numbers of the party’s voters to go to the polls.
On November 4, 2014, Hagman eked out a victory, albeit by a rather narrow margin, 24,480 votes, or 52.11 percent of the 46,982 votes cast to Negrete-McLeod’s 22,502 votes or 47.89 percent.
More than three years into Hagman’s tenure as supervisor, it is unclear whether he will be able to convert the advantage incumbency often confers on an elected official into a repeat electoral victory over Negrete-McLeod in 2018 and another four-year term. While Hagman certainly bears the upper hand in terms of incumbency, three of the factors that favored him in 2014 have been attenuated or eliminated entirely and one of the disadvantages he managed to overcome has become an even larger advantage in Negrete-McLeod’s favor.
Spence, without whose guidance in 2014 Hagman very well may not have won, is no longer with the Hagman team after Hagman fired him more than 13 months ago. Spence’s cashiering came in the aftermath of his June 2016 involvement in a single-vehicle traffic accident in the City of Covina. Toxicology tests determined he was under the influence of methamphetamine at the time of the accident. Ultimately, Spence was convicted of a misdemeanor driving under the influence offense.
Hagman’s and Spence’s shared “Republican Values,” including principles of social conservatism and pro-law enforcement concepts, virtually mandated that Hagman part company with Spence. Still the same, the impact to the Hagman political machine from the loss of Spence is immense and incalculable. As the architect of Hagman’s winning 2014 strategy, Spence game-planned how to dictate the terms of the campaign from the beginning, keeping the Negrete-McLeod campaign off balance and out of the proper firing sequence. Ensuring that Hagman’s shots were well-placed and done with sufficient frequency, in proper numbers and with effective depth and reach, Spence provided the steady nerve needed in the face of developments that might have rattled other campaign managers into overreacting. He formulated on the fly but nevertheless with considerable aplomb his boss’s responses to the few deft moves made by the Negrete-McLeod team during the campaign.
Negrete-McLeod appears to realize the degree to which she herself underperformed in 2014 and how her campaign was lulled into complacency by her victory in the June 2014 primary and by superior Democratic registration numbers. That she has taken up the gauntlet against Hagman this year is an indicator that she will be more diligent in propounding her message and less laissez-faire with regard to entrusting Democrats in the Fourth District to show at the polls en masse without prompting.
It remains to be seen whether Hagman can reproduce in 2018 the heavy Republican voter turnout in the Fourth District that occurred four years ago, given his demonstrated propensity to deviate from a basic tenant of the Republican Party, which is to attenuate the power of government and the concentration of power rather than to intensify it. Hagman has consistently installed into the positions of authority within his supervisorial office not representatives of the private sector but ones who are creatures of the government or outright institutional government employees. As a consequence, Hagman’s primary advisers are averse to effectuating reforms that include reducing government employee pay scales and benefits. Accordingly, Hagman has drifted away from any such reform initiatives, leaving him closer to the position taken up by the Democratic Party, which adheres to protecting public employees and conceding to their unions in the course of collective bargaining.
Spence was a long time government employee, with over 20 years as a public employee. At the time he was fired, he was receiving $135,166.81 in pay from all of his government positions and $54,325.22 in benefits on top of that. He was on a trajectory to collect a pension upon retirement of roughly $140,000 per year.
Katherine Kolcheva, who succeeded Spence as Hagman’s chief of staff, was formerly a regional field representative for the Assembly Republican Caucus in service to former-Assemblyman Mike Morrell and Hagman when he was yet in the Assembly. She is on a trajectory to receive a pension upon retirement rivaling Spence’s.
Jeff Sorenson, who serves as one of Hagman’s policy advisors, has held a number of positions as a public employee, most recently as a prosecutor’s office investigative technician. Karen Haughey, one of Hagman’s field representatives, is the wife of Chino City Councilman Tom Haughey. Douglas Boyd was a field representative with Hagman’s office when he was assemblyman, a field representative for Congressman John Rousselot, and chief of staff to State Board of Equalization Member Ernie Dronenburg.
