By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the October 7 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel

sentinel-10-07-16

By Mark Gutglueck

San Bernardino County and its taxpayers are facing untold legal liability as a consequence of the neglect, misfeasance and malfeasance of employees, supervisors and both midlevel and senior managers in the county’s child and family services department in the face of both indicators and overwhelming evidence that children monitored by the department were being abused by their biological or foster parents.

Efforts by the department’s head as well as the county’s chief executive officer and members of the district attorney’s office to ignore evidence of the abuse, short circuit actions to address it or investigations concerning it or bury the matter to prevent the abuse from being documented have exacerbated the situation and increased the county’s potential liability.

It was revealed this week that the county more than six months ago devised a secret strategy to utilize the services of a high-powered attorney to conduct a fact-finding effort that will allow it to prophylactize the county or at least its highest ranking officials by ushering all information relating to the burgeoning scandal under the umbrella of attorney-client privilege. In this way, potential plaintiffs and their lawyers will encounter a virtual block wall in attempting to obtain information about or document any specific cases of abuse, let alone determine the breadth and scope of what has occurred.

As early as 2011, employees within the San Bernardino County Children and Family Services Department encountered resistance up the chain of command when they reported or otherwise took action with regard to their perception that both biological parents as well as foster parents who were in some fashion being monitored by the department were abusing their children or wards.

In some of the cases the indications of abuse were strong, indeed unmistakable. In others, the indicators were less clear cut and subject to interpretation.  In dozens of cases, the Sentinel is informed, reports were generated conveying the suspicion that children were being subjected to physical, emotional, psychological or sexual abuse at the hands of their natural parents or by foster parents to whom children had already been entrusted or who had temporary guardianship of children who were in the process of being placed for adoption. In several cases, when those children and family services department employees’ concerns were not adequately addressed in-house, they attempted to have the matter taken up by other responsible authorities.

Complicating the issue were the confidentiality restrictions imposed on the case files, making it difficult for those with concerns to bring the issues out into the open or to the attention of others outside the department for some means of resolution. In fact, seeking to go outside the chain of command under county policy was, and still is, considered to be insubordination and grounds for termination.

It is not clear, precisely, why higher-ups in the children and family services department were initially unwilling to forthrightly deal with the abuse and the abuse allegations.  It may have been because there had been abuse of children that predated the abuse noted by the workers in the 2011-2013 time frame, such that department administrators were concerned that any documentation of the  abuse phenomenon would potentially assist those seeking to lodge civil cases against the county; perhaps the administrators were concerned that the demonstration of such instances of abuse would upset their superiors up the chain of command, including  children and family services supervisor Kristine Burgamy; Teri Self, a deputy director of children and family services; deputy children and family services director Nickola Hackett,  Christa Banton, a supervising social services practitioner in the department;  the assistant director of children and family services Jonathan Byers; the director of children and family services Marlene Hagen; Hagan’s predecessor’s Deanna Mordecai; Linda Haugan, the director of the county’s human services division, under which the children and family services division is administered; and Greg Devereaux, the county’s chief executive officer.

As mandated reporters, children and family services employs are legally obliged to inform their superiors or responsible authorities if they see or suspect abuse of minors. Once having done so, the employees were out from underneath any further legal requirement. Nevertheless, unless they could actually document they had made the report, they were subject to legal reprisal if at some future point it were to be alleged they had not lived up to the reporting mandate. For that reason, as well as because some were genuinely concerned that those above them had not acted appropriately with regard to their notation of the abuse, some children and family services case workers took it upon themselves to go out of channel and report what they had seen, either to other governmental entities with investigative or enforcement authority, or elsewhere, including elements of the press. In doing so, these workers risked the wrath of their superiors, discipline and firing.

One agency within the government structure the abuse was reported to was the San Bernardino County Grand Jury. Nevertheless, the grand jury did not investigate the issue with alacrity. In San Bernardino County, the grand jury’s annual session runs in accordance with the governmental fiscal year, from July 1 to June 30. During the 2014-15 term information was provided to the grand jury relating to the circumstance pertaining to the abuse of children under the children and family services department’s supervision. As the 2014-15 grand jury term was drawing to a close, the grand jury, functioning under its then-advisor, deputy district attorney Charles Umeda, dragged its feet on opening an official inquiry into the matter. Thus, the 2014-15 Grand Jury in its final report delivered on June 30, 2015 made no reference to child abuse issues.

Reportedly, the grand jury was under considerable pressure to simply let the issue die, and with the changeover in the grand jury’s personnel in which but a few of those who had served in 2014-15 were slated to return in 2015-16, the likelihood the matter would be buried was real.

At the end of July 2015, Umeda was elevated to the Superior Court by Governor Jerry Brown. To replace Umeda, district attorney Mike Ramos selected deputy district attorney Michael Dauber to serve as grand jury adviser. With the departure of Umeda, some of those pushing for an aggressive investigation into the abuse allegations were heartened. A member of the 2014-15 Grand Jury was James Wiebeld, who had retired as a sheriff’s deputy after a 30-year career in law enforcement. Wiebeld was a holdover to the 2015-16 Grand Jury, which after its ranks filled out, elected him sergeant-at-arms. Wiebeld sought to have the grand jury maintain its focus on several issues that had been taken up by the 2014-15 Grand Jury, which had in his view not been sufficiently resolved or reported in the 2014-15 Grand Jury’s report. Among those issues was that pertaining to the abuse of children under the purview of San Bernardino County Children and Family Services. But if Wiebeld and others felt that Umeda had been unenergetic or passive in pursuing the abuse investigation, they would find his replacement, Dauber, actively resistant or even outright hostile to such an investigation.

What Wiebeld and other grand jurors encountered, the Sentinel has been told, at first consisted of Dauber’s subtle effort, not unlike that of Umeda, to steer the grand jury away from the subject. When grand jurors persisted, Dauber used progressively firmer and eventually much harsher methods to discourage the investigation, ultimately resulting in the blunting of the investigation’s focus and its shift away from the nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance within the children and family services department that allowed the criminal abuse and even deaths of some of the children at the hands of their parents and guardians to take place.

The failure of children and family services to step in and stem the abuse was of moment with higher ranking elements in the county because attorneys had already been in contact with the families of some of the abused children and had initiated cases on behalf of those children and their families or were in the process of doing so.

To district attorney Mike Ramos, who has striven to remain on favorable terms with both the county’s political establishment and its senior administrators, and to Dauber, who is answerable to Ramos, Wiebeld’s established status as a grand jury leader able to influence at least a handful of his colleagues on the panel heightened concern that they might be faced with a rogue grand jury that would take the focus on abused and dead children in a direction that could prove monetarily costly for the county. At some level, Ramos, Dauber and other county officials, including Devereaux, Haugan, Hagan and Hagan’s predecessors, were aware that the media was becoming involved and they suspected employees within the children and family services department had  approached elements of the local media. They remained confident, nonetheless, that the matter could be contained, that all media outlets could be controlled and, if not, the public would not react adversely to what would only be some momentary and limited negative coverage, that the grand jury could be reined in and that the recalcitrant, disobedient and insubordinate employees could be disciplined into silence and, if not, fired. Any who remained problematic after being fired could be, they calculated, prosecuted for having violated confidentially, and thus discredited entirely. That confidence was shattered when, on August 27, 2015, Fox 11 News in Los Angeles reported that “children who were under the supervision of the San Bernardino County Department of Children and Family Services … were being abused, tortured, and killed.” According to that report, in certain cases, children had been entrusted to foster parents who had previously been caught abusing children living in their homes. In one of those cases, according to Fox 11, a child had died at the hand of an abusive foster parent after the San Bernardino County Department of Children and Family Services was made aware of the sadistic nature of that foster parent. The Fox 11 News report made reference to an ongoing grand jury investigation.

The following day, Friday August 28, a special meeting was convened at the county administrative building which was attended by county executive officer Greg Devereaux, district attorney Mike Ramos, children and family services director Marlene Hagen, and a handful of other high level county officials. The primary topic discussed, the Sentinel was told by a reliable source, was the formulation of a cover story and talking points calculated to defuse the issue of negligence in the San Bernardino County Children and Family Services Department which led to the deaths of children in the foster parent system it oversaw.

The county, through its official spokesman, David Wert, has denied that Devereaux spoke to the district attorney on August 28 or that he had ever spoken to Ramos about children and family services or grand jury matters.

Forthwith, however, county officials in August and September 2015 moved to identify those responsible for the leaks that resulted in the foster child deaths becoming public and sought to squelch any further release of information. Grand jurors, whose investigations and proceedings are considered to be confidential and are informed of such and sworn to secrecy when a grand jury is impaneled, were threatened with arrest and prosecution if they violated that oath.

In September 2015, attorney Valerie Ross filed lawsuits against the county on behalf of former social workers Eric Bahra and Mary Anna Whitehall. According to Bahra’s suit, while working as a social services practitioner for the children and family services department in 2013 he “made the discovery that the system lacked safeguards which in practice allowed social workers to subject children to abuse by permitting them to place children in foster homes with known abusers.”

According to the suit, Bahra “made the discovery by doing a simple but novel search of the department of children and family services child welfare system’s  database.  In that short time plaintiff discovered at least 19 separate instances where social workers had placed children in the foster home of a known abuser.”

According to the suit, Bahra on July 11, 2013 was called upon to make an immediate response on a dead baby case in the City of San Bernardino. Bahra arrived at the home in the company of another social worker, Melissa Pena. In the home, Bahra found indications of what he believed to be methamphetamine on the premises. According to the suit Bahra “sought and obtained approval from the supervisor at the [children and family services] hotline to seek a detention warrant to remove the surviving siblings of the dead baby, all toddlers themselves. Subsequently, a judge of the Superior Court signed the warrant.” The four children were placed in two separate homes.

After that, according to the suit, the two foster mothers with whom the children had been placed “reported that when they had had a chance to examine the children they found what appeared to be ligature marks on the wrists and ankles of the children and burn marks and other injuries.  Plaintiff wrote the allegations against the parents in the case in light of the reports of the foster mothers about the condition of the children. Plaintiff recommended that these children be permanently removed from their parents. The siblings were examined by the doctors at the Children’s Assessment Center and the injuries the foster mothers had observed were confirmed by these doctors. These children had ligature marks around their ankles and wrists [and] their bodies were scarred with burn marks as if from a cigarette.”

Under children and family services protocol, when a child is or children are removed from a home, the matter is reviewed by what is termed a jurisdictional disposition officer, referred to as a J/D writer, to determine if the separation of the child from his or her, or children from their, parents is justified.

According to Bahra’s suit, in the case of the four siblings removed from the San Bernardino home where the dead baby had been found on July 11, 2013, “The J/D writer confirmed the findings made in plaintiff’s report and herself recommended that these children should be permanently removed from their parents. When the matter came up for a hearing in dependency court before the presiding judge of the dependency court to determine the future placement of the surviving siblings, the J/D writer was removed from the case [by the children and family services department] and told not to discuss the case further. Then it was learned that the department told the court that plaintiff had lied on the report and that all of the evidence which would include the children’s assessment center doctors reports should be sealed and a new trial granted before a judge who had not read plaintiff’s report. The department was now recommending that all the children be returned to the parents. Plaintiff and the social worker who had accompanied him on the investigation and the J/D writer then in a formal written pleading informed that court that plaintiff had not lied. Counsel for the minors then conducted her own investigation and found that the department had tampered with the police photos and withheld the part of the police report prepared by the detective assigned to the investigation of the death of the baby. Minors counsel’s investigation confirmed the veracity of plaintiff s reports. Minors counsel also agreed with the recommendations to permanently remove the siblings. Plaintiff and the two social workers brought the motion before the court to inform the court that the department in moving for a new trial was attempting to manipulate the court into making findings that would bolster its case against plaintiff.”

According to the suit, “The social worker who had accompanied plaintiff on the investigation on July 11, 2013 had left the employ of the county by the time she joined in the motion. The J/D writer was still employed by the department. Within six days following this social worker coming forward to report the wrongdoing of the department to the court she was put on administrative leave. No charges were brought against this social worker, however; she was just left on administrative leave.  After two months on administrative leave this social worker felt forced to resign in protest of the retaliatory treatment.”

Bahra’s suit suggests there may have been other foster parents who were not adequately vetted and there may have been other incidents of abuse that went unaddressed by the children and family services department.

“In June 2013 plaintiff was assigned to a joint investigation by the department of children’s services and the sheriff’s department concerning sexual abuse of children by a

foster parent,” according to the suit. “Two children disclosed that the foster father had sexually abused them and took naked photos of them which he then placed in an album containing many photos of other naked children. The detective assigned for the sheriff’s department asked plaintiff to provide further information regarding other children who had been placed in the foster home in the past. Supervisors in the CFS office then produced a list of children who had been placed in the foster home going back to 2001. Social workers had placed 39 children in the home since 2001 but plaintiff could find no prior complaints about the home. Plaintiff’s education, training and experience led him to believe that finding no prior complaints was unusual in the circumstance of allegations of sexual abuse, particularly in this case where two children disclosed that they had been in the home for years and had been sexually abused the entire time and that they had seen the foster father’s album containing nude photographs of many children. It was then that plaintiff made the discovery about the county s child welfare database. That database warehouses all case information and it is the database utilized by all county social workers in all aspects of their work including the placement of children in foster homes. Plaintiff discovered that this database lacks a system of cross checking, with the result that one social worker can substantiate abuse by a foster parent and remove the child but that another social can come right behind and place another child in the home with a foster parent determined to be an abuser. Plaintiff discovered that this revolving door had resulted time and time again with children being placed at risk in foster homes with known abusers, evidencing a total, complete and continuing breakdown of the very system mandated to protect children. The child who was the initial subject of the joint CFS sheriff’s department investigation into sexual abuse by her foster father was the 57th child placed in that home following actual decertification of the foster home prior to 2001. Plaintiff was terminated in an effort to cover up this system failure. The system failure was turned into malfeasance by the defendants to cover up and discredit plaintiff.”

In her lawsuit, Mary Anna Whitehall identifies herself as the J/D writer who was initially assigned to review the July 11, 2013 dead baby case that Bahra handled.  According to the suit, Whitehall was in possession of the police photos taken at the scene of the death. “In regard to this dead baby case, Nickola Hackett, a CFS deputy director who was the head of the CFS Victorville office out of which plaintiff [Whitehall] worked, instructed plaintiff to withhold a number of police photos and give to the court and counsel only those police photos deputy director Hackett selected,” the suit states. “Some of these photos were then altered by deputy director Hackett by printing only part of a photo or blocking out part of the photo. The conduct of withholding some photos and altering others was the first unusual thing that struck plaintiff about this dead baby case.”

According to Whitehall’s suit, in a crisis of conscience, she “took the CD disk of all of the photos obtained from the police and quietly gave it to deputy county counsel Steve Bass who was one of the deputy county counsel who had been involved with the dead baby case.” The suit continues, “Shortly after plaintiff [Whitehall] delivered the CD of all the photos to the deputy county counsel, plaintiff was removed from the case and another J/D writer was assigned. [Whitehall] was instructed not to discuss the case with the new J/D writer.”

According to Whitehall’s suit, there was evidence to indicate that methamphetamine was present in the home in which the dead baby and the surviving siblings were found and this was borne out by the social worker who had accompanied Bahra into the house, Melissa Pena. Nevertheless, higher-ups in the department of family services were alleging that Bahra had falsified or exaggerated the presence of methamphetamine near the death scene and “wanted to give the children back to the parents. But plaintiff [Whitehall] assumed that the children would be protected and not returned to the parents because the weight of the evidence before the court was against returning the children. Then plaintiff learned that the department had moved for a new trial, that a new trial had been granted, that a new judge was assigned  and that all the evidence that had been before the court would be marked ‘Confidential,’ with instruction that the new judge was not to view the prior evidence. Plaintiff also learned that the department told the court that a new trial was allegedly necessary because social worker Eric Bahra had lied and exaggerated on his detention report and the whole case had been tainted. Defendants knew those claims to be false at the time they were made. “

Whitehall’s suit continues, “Plaintiff now knew that she must act to protect the four surviving siblings. So plaintiff and social workers Bahra and Pena all came together to inform the juvenile court that the department had perpetrated a fraud upon the court by telling the court that Eric Bahra lied and exaggerated on his detention report  when, in fact, the evidence showed that Eric Bahra had not lied nor exaggerated. Plaintiff also then informed the court that the head of the Victorville office had instructed her to withhold evidence from the court and had instructed her to instead provide altered photos to the court and counsel.”