Upon becoming supervisor, Hagman hired then-Chino Hills City Council Member/Mayor Ed Graham, whom Hagman had previously employed in his Assembly office, as his senior field representative. When Graham, who had been a public employee most of his life, surpassed the retirement age of 65 and retired in 2016, Hagman replaced him with another government insider, Graham’s Chino Hills City Council colleague, Peter Rogers.
Last year, Hagman hired longtime Ontario City Councilman Alan Wapner, himself a retired Ontario police officer, as his policy adviser. Wapner retired in 1998 from the Ontario Police Department after being with the department for 15 years 10 months and six days and having risen to the position of sergeant of detectives. Wapner took a disability retirement based on aggravation to his hip from constantly wearing a gun holster. The disability retirement excused him from having to pay taxes on his pension, which stands at $58,647.68 per year.
Surrounded as he is by staff members partial to government and who are indulgent of government employees and giving them favored status, it remains an open question whether Hagman can count on the solid backing of the Republican voters he needs if he is to again shut the door on Negrete-McLeod.
Another disadvantage Hagman faces, paradoxically, is the strength of his performance in 2014, which threw the tepid performance of San Bernardino County Central Committee Chairman Chris Robles into stark relief. As much as Negrete-Mcleod can be faulted for not being more aggressive in her 2014 campaign, Robles likewise squandered what seemed to be a clear advantage for his party – given the voter registration numbers in the Fourth Supervisorial District that were so favorable to the Democrats – and allowed victory to elude Negrete-McLeod. Indeed, within the last year, a growing number of the San Bernardino County Democratic Central Committee members have sought to replace Robles as their leader, citing his seeming indifference with regard to many of the races in San Bernardino County where the Republicans simply outhustled the Democrats and were able to prevail not on the strength of greater numbers but by virtue of better organization, sharper and more aggressive strategies and clocklike execution of those strategies. Many of his Democratic minions have lamented that Robles, who by profession is a political consultant, has been less focused on facilitating the campaigns of Democrats in San Bernardino County than on running the campaigns of his campaign consulting firm’s clients, many of whom held or were seeking office in Orange and Los Angeles counties. It appears that Robles has, at least for the time being, overcome the efforts to depose him as Democratic Party chairman in San Bernardino County. But with the attention that has been focused on his failures to energize the Democratic Party sufficiently in San Bernardino County in 2014 and 2016, he is now under the gun to demonstrate that he can quarterback the Democrats to victory. As of this week, the already overwhelming voter registration advantage the Democrats had over the Republicans in the Fourth District had widened to the point where the ratio of Democrats-to-Republicans has grown to more than 3-to-2. As of this week, of the district’s 166,406 voters, 71,506 or 43 percent are Democrats and 46,336 or 27.8 percent are Republicans. If Robles cannot muster the Democratic troops to take that battle in 2018 and install Negrete-McLeod as Fourth District supervisor, he will be out as the Democratic leader in San Bernardino County, and he knows that.
At this point Hagman has options beyond simply seeking reelection as Fourth District supervisor. Should he determine that seeking to hang onto the post in the face of Negrete-McLeod’s commitment to challenge him is too risky, he could instead seek to replace Republican Ed Royce, the incumbent Congressman in the 39th Congressional District who is voluntarily leaving Congress. Demographics, party registration numbers and stronger turnout among Republican voters vis-à-vis Democrats in the 39th District auger well for a Republican victory there. To move up to Congress in the 39th, however, would require that Hagman compete against a bevy of other Republican hopefuls, including Scott Baugh, a former state assemblyman and former chair of the Orange County Republican Party; Phillip Chen, a first-term assemblyman in the 55th Assembly District; Ling-Ling Chang of Fullerton, the former Assembly District 55 office holder; Bob Huff, a former State Assembly member and state senator from Diamond Bar, who was the California Senate Republican leader before being termed-out; Young Kim of Fullerton, the former state assemblywoman in the 65th Assembly District, and a one-time staff member with Royce’s office; Tim Shaw, the mayor of La Habra and a former district director for Huff while he was senator, a policy advisor for then-Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen, and policy assistant to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; Shawn Nelson, a lame duck member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors from Fullerton in Assembly District 65 and a longtime aide to Congressman Royce; and Janet Nguyen, a state senator from Fountain Valley and former Garden Grove City Council member and Orange County supervisor.