In the aftermath of the Fox 11 reports detailing the abuse and deaths of children in San Bernardino County’s foster parenting system and the filing of the Bahra and Whitehall lawsuits, the children and family services department and the county’s administration was thrown into full crisis mode. Wiebeld, the grand jury’s sergeant-at-arms, was suspected of being Fox 11’s source for its August 27 report and subsequent follow-ups. District attorney Mike Ramos accompanied the grand jury’s advisor, deputy district attorney Mike Dauber, and a single member of the grand jury to the office of Marsha Slough, who was then the presiding judge of the San Bernardino County Superior Court. Wiebeld, Slough was told, was proving disruptive. Slough subsequently summoned Wiebeld to her office. She informed him that he was an at-will volunteer and that his services were no longer needed. After Wiebeld was bounced from the panel, Dauber, with some prevarication, told the remaining members of the grand jury that Wiebeld had voluntarily resigned his commission as a grand juror for personal reasons.

Before the grand jury’s term ended on June 30, 2016, six other members of the grand jury who had been sworn in on July 1, 2015 to serve a full year – Robert Turley, Benjamin Royland, Rebecca Fults, Allen Burt, Paul Gorsky, Douglas Kinzle – left, either voluntarily or as a result of having been shown the door. The mass exodus from the grand jury itself was telling: No grand jury in San Bernardino County going back to the 1970s had suffered anywhere approaching that number of defections. At last, when the grand jury delivered its final report for 2015-16, a puerile chapter with regard to the children and family services department was included in it. In a low key account of ground the grand jury had covered in an investigation which reflected that the grand jurors had merely gone through the motions of making an inquiry, it was noted that social workers with the department did not make a practice of “recording interviews with clients” because “Children and family services management was uniformly opposed to the idea of tape recording client interviews… their stated reason for this opposition [being] confidentiality and possible intimidation of the client.” The report stated that “interviews with CFS [Child and Family Services] management revealed that social workers who had observed a parent under the influence did ‘not necessarily’ notify law enforcement or remove the child from the home.”

The report further noted “areas of concern about the relationship between CFS and law enforcement agencies. Interviews with law enforcement officers disclosed areas that potentially hindered investigations. Law enforcement officers disclosed, and CFS management confirmed, that CFS reports requested by law enforcement are first sent to county counsel [i.e., the county’s in-house lawyers] for review prior to being released. Law enforcement officers stated that CFS social workers are reluctant to remove abused and neglected children from their homes. Officers further stated that CFS does not always inform investigating officers of the location of a child, which causes delays in investigations.” The report also noted that law enforcement investigators “informed the grand jury that receiving redacted reports from Children and Family Services hinders their investigations” and prevents law enforcement officers from making so-called pretext calls to parents or guardians suspected of sexually abusing children.

The report stated that there were delays in children and family services’ response to its request for information, including one in which it took the department “a period of seven months and 23 days from the date the request was submitted” to provide the information sought.

The report stated, “In interviews with county counsel employees it was stated that CFS is focused on family unification, while county counsel would prefer the safety of the child to supersede family unification. Additionally it was reported by law enforcement officers that CFS is interested in keeping families together while law enforcement seeks to arrest perpetrators of child abuse.”

The report states that there was a 15.5 percent rate of employee turnover in the child and family services department in 2013-14 and a 23.8 percent employee turnover in 2014-15, such that social workers are “overwhelmed” by heavy caseloads.

In the report there is no mention of the deaths of any children who fell under the rubric of the children and family services department system. Nor did the report make reference to reports received by the grand jury which indicated that social workers who had made an effort to bring incidents of the abuse of children to light had been actively discouraged from doing so.

If the parents or representative of the children in the San Bernardino County foster care system who were subjected to abuse or loss of life were to come forward, this would potentially result in an avalanche of lawsuits that would prove financially devastating for the county.

A week prior to the release of the grand jury’s final 2015-16 report, after the scandal pertaining to the abuse of children lodged in San Bernardino County’s foster care system had been percolating for months, the California Attorney General’s Office announced it was looking into allegations of failure to act with regard to the abuse of children or criminal negligence by the Department of Children and Family Services.

Unlike San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Michael Dauber, the grand jury adviser who last year threatened individuals with arrest if they were to disclose nonfeasance or misfeasance and malfeasance by Children and Family Services Department employees, California Attorney General Kamala Harris said publicly to San Bernardino County residents, “If you have any information about those agencies falling short of their duty, much less harming children, tell us because we are concerned and we’re paying attention and we’re prepared to prosecute.”

This week, more than three months after the launching of that investigation, it was revealed that the county had quietly retained John Hueston, a private practice attorney perhaps most noteworthy for his stint as a member of the Department of Justice’s Enron Task Force led by U.S. Attorney  Sean Berkowitz and Kathryn Ruemmler which successfully prosecuted Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. It was revealed that the legal rumblings with regard to the situation in the county’s child and family services department were so ominous that Hueston was clandestinely hired in April, more than two months before Harris announced her office’s investigation. In the six months since he was hired, Hueston has billed the county for more than $179,000.

County officials, including CEO Greg Devereaux and county counsel Jean-Rene Basle wanted to keep Hueston’s hiring secret. That, however, was complicated by a county regulation requiring that the board of supervisors approve expenditures or purchase orders for amounts in excess of $100,000 per fiscal year. The officials were able to get around that by applying Section 12.1908 of the San Bernardino County Code which allows county counsel to retain outside counsel on a purchase order for a particular matter up to $100,000 per fiscal year. Thus, non-competitive purchase orders in the amount of $100,000 each were issued for Hueston’s services in fiscal year 2015-2016 (Purchase Order No. 168536) and fiscal year 2016 2017 (Purchase Order No. 178786).

With billing from Hueston’s firm, Hueston Hennigan, now on the verge of exceeding $200,000, the county was obliged to disclose that he is working on behalf of the county so that another purchase order by the county board of supervisors to avoid any interruption of his work.

There were both subtle and not-so-subtle differences in how the nature of Hueston’s was described.

Some county officials did not blanch at the reference to Hueston as a defense attorney. Others softened this somewhat, saying he was “to help defend county officials against an investigation by the California Attorney General’s Office into alleged illegal practices at the department of children and family services.”

In their co-authored report to the board of supervisors, county counsel Jean-Rene Basle and children and family services director Marlene Hagan softened the description further, saying the “contract with Hueston Hennigan LLP [is for] for continuing legal services in connection with an ongoing investigation by the State of California Attorney General’s Office of the County’s Division of Children and Family Services.”

County officials and even Hueston suggested to the Sentinel that it is somewhat gauche to refer to him as the county’s “defense attorney.”

Yet, based upon information obtained by the Sentinel with regard to the nature of the allegations involving the children and family services department and Hueston’s work on its behalf, such a term appears to be an apt one. Along certain tangents, indeed, the legal strategy the county is formulating appears to be an aggressive and ruthless one. The Sentinel has learned, for example, that investigators connected with the Hueston Hennigan law firm are conducting an investigation intended to replicate – or exceed – that being conducted by the investigators with the California Attorney General’s Office. Once what those investigators have covered is reviewed by Hueston and the firm’s other attorneys, that information is deemed to be subject to attorney-client privilege, meaning it cannot be disclosed to the attorney general’s investigators or prosecutors unless the county waives that privilege. If the employees within the children and family services division  can be deemed Hueston Hennigan’s clients, they may well be off limits to the attorney general’s investigators under the broad protection of attorney client privileged confidentiality. In this way the county could thwart the attorney general’s office’s investigation.

One factor in the county’s favor is that the attorney general’s office moved rather slowly in the San Bernardino County Children and Family Services Department investigation after it was underway, with investigators conducting few interviews of pertinent witnesses, participants or suspects. In this way, discernible facts suggest San Bernardino County has beaten the attorney general’s office to the punch with regard to assembling information that could prove crucial to the investigation. Whether information and facts gathered by the grand jury are provided to the attorney general’s office remains to be seen. One report received by the Sentinel which could not be earlier confirmed was that county officials knew of the attorney general’s investigation well in advance of Harris’s late June announcement, and that this had been the catalyst in retaining Hueston.

Hagan and Basle’s report to the board of supervisors disclosed that the investigation by the California Attorney General’s office predated by some four months Harris’s announcement of it. In that report, Hagan and Basle avoid the suggestion that the investigation is criminal in nature.

“In January 2016, the Bureau of Children’s Justice, a department of the Attorney General’s Office

(AG), initiated an investigation regarding alleged failures to comply with state laws by CFS [San Bernardino County Children and Family Services] regarding the provision of child welfare services,” according to Hagan and Basle’s report. “Due to the seriousness and systemic nature of  the allegations made to the AG, the scope of the AG’s investigation is assessing and evaluating CFS policies and practices over a five-year period as well as all documentation prepared by CFS during that time period. After meeting with the AG’s representatives, the law firm of Hueston Hennigan LLP was retained to represent the county for purposes of the AG’s investigation. Hueston Hennigan was tasked with not only examining the county’s policies and practices, but conducting its own assessment of child welfare services provided by CFS relative to state law. This assessment will assist the county in cooperating with the AG to perform a thorough examination of child welfare services provided by CFS. Hueston Hennigan was retained for its expertise in handling Department of Justice investigations.”

Hueston told the Sentinel “I am assisting the county in representation and cooperating with the attorney general’s investigation and to make sure that investigation proceeds fairly.”

Hueston said this would consist of “assuring there is fair data and the proper experts working with the attorney general’s office to provide information on issues that have historically been a problem for the county  and are now being addressed by the County of San Bernardino.”

As to the criminal elements of the case,  Hueston said he had “no comment.” He then sought to diffuse the suggestion that the matter was riddled with issues that were criminal in nature or involved criminal negligence on the part of San Bernardino County employees. He suggested that the gist of the attorney general’s inquiry ran to reporting delays and other relatively benign procedural errors or glitches in policy and the administration of the department that were not endemic to San Bernardino County.

“Certainly there have been issues with timelines and reports that have been problematic for every county in the State of California, San Bernardino [County] included,” he conceded. “That has long been acknowledged by San Bernardino [County] and the county is addressing those issues, particularly in the last two years.”

When directly confronted with the litany of charges emanating from the already filed litigation by former child and family services employees and allegations that have surfaced during and in the wake of the grand jury investigation, Hueston was either genuinely, or feigned being, taken aback. “Goodness,” he expletived.

He denied that his work for the county would in any way inhibit the collection of information of either a criminal or civil nature and that he would be assisting the county in defending current lawsuits brought against the county by former children and family services department employees or pending lawsuits by those litigants’ colleagues or former colleagues, and/or children overseen, or the families of children overseen, by child and family services who were  repeatedly placed into abusive foster homes in which they died or were severely maltreated.

“My role has nothing to do with any other collateral litigation pursued by private sector plaintiffs, period,” Hueston said.

Asked if he and the county were involved in a  strategy of creating a broad umbrella of attorney-client confidentiality that would render it difficult for investigators for both criminal prosecutors and plaintiffs’ attorneys to obtain information about children and family services operations, Hueston said, “I am not prepared at this time to talk about what we plan to do, other than cooperate with the attorney general as the investigation proceeds to ensure there is a fair balance. We are doing this so the attorney general can consider all relevant material as well as the improvements made by the County of San Bernardino. The course of this investigation is set by the attorney general. My goal is to assist them in meeting that.”

Hueston said that calling him a defense attorney would be a “misrepresentation. I have not been hired in that capacity.  I am not engaged in criminal defense. That is not per the scope of my engagement.  This is not a criminal investigation by the attorney general’s office.”

For both the county and Hueston, a major difficulty arises out of the public’s perception. This is not the first time Hueston represented San Bernardino County. In 2009, he was hired by the county to carry out an investigation into then-assessor Bill Postmus and put together the county’s case for removing him from office. That case hinged on the dual issues of Postmus’s use of his position as assessor for partisan purposes and his drug use. Ultimately, Hueston delivered a report that was in some measure credited with convincing Postmus to resign voluntarily. Nevertheless, in drafting, framing and delivering that report, Hueston made a case against Postmus while simultaneously protecting members of the board of supervisors and other high ranking county officials who had hired him and had been in league with Postmus during the perpetration of his depredations.  At least three of the high ranking county officials still in elected or appointed office in 2009 were also implicated in much of the wrongdoing Postmus had engaged in. Their activities and culpabilities were not mentioned in Hueston’s report.

One example is that Postmus, prior to being assessor, was a member of the board of supervisors, the chairman of the board of supervisors and the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Party. Postmus’s chief of staff while he was supervisor was Brad Mitzelfelt. While he was chairman of the board of supervisors and chairman of the county GOP, his board colleague and political ally Paul Biane was vice chair of both the board of supervisors and the San Bernardino County Republican Party. In 2006, while he was running for assessor as an incumbent supervisor, Postmus went missing for nearly three months. His absence was particularly baffling and problematic in that several emergencies – including fires – dogged the First District, of which Postmus was supervisor, that summer. His absence from the county in the midst of those disasters and during his political campaign went beyond being simply mysterious to downright suspicious. Suspected by some segments of the public at that time was that Postmus had been rendered non compos mentis as a consequence of heavy drug use. Such reports were at odds with Postmus’s rock-ribbed conservative Republican image. At that point, Postmus benefited from the false denials. Mitzelfelt, Biane and the county’s then-administrative officer, Mark Uffer, orchestrated, with the assistance of other county officials and employees, a series of cover stories as part of a strategy to prevent the public from learning that Postmus was indeed under the onus of daily methamphetamine use, besotted and addled to the point where he could not risk being seen in public on pain of being exposed and losing the assessor’s election. Subsequent events, including Hueston’s investigation, would reveal Postmus’s profligate drug use. Yet Hueston’s report omitted the roles that Mitzelfelt, Biane, Uffer and other county officials played in allowing Postmus to not only remain in his role as board of supervisors chairman while he was under the throes of drug addiction but to accede to the elected position of county assessor, the county’s highest tax imposition authority. Mitzelfelt and Biane were members of the board of supervisors that voted to hire Hueston; it was upon Uffer’s recommendation that the board had considered hiring him.

Another example of Hueston allowing his work product to be swayed by loyalty to those who hired him was that part of the case he put together against Postmus with regard to the partisan use of the assessor’s office. That report focused primarily on the manner in which Postmus and his assistant assessor, 22-year-old Adam Aleman, along with the office’s taxpayer advocate Gregory Eyler, the office’s local municipal liaison Rex Gutierrez and assessor’s office consultant Anthony Riley, used the assessor’s office’s facilities to engage in politicking and campaigning, in most cases on behalf of Republican candidates or issues, on county time. Hueston’s report on Postmus ignored a much larger, deeper and broader scandal in the assessor’s office relating to Postmus having used his authority to reduce the property taxes of his political allies, supporters, campaign donors, friends and associates. A number of those who had benefited by this corruption of assessor’s office were the then-current political and administrative leaders of the county, their associates or major supporters or campaign donors of elected officials who yet remained in office.

By early 2009, when Hueston was brought in as a hired gun to subdue Postmus, the embattled assessor was already self-destructing, as occurred in January of that year when investigators with the district attorney’s office, armed with a warrant to search his Rancho Cucamonga house for evidence of the misuse of county facilities and equipment for political purposes, found street narcotics and paraphernalia. Shortly thereafter, he would descend further into disgrace and untenability  when he came to court bedraggled and under the influence of methamphetamine, leading to a search of his vehicle and the discovery of more drugs and more paraphernalia. Removing Postmus from office, or convincing him to remove himself, was not a challenging assignment and Hueston did not shrink from it. Where he did back down, though, was in ensuring those who participated Postmus in his depredations and had enabled him in carrying them out were also held accountable. It is not lost on observers that those Hueston excused from accountability were the county powerful administrative and political elite.

Many see in Hueston’s past efforts to protect San Bernardino County’s powers-that-be a parallel to his current legal assignment with the county, which appears to aimed at criminally absolving those who neglected the wellbeing of children under the watch of the children and family services division or covered that negligence up.