Jumping from the San Bernardino County supervisor’s post he currently holds and reaching for the Congressional brass ring might be the most propitious and best-timed move Hagman can make at this point in terms of advancing his political career. Nevertheless, it may be too risky for Hagman, who has already offended elements of the Republican establishment by his slavishly favorable treatment of Democratic-leaning government employee unions, to stand in opposition to the ambition of so many other established and up-and-coming members of the GOP.
-Mark Gutglueck

San Antonio Heights resident Ken Petschow is challenging Second District San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford in this year’s election.
Petschow, 54, is a pilot with American Airlines, for which he has flown since 1993. He previously worked as a pilot with Kemp Bros, W.F. Probst, Calico Industries, Wells Aviation, Upland Freight Lines and Rogers Aviation. He currently has 29,259 hours of flight time, 22,747 of those with multiengine craft.
He holds a bachelor of arts degree in English, a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, all from Cal Poly Pomona.
The home Petschow lives in was built by George Hostetler, who constructed an electrically lit star on the San Antonio Heights property at the top of Euclid Avenue, which he first illuminated for the Christmas season in 1958. When Petschow purchased the house in 1996, he continued the tradition, interrupted only when then-Upland Mayor John Pomierski, upset by Petschow’s support of Pomierski’s opponent in the 2008 Upland mayoral race, used his political reach to have county code enforcement officers shut it down.
Petschow’s effort to reestablish the Christmas Star was his first foray into bare-knuckled politics. His next major political battle was that waged by the San Antonio Heights Association against the move by Upland and the county to shutter the Upland Fire Department and force all of Upland’s and San Antonio Heights’ property owners into a fire assessment district/county service area under which all property owners were assessed $154 yearly to cover the cost of the county fire division providing those communities with fire protection service. Petschow was the president of the San Antonio Heights Association from November 2006 until November 2017. It was during the last year of his tenure as president that the unsuccessful effort to prevent San Antonio Heights from being annexed into the fire service district reached a fever pitch. With few exceptions, the residents of San Antonio Heights deeply resented being forced into the fire service area, and they faulted Rutherford for failing to represent them in the face of the takeover. Rutherford’s siding with Upland’s elected leadership in the fire service changeover, which was roundly opposed by a wide cross section of Upland’s residents, is a major impetus in Petschow’s candidacy.
He decried the secrecy and duplicity of the fire service takeover, the way in which it was sprung on residents without adequate opportunity for community discussion or consideration of alternatives and the stratagem used by county officials that did not give the residents impacted by the change an opportunity to vote on it.
“I have worked with local communities for over two decades in the county,” Petschow told the Sentinel. “With this rich history of knowledge and local affinity, I feel motivated by the opportunity to represent San Bernardino County constituents by driving a platform for transparency and trust.”
Petschow also lays claim to previous elected official status as a board member, from January 2010 until January 2016, with the Devore Water Company.

Katydids are insects in the family Tettigoniidae and are part of the suborder Ensifera. They are sometimes referred to as bush crickets or long-horned grasshoppers. More than 6,400 species are known. Tettigoniidae is the only family in the superfamily Tettigonioidea. Tettigoniids are found on every continent except Antarctica. The vast majority of katydid species live in the tropics. Some katydids proliferate in cooler and dry temperate regions, with about 255 species in North America.