A major issue is the apparent effort by district attorney Mike Ramos and deputy district attorney Mike Dauber to obstruct the grand jury’s investigation into the circumstances within the children and family services department, including the false representations they made to then-presiding judge Marsha Slough to have James Wiebeld removed from the grand jury.

The Sentinel has learned that at one point in the summer of 2015, Dauber told attorney Valerie Ross that if her client testified before the grand jury her client would be arrested.

Dauber did not respond to any of several phone calls or a letter from the Sentinel seeking his version of events. He offered no response to questions as to whether his action had come at Ramos’s direction. Dauber declined to explain why he and Ramos had moved to have Wiebeld removed from the grand jury.

Hueston demurred at discussing whether Dauber and Ramos’s action would be an issue he intended to deal with in his representation of the county with regard to the California Attorney General’s Office’s investigation of San Bernardino County’s department of child and family services.

Hueston told the Sentinel there was no comparison of his work for the county with regard to Postmus and what he is doing in representing children and family services during the California Attorney General’s Office inquiry.

“There is no analogy between those situations at all,” he said. He suggested that there has been a major changeover at the top level of San Bernardino County government.

“It is a different reality today,” he said. “You have a whole different board of supervisors than back then.”

Hueston said he was initially retained by the county in 2009 to engage in a relatively limited inquiry, saying the board of supervisors and county administrative officer Mark Uffer wanted to find out “What has he [Postmus] done in terms of abuse of his office?”

Ultimately, he said, “They allowed me to expand quite a bit, including looking at some city council members [who at that point remained as Postmus’s political allies]. I went a lot further and the investigation was wider than anyone anticipated.”

Ultimately, however, Hueston conceded that in his function as a lawyer, “The clients call the shots.”

According to Basle and Hagan, the Hueston Hannigan attorneys working per the contract approved Tuesday will be paid at a rate of $575 per hour and paralegals will receive $235 per hour.

That Hueston is being paid at near the top tier of what law-yers are paid fueled speculation that he is not in place to merely guide the department of children and family services through their “cooperation” with the California Attorney General’s Office, as he claimed.

When pressed on why the county could not simply cooperate with the attorney general’s investigators and attorneys without introducing Hueston as a middle man, county officials put out that Hueston’s assistance was necessary to allow the county “to efficiently respond to any questions the attorney general might have.” Hueston has no previous experience with child welfare issues, they acknowledged.

Main Street on the historic downtown thoroughfare of Needles is nowadays devoid of food vendors.  The last remaining food “joint” on the downtown “Broadway,” section of RT66, the “Burger Hut,” closed down when a strong gust of wind blew its roof off last year.

“The reason for the lack of food vending businesses in the downtown section of Needles should definitely be food for thought at the political forum this next Wednesday,” said local businessman David Buckley, “What will the candidates do about the anti-competitive policy of the “Needles Downtown Business Alliance” run by West End business owners who are keeping competition and growth out of the once prosperous downtown area?”

Needles historically was a significant element of San Bernardino County and California, the spot where the Southern Pacific Railroad crossed the Colorado River. As a consequence, beginning in the late 1880s, it grew into what at one point was – with its population of slightly more than 10,000 – the fourth largest city in the county, one that became a full service municipality, with its own police department, fire department, water utility and electrical utility. In the 1920s it reached its heyday as a key way station for bootleggers and illicit alcohol purveyors and smugglers during Prohibition. Poised along Route 66, it was known as the Gateway To California to automobile travelers from the late 1920s to the 1960s.

But Needles has fallen on hard times, and both its police department and fire department have been subsumed by the county sheriff’s department and fire de-partment. Its population has attrited significantly, to the point that at 4,884 residents, it is the smallest of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities population-wise.

Buckley claims that “it is no coincidence that it is the Needles Downtown Business Alliance (NBDA) in con-junction with the Chamber of Commerce that will be in charge of moderating the one and only public debate that will take place here just as the absentee ballots are mailed out by the county next week.”

The public forum is to be held on October 12, 2016 at 5:30 p.m. in the “El Garces” historic train depot meeting room and will be moderated by George DeLeon, long-time member of the NBDA, who has the same surname as  former City of Needles Human Resources Director, Genevieve DeLeon.  Questions are to be accepted from the public as long as they do not tend to “pick on any one candidate” a chamber spokesperson said.

Among those to be interviewed are the local municipal and school board candidates. Dr. Edward T. Paget is un-challenged in his race for mayor of Needles. A hot debate should ensue between nine candidates vying for three seats on the city council.  Two of those seats are currently held by incumbents Tom Darcy and appointed incumbent Shawn Gudmundson.  A third incumbent, Tony Frazier, has bowed out this year after serving on the council since the mid-1990s.  The seven other can-didates in alphabetic order include Tona Belt, former incumbent Linda J. Kidd, Clayton B. Hazlewood, 1990s councilwoman Ruth Musser-Lopez, Gerald “Jerry” Telles, Timothy Terral and John H. Wagner.  Four candidates will compete for two seats on the school board.  Incumbents Marilyn H. Mathews and Christina Cameron-Otero are hoping to be reelected.  Long-time resident and former city councilman Steven Thomas along with Chad Donald Zamora also will be competing for the board seats.

“I’m not sure how a forum run by an illegal trust, featuring anti-competitive policies and practices will reflect well on any of these candidates” Buckley, who is a leading critic of the status quo in Needles, pondered.  “Just the word ‘business alliance’ in the organization’s name ‘Needles Downtown Business Alliance’ is enough to scare any business off,” he says, “I have been the only legal off-site vendor in town for the preceding three years holding the necessary San Bernardino County Department of Environmental Services temporary food facility permit  to vend food as required by the California retail food code.  The two organizations running the current political forum, the Needles Chamber of Commerce and the NDBA, for no legitimate reason, have together barred my family business from setting up food concessions at multiple events over a period of two years—first it was the Vietnam veteran bikers’ ‘Ride for the Wall’ event, and then they barred us from participating in the El Garces renovation ground breaking ceremony.  The San Bernardino County health inspectors raided NDBA event at the El Garces grand opening.  A cover image from the local paper clearly shows Needles City Council members reacting to the health inspector’s raid as then-city council member Linda Kidd cuts the ribbon.”

Buckley continued, “There’s been seven NDBA events that have been closed down by the county inspectors over a period of two years, and somehow the NDBA has avoided being cited for those illegal operations.   Someone had apparently told the NDBA that they did not have to comply with the law. Current San Bernardino County First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood maintains an exclusive private relationship with the NDBA, attending at least seven NDBA events while at the same time failing to appear at one Needles City Council, with the exception of the swearing in ceremo-ny for new council members.   He has never come to speak to the people at a Needles City Council meeting or answer questions of his constituents or hear the needs of the people of the East Mojave area.”

Buckley was relentless in his expressed criticism of the alliance.

“Janet Jernigan, NDBA spokesperson, lives in Arizona,” Buckley charged. “She owns the Farmer’s Insurance Agency in town and has refused us membership in the NDBA and refused to insure our home business structure, Another Farmer’s agent from out of town did insure us. Janet Jernigan also runs a realty agency out of her office and refused to sell business property to me in the downtown area.”

Jernigan had not returned by press time phone calls from the Sentinel seeking her input.

Buckley wasn’t through.

“The staff of long time NDBA member Larry Deatly, owner of Decco Foods Distributor, refused to sell food supplies to me for my business purposes and in public at city council meetings has been heard to refer to Joe Jones as ‘Boss,’” Buckley said. “I will definitely be asking the incumbents why such illegal anti-trust associations are allowed to control development in the community.”

Buckley claims that “Joe Jones, a businessman who operates several food vendor businesses at the West Broadway offramp, including the Dairy Queen, Subway and Orange Julius, has effectively, along with  Susan Alexis and a few others, seized the food vendor market  on the west side of town. Alexis is the owner of the Wagon Wheel.”

Buckley claims that both Joe Jones and Susan Alexis are long term board members of both the NDBA and the chamber.  “Jones was serving as president elect of the chamber heading up the plans for a new chamber of commerce building in downtown Needles, but suddenly he dropped out of site and the new building appears to be in limbo,” Buckley said. “The chamber serves as a sensor to detect encroachment into the Needles market.  The NDBA serves as a bully gatekeeper thwarting competition. Our economic potential has been chilled.  Any good business operator would not drop a dime into this town until there is a county administration willing to step in and do something about the wrongful restriction of trade here.”

Buckley asserts that the NDBA is “a proxy trust operated on behalf of the Needles City Council, featuring the utilization of interlocking directors, exchange of funds and espionage by city staff.  Ex-city councilmember Terry Campbell, for example, concurrently served as both vice mayor of Needles and vice president of the NDBA, an illegal trust. The NDBA was created and operated to restrict trade and is utilized as a gatekeeper to the market. When two or more parties are formed to restrict trade, you have an illegal anti-trust situation.”

The Sentinel has found that the California Secretary of State identifies Susan Alexis as the “agent of process” for the Needles Downtown Business Alliance active since February 15, 2007 with an address at 2420 Needles Highway which is the site of the Wagon Wheel Restaurant.

“Several years ago, Joe Jones and several west Needles petroleum distributors actually concocted a plan to se-cede from Needles and create the new incorporated city of West Needles, California,” Buckley told the Sentinel.   “In 2013, when my family bought our home business, that plan was afloat.  Joe told me that he would take his new chamber building and build it in West Needles.” Buckley said.

“After looking at this for three years,” Buckley com-mented, “it appears that the Downtown Needles Business Alliance is actually a front for business owners on the west end of town at the West Broadway offramp. It is no wonder that the federally funded I-40 Interconnect project has been designed and redesigned so many times to the tune of five to seven million dollars, and now, depending upon how they time the light signals, they could actually direct traffic to the west end of town away from the downtown business district and defeat the entire purpose of the federal project which was to create a direct link from the I-40 to the bridge into Arizona.”

Alexis and her business, the Wagon Wheel Restaurant, on the west end of Needles, received the business of the year award at the chamber of commerce $100/plate dinner last week where numerous City of Needles golf course passes valued at over $250 were donated to the chamber for its’ silent auction. “The city subsidized the golf course to the tune of $400,000 this year,” Buckley asserted.

The Needles Chamber of Commerce offers a much more upbeat description of Needles than does Buckley.

“Needles offers a wide variety of service stations, fine motels, restaurants, grocery stores, hardware stores, drug stores, specialty shops, automotive supply stores and marina parks,” the chamber maintains, contradicting Buckley’s vision of a closed enclave of businesses shutting out competition. “Needles offers a wide range of business and recreational opportunities of all types and for all visitors. Activities range from shopping, sightseeing, golfing, hiking, swimming, fishing, camping, water sports and recreation. Needles is rich with history. Needles is home to El Garces (hotel/depot), one of the original “Harvey Houses”  built by Fred Harvey and Santa Fe Hotels  in 1908. Needles is also famous for resting along the original Route 66. Many of the original buildings and businesses still exist in the ‘old downtown’ area of the city. Travelers will immediately get a sense of the historical feel to Needles when visiting the area. Attractions for the area include the Mystic Maze, the Mojave National Preserve (home to the Kelso Dunes), the Mitchell Caverns, real ghost towns, the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge, and the natural beauty of the Topock Gorge, to name just a few.”

The chamber looked beyond Buckley’s criticisms to say, “Visitors to Needles will quickly discover a refreshing small, hometown atmosphere and wide variety of opportunities available in our area. Whatever brings you to our community, Needles can provide you with a wonderful experience. Community events, local attractions, bright blue skies, desert beauty, next to the exciting waters of the Colorado River are here for all to enjoy!”

A human resources leader with a depth of experience managing large and complex organizations has been selected as San Bernardino County’s new director of Human Resources.

Cindi Peterson Tompkins begins leading Human Resources on Oct. 31. She will be in charge of providing services to the County’s 22,000 employees and managing a staff of 143 and a budget of $18 million.

“We are proud to have someone of Cindi’s background join the County,” said James Ramos, chairman of the Board of Supervisors. “I believe she will bring a wealth of experience and ideas to benefit our employees.”

Tompkins comes to the County following 13 years at Esri in Redlands, which has more than 3,000 employees globally. Tompkins’ career with Esri includes multiple director roles and includes leadership of several functions including operations, human resources, global benefits, compliance, privacy, ethics, purchasing and safety functions for the $900 million high-tech software and services organization.

Prior to Esri, Tompkins was vice president of human resources, facilities, and corporate strategic staffing at Avery Dennison Corporation in Brea from 1992 to 2003, where she was a corporation

staff officer. Tompkins also has government-sector experience from her time as Human Resources Director at the City of West Covina in 2002. She began her career in human resources at General Dynamics Air Defense Systems Division in Rancho Cucamonga in 1987.

Tompkins has a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration and finance from California State University, San Bernardino. She completed the Human Resources Executive Program at Stanford University and has a certificate in employee benefits from the International Federation of Employee Benefits and was awarded the compliance and ethics professional certification from the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics.

Tompkins served as a past board member of the Prudential Advisory Board for the Prudential Corporation and was an instructor at the University of California, Riverside Extension where she taught employee and labor relations and human resources strategy. She also was a human relations commissioner, a charitable coalition board member, and served on the public space and facility naming committee – all for the City of Redlands.

Tompkins, a long-term resident of the County of San Bernardino, currently resides in Redlands.  She and her husband of 26 years have two sons, both attending local colleges. Tompkins said she is excited and honored to be serving both the employees and people of San Bernardino County.

The county this week abruptly expanded its contract with a thus-far untested traveling nursing agency  from $100,000 to $1 million.

Earlier this year, as part of the preparations for the 2016-17 county budget, the county’s chief purchasing agent, Laurie Rozko, authorized the issuance of a non-competitive master blanket purchase order to Fastaff in the amount of $100,000 for the period of July 20, 2016, through July 19, 2017.

Fastaff  is a rapid response nurse staffing company based in Greenwood Village, Colorado. The nurses on hire from Fastaff were intended to cover assignments in the operating, emergency and maternity rooms at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, the primary campus of the San Bernardino County’s county hospital.

Rozko had the authority to make such a commitment under County Policy 11-04.

From the initiation of the current fiscal year on July 1 through earlier this week, of the $100,000 authorized for hiring Fastaff nurses, none of that money had been expended.

At the recommendation of William L. Gilbert, the director of Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, the county board of supervisors this week, agreed to increase  the $100,000 master blanket purchase order with Fastaff by an additional $900,000 for nursing staffing services.

According to Gilbert, “Experienced operating room (OR) staff is vital to patient care in the ARMC OR, as well as other critical care areas such as the labor and delivery (L&D) department and emergency department (ED), which all require additional staffing at this time. Each of these areas requires special skills and experience. The ARMC OR staffing is currently at a critical level due to increased patient volume, recent departure of staff in difficult to recruit positions, and staff on short or long term leave. These staffing issues will negatively impact the ability to operate the minimum number of operating rooms to meet patient needs for elective and trauma surgeries. ARMC has researched staffing vendors currently providing registry services to supplement the ARMC nursing staff to cover absences and ensure that ARMC maintains nurse-to-patient ratios required by Assembly Bill 394; however, these vendors were unable to provide any staff with OR experience.”

Gilbert continued, “Registry nurses perform services under per diem contracts. Traveler nurses specialize in providing rapid response nursing services in urgent or crucial situations. Traveler nurses are placed on temporary longer term assignments under four to 13 week contracts, will travel outside of their local area to assignments, and are compensated at a higher rate to do so than registry nurses. Some of the current registry vendors contracted with ARMC provide both registry and traveler nurses. ARMC has been able to tentatively obtain contracts with four traveler nurses through Fastaff for the OR with a projected cost of $450,000.”

Gilbert said that “In order to reduce reliance on traveler nurses, ARMC has initiated a new nurse training program to complement the number of experienced OR nurses. The program provides training to six nurses per session, trained over a six-month period to prepare them to work in the OR. Each nurse is being offered a 13-week contract to staff the OR, providing for the safety, health, and social service needs of county residents by ensuring patient care continues while the hiring process for permanent staff is completed by the county. ARMC anticipates a list of candidates to begin interviewing shortly. However, none of the applicants have the necessary OR experience, so will be part of the new six-month nurse training program. Fastaff will also provide staff to fill additional vacancies in the critical care areas of L&D and ED. The availability of registry nurses to augment the staffing needs of the ED has decreased over the past three to four months, as many registry nurses have taken permanent positions with other local hospitals and health care organizations.”