Primarily nocturnal in habit, with strident mating calls, many katydids exhibit mimicry and camouflage, commonly with shapes and colors similar to leaves.
Tettigoniids range in size from as small as 5 millimeters to as large as five inches. The smaller species typically live in drier or more stressful habitats which may lead to their small size. The small size is associated with greater agility, faster development, and lower nutritional needs. Tettigoniids are tree-living insects that are most commonly heard at night during summer and early fall. Tettigoniids have longer antennae than grasshoppers.
Katydids live for roughly one year, with full adulthood usually developing very late. Females most typically lay their eggs at the end of summer beneath the soil or in plant stem holes. The eggs are usually oval-shaped and laid in rows on the host plant. Tettigoniids lay eggs in dead or living plant matter, or variously in grass stems. When tettigoniids hatch, the nymphs often look like smaller versions of adults, but in some species, the nymphs look nothing at all like the adult and rather mimic other species to prevent predation. Once nymphs complete their last molt, they are then prepared to mate.
The diet of tettigoniids includes leaves, flowers, bark, and seeds, but many species are exclusively predatory, feeding on other insects, snails, or even small vertebrates such as snakes and lizards. Some are also considered pests by commercial crop growers.
Male tettigoniids have sound-producing organs located on the hind angles of their front wings. In some species, females are also capable of stridulation. Females chirp in response to the shrill of the males. The males use this sound for courtship, which occurs late in the summer. The sound is produced by rubbing two parts – one a file or comb and the other a plectrum – of their bodies together, called stridulation. Tettigoniids produce continuous songs known as trills. Many katydids stridulate at a tempo which is governed by ambient temperature, so that the number of chirps in a defined period of time can produce a fairly accurate temperature reading. For American katydids, the formula is generally given as the number of chirps in 15 seconds plus 37 to give the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.
When tettigoniids rest during the day, they assume a roosting posture which fools predators into thinking the katydid is either dead or just a leaf. Their coloration mimicking leaves allows them to blend in with their surroundings.
The males provide a nuptial gift for the females in the form of a spermatophylax, a gelatinous protrusion attached to the males’ spermatophore and consumed by the female. Females prize a large and nutritious spermatophylax. Tettigoniidae have polygamous relationships with one another. The polygamous relationships of the Tettigoniidae lead to high levels of male-male competition. Male competition in the Tettigoniidae species is caused by the decreased availability of males able to supply nutritious spermatophores to the females. Females will produce more eggs on a high-quality diet; thus, the female looks for healthier males with a more nutritious spermatophore. Females will use the sound created by the male to judge the fitness of the male. The females adduce a louder and more fluent trill to represent a fitter male. Studies found that the tuberous bushcricket (Platycleis affinis) has the largest testes in proportion to body mass of any animal recorded. They account for 14 percent of the insect’s body mass and are thought to enable a fast re-mating rate.
The scientific name “Tettigoniidae” is derived from the genus Tettigonia, first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1748. Latin tettigonia means leafhopper; it is from Greek tettigonion, the diminutive of the imitative (onomatopoeic) τέττιξ, tettix, cicada. The common name “katydid” is also onomatopoeic.
From Wikipedia

We have survived January, and February is about to get interesting with all the new fashion and romance. And what will we buy this month? Anything from sneakers to blazers to knotty heels. A blazer is perfect for layering, and a checkered one provides a bit of romance to go with the month. Jewelry, like earrings with hearts, are going to be a lovely accessory for the shortest month, too. Let’s not forget sneakers for walking the streets of California. Try them in a light almond, or white color. Also, suede boots make for a romantic accessory for love. One more piece which brings attention to the feet are knotted heels. There’s something dramatic yet subtle about them. They could prove to be the only piece you may need for the month. February is all about romance. Enjoy!

“Fashion may not be a weapon of the woman but at least it gives her the ammunition.” -Brigitte Bardot