Gilbert justified the county’s use of Fastaff as a sole-source vendor thusly, “This is a non-competitive procurement based on specialized credentials, as Fastaff is able to provide ARMC with traveler nursing staff with the required experience in OR, L&D, and ED. In an effort to procure these specific staffing services, the ARMC Materiel Management Department contacted each of the current vendors contracted with ARMC to provide registry nursing services. Of the vendors that responded, none were able to provide ARMC with nursing staff with the required experience. Two of these vendors, Medical

Staffing Network and Healthcare Pros, responded that they are currently recruiting for nurses with this experience. As none of the current registry vendors are able to provide these services to ARMC, an additional vendor was found to provide ARMC with traveler nurses for the OR, L&D, and ED.”

Deputy county counsel Frank Salazar signed off on the arrangement prior to the board of supervisors vote on the matter.

The Twentynine Palms City Council is leaning toward including a gym and a library, either as adjuncts to or directly as a part of Project Phoenix.

A remaining outstanding question is whether the city has the legal authority to utilize a portion of the $12 million in recovered redevelopment money on those two amenities, which were not explicitly identified as a part of Project Phoenix when it was proposed more than six years ago.

The entirety of the project appeared to be derailed through action by the state legislature and the governor five years ago; but an intrepid effort by the City of Twentynine Palms resulted, after what seemed an interminable delay, in the city being given go-ahead to proceed with the project.  More than a half decade after the project was first drawn up and approved, public sentiment seems to have shifted against certain elements of the plan as envisioned, and a small, but vocal, cross section of the community wants the project to be reformulated without the performing theater as part of its community center. Those residents are less than keen on a recently-floated proposal to include a city library at the center as well.

Project Phoenix was originally conceived as an undertaking by the Twentynine Palms Redevelopment Agency aimed at constructing a community center, a 250-seat theater, classrooms, a civic plaza, a park, a paseo, residential units, a wastewater treatment plant, and improvements to the downtown fire station. Project Phoenix was to utilize redevelopment funding.

Redevelopment agencies were adjuncts to local governments empowered to issue bonds, which would be sold to investors. The proceeds from those bond sales would then be used to eradicate blight and/or create infrastructure that would encourage development. The improvements in the property contained within a redevelopment project area would, theoretically, result in an increase in property values and the increase in property tax derived from the properties in the redevelopment project area, referred to as tax increment, would then be routed to repay the bondholders.

In 2011, however, when the legislature passed AB X1 26 and AB X1 27, which shuttered more than 400 municipal and county redevelopment agencies up and down the state. Twentynine Palms boldly sought to push ahead with the project, based upon Twentynine Palms City Attorney A. Patrick Muñoz’s assertion that the project had been initiated prior to AB XI 26 and AB XI 27 going into effect. According to Muñoz, the state law ending redevelopment function was trumped by federal securities regulations, meaning the money the Twentynine Palms Redevelopment Agency bonded for in 2011 could be utilized only for the purpose that bondholders were told the money would be applied toward.

Muñoz asserted in filings with the Sacramento Superior Court that the non-taxable bonds issued in 2011 created specific obligations between the city, as the issuer, and the bond purchasers, and as such are enforceable obligations and any use of the money for a purpose other than what the city had specified in marketing the bonds to the bond buyers would constitute fraud. The city then used the locally composed bond oversight board that was formed by the state legislation to recommit the bond money to the Phoenix project.  When the state Department of Finance used its authority to disallow the recommitment, the city filed legal action in Sacramento Superior Court, the venue where the legislation required any litigation pertaining to cities’ use of redevelopment money had to be filed. The case was heard by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael P. Kenny.

Kenny proved amenable to the city’s assertions and after the California Department of Finance lost a succession of appeals and challenges, the state relented in May of 2015, announcing it was throwing in the towel on opposing the cities’ moves to preserve their last remaining redevelopment agency projects.

Twentynine Palms has since move ahead with attempting to bring Project Phoenix to fruition. A number of city residents are now second guessing the direction the city wants to take with Project Phoenix, in particular the performing arts center/theater and the library. That library was not on the original wish list for the project, meaning it will need to be funded by some other means than the available Project Phoenix money.

Some have expressed the view that the city does not need cultural amenities such as a library or theater. They say such elements and the vision they represent for Twentynine Palms are being foisted on the community by a group of elitists with an artistic and cultural bent that is out of step with the majority of the community. They want the money applied to public safety enhancements and improvements to the city’s core.

A difficulty is, however, that the same principle that preserved the redevelopment money for the city is also at play in how the money is to be applied.

Muñoz’s assertion was that the money the Twentynine Palms Redevelopment Agency bonded for in 2011 could be utilized only for the purpose that bondholders were told the money would be applied toward. Contained in the bond documents was that Project Phoenix was to entail the community center,  theater, classrooms, civic plaza,  park,  paseo, residential units, a wastewater treatment plant, and fire station improvements.  Those elements must be incorporated into the project under the theory Muñoz propounded in saving the project money from confiscation by the state.

Last month, Matt McCleary, who has a contract with the city for Project Phoenix planning, took a survey of local residents at a September 8 community meeting. He has sent a report to the city council summarizing that input. City staff, primarily city manager Frank Luckino, has also weighed in on how Project Phoenix should be fleshed out when it at last rises from the ashes. That consensus is that the city should construct a community center that qualifies as a mixed use facility with a library, museum, visitor center and meeting rooms. The council said it believes the community center should entail at least in part a multipurpose gymnasium or athletic facility, a library, a museum and an outdoor performing or event venue. Further refinement of the community center concept will be attempted at the council’s first meeting in December.

The  cost for the technical services of a single engineering consulting firm assisting with the  legal defense against lawsuits and administrative action brought against San Bernardino County over the spread of perchlorate contamination in the county’s central valley has risen another $375,000 to $3,305,892.
The engineering consulting done in conjunction with the case represents but a fraction of the total cost to taxpayers accruing out of the  irresponsible action of former county officials in managing the Rialto landfill in such a way that it worsened perchlorate contamination in the ground and groundwater beneath that landfill.

This week, at the recommendation of county counsel Jean-Rene Basle, the board of supervisors approved an extension of the existing contract with Geo-Logic Associates from October 4, 2016 through October 3, 2017 in an amount not to exceed $375,000. That contract comes on top of the nearly $2.931 million the county has already paid Geo-Logic for the provision of technical support services in connection with perchlorate and other contamination issues in the Rialto-Colton Basin.

County counsel is the county’s top in-house attorney. The office of county counsel is the stable of lawyers the county employs.

At the root of the matter is perchlorate contamination that has seeped into the region’s water table and is continuing to spread.
In north Rialto, Pyro Spectaculars, Ken Thompson Inc., Chung Ming Wong, BF Goodrich and Emhart Industries had operations that were ongoing in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. All of those operations utilized perchlorate in their manufacturing processes. Near those operations Broco Inc. maintained a hazardous-waste disposal operation which was active from the mid-1960s until the late 1980s.
The county purchased the Broco property in 1994 and used it in the expansion of the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill.
In the late 1990s, a plume of contaminants containing perchlorate was found to be migrating through the local water table. Perchlorate is a product used in the manufacture of both fireworks and ordnance. In very minute quantities perchlorate can wreak havoc on the thyroid gland.
It has been established that the five aforementioned corporate entities – Pyro Spectaculars, Ken Thompson Inc., Chung Ming Wong, BF Goodrich, and Emhart Industries – were responsible for the accumulation and release of the perchlorate.
Water agency officials, state officials and federal officials also believe the county of San Bernardino engaged in activity that exacerbated the perchlorate problem.
Officials with the Rialto-based West Valley Water District and their lawyers have alleged that San Bernardino County razed and buried structures at the Broco facility to make way for the landfill expansion, action those officials maintain was not only illegal but worsened the contamination of the groundwater below Rialto.
According to attorney Barry Groveman, who represents the West Valley Water District, it appears the county simply knocked the hazardous waste facility down and spread the debris around before burying it. Groveman said the county was in violation of state hazardous waste handling regulations and the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Burying hazardous waste and storing it without a permit is illegal.
The Environmental Protection Agency has designated the north Rialto area as one of its Superfund sites so that the parties responsible for the contamination can be forced to assist in the remediation effort and so-called federal Superfund can be applied toward that end.
In 2004, Rialto filed an action in the U.S. District Court, known as City of Rialto v. United States Department of Defense et al. relating to the perchlorate contamination, alleging defense contractors were in part responsible for the situation. In early 2005, Colton filed a similar action in U.S. District Court, known as City of Colton v. American Promotional Events, Inc. West, et al. Rialto and Colton brought their respective actions against a number of defendants, including the county and Emhart, seeking response costs and injunctive relief to, among other things, ensure that perchlorate and another contaminant, TCE, in the Basin would be cleaned up. In June 2010, the District Court consolidated the United States action with actions which had been refiled by Rialto and Colton. Rialto dropped the portion its lawsuit against BF Goodrich after the company agreed to undertake a remediation effort. BF Goodrich did pay a total of $4 million – $1 million each to the cities of Fontana, Rialto and Colton as well as to the West Valley Water District. That money was used to treat specific wells that were producing perchlorate-laden water but did not redress the underlying problems in the aquifer. An EPA-designed program of remediation, consisting of contaminated water being pumped out of the ground to then be treated and distributed to water districts, is underway. It will likely take two decades or more for the perchlorate levels to be reduced to acceptable limits.
In May 2009, then-county counsel Ruth Stringer convinced the county board of supervisors to retain the law firm of Gallagher & Gallagher at an original cost of $710,000. The legal services Gallagher & Gallagher was to provide pertained to allegations against the county relating to perchlorate contamination in connection with particular matters that fall outside of the defense work covered by the county’s insurance. Gallagher & Gallagher currently represents the county in connection with the federal and state court litigation and federal and state agencies’ investigations of the perchlorate groundwater contamination in the Rialto-Colton Basin. Records show that as of last year  the county had paid Gallagher & Gallagher a total of $2,325,000 and that another law firm, Price Postel & Parma has been paid $4 million by the county for its work with regard to perchlorate contamination litigation.
Two years ago, the county entered into a four-party implementation agreement with Emhart Industries, Inc.; the city of Rialto and the Rialto Utility Authority, collectively; and the city of Colton.
That agreement calls for the construction of a combined water capture and treatment system to be operated by the city of Rialto and its utility authority that will reduce the perchlorate in the water table to the state standard of 0.004 mg per liter or less. The system is to consist of two groundwater extraction wells; a combined treatment plant; conveyance piping connecting the extraction wells to the combined treatment plant; distribution piping and any necessary valves connecting the combined treatment plant to Rialto’s municipal water supply system; distribution piping and infrastructure necessary for the delivery of water to Colton’s municipal water supply system as well as, if needed and reasonably necessary, distribution piping and infrastructure necessary for the delivery of water to a water purveyor other than Colton, which would most likely be the West Valley Water District; up to seven monitoring wells; and at least two and perhaps more piezometers required by the California State Water Resources Control Board Division of Drinking Water for the extraction well and the city of Rialto water well closest to the contamination site.
This week, in presenting to the board of supervisors his request that the county extend its contract with Geo-Logic Associates, Basle revealed that the legal challenges the county is facing over the perchlorate contamination has grown even more complicated.

According to Basle, “On October 6, 2015 the board of supervisors approved Contract #15-733  with Geo-Logic Associates to provide technical assistance to county counsel and outside

counsel, The Gallagher Law Group, in connection with groundwater contamination issues in the

Rialto-Colton Basin, where the County’s Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill is located. These issues are not yet resolved and this new contract will allow those services to continue for an additional year. Also, the scope of work is slightly revised to increase technical assistance regarding a new lawsuit, ICSOP v. County of San Bernardino, that concerns certain aspects of contamination in the basin.”

“Geo-Logic Associates provides important and necessary consulting services including required groundwater monitoring and reporting related to perchlorate and volatile organic compounds impacts to groundwater in the vicinity of the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill, and provides review and oversight of the perchlorate and volatile organic compounds groundwater treatment system at city of Rialto Well No. 3,” Basle said. “These services assist the county in maintaining compliance with legal requirements, including the state of California Regional Water Quality Control Board Cleanup and Abatement Order R8-2004-0072, which requires investigation into the extent of perchlorate and volatile organic compound impacts and the cleanup and abatement of the effects of the discharge of perchlorate and volatile organic compounds from or near the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill. Geo-Logic Associates has provided highly critical and successful specialized consultant litigation and technical support services to county counsel and outside counsel related to hydrogeologic analyses and identification of the contamination and treatment issues in the Rialto-Colton Basin.”

Basle said, “The specialized services of a qualified hydrogeologic consultant are necessary as these services cannot be provided by county staff. Geo-Logic Associates  is qualified to assist county counsel and outside counsel due to their expertise and familiarity with the contamination in the Rialto-Colton Basin and with the county’s remediation plan and treatment system. The recommended contract will allow Geo-Logic Associates to continue providing these services for the ensuing year.”

By Count Friedrick von Olsen
The word is that Donald Trump made some remarks about the desireability of a certain woman or two. It seems the Democrats are having a field day with that. I guess Mr. Trump may have used what some people consider pretty crude language in expressing that admiration….
Okay, so what does this mean? I think this was brought up by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Hmmm. It seems I have a recollection or two with regard to her husband having a certain admiration for, and inclination toward, women…
News Flash! Men chase women! It seems that every generation, someone discovers the sexual nature of the world all over again. When I was a bit younger, I was known for cutting a rug or two with a damsel in my arms. I did my best dancing while we were horizontal…
Okay, now that everyone has had their fun, let’s get on with discussing some serious things in this year’s presidential election campaign…

Howard J. Snider

By Mark Gutglueck
Howard J. Snider is a historical figure out of Ontario’s recent past.
Snider was born January 18, 1929 in Long Beach. As a kid, he shined shoes, worked in a butcher shop, hoed weeds around derricks in Signal Hill, bucked hay and sold magazines door to door. As a teenager, he raised calves and hogs. At Long Beach Polytechnic High he was on the varsity football team.
His mother hailed from Iowa and, given his interest in agriculture, he matriculated at Iowa State University. He majored in animal husbandry and competed in the 167 pound division on the wrestling team, of which he was captain. In his summers away from college back in California, he worked construction in the Long Beach area.
He attended officer candidate courses at Iowa State. Upon graduating in 1951, he married his wife, Lois, and joined the Marines. He served as a 1st Lieutenant and company commander at the Marine Corps training station in San Diego during the Korean War.
Based on his degree, he was offered a job teaching hog raising at Cal Poly San Luis Obisbo, a job which paid $325 per month. While in San Luis Obisbo, he also had a hog farm of his own.
In 1955 he came to Chino to raise hogs on a farm there, and shortly thereafter purchased a home in Ontario for $14,000. In 1957 he took up selling new cars at De Anza Chevrolet in Riverside. Simultaneously, he created a company, S & H Green Feed, which grew green alfalfa. In the very early 1960s, he went to work for Bateman Eichler Hill Richards, Inc as a stockbroker, eventually rising to become the vice president and resident manager of the local office.
In 1962 he was appointed to the city council to fill a vacancy and in 1964 was elected to a full four year term on that body. He did not serve that entire term, however, instead running successfully for mayor in 1966. He was reelected mayor in 1970.
As mayor, he supported commercial and residential development. He said, with some degree of hyperbole, that while he was mayor the city transformed itself from a small farming community into a regional leader in business, trade, development, housing and employment. In reality, the city, though it had its agricultural components, was long a relatively sophisticated commercial center.
Snider was dedicated to the expansion of Ontario International Airport, the development of a master plan for commercial and economic growth and expansion of the city’s parks and recreation system.
In 1972, as a Republican, he ran against the venerable Democrat George Brown for Congress. He attacked Brown as someone who did not live in the district and he took a stand against Brown’s push to legalize marijuana. The themes of his campaign were fighting drug abuse, reducing smog, creating jobs, cutting taxes and opposing school bussing to achieve racial diversity in local schools. Snider lost the race, garnering 43.7 percent to Brown’s 56.3 percent.
In 1974, he left politics, choosing to not seek reelection as mayor. In that same time frame, he left the employ of Bateman Eichler Hill Richards, Inc. He became the director of governmental affairs with Garden State Paper Company in Pomona, essentially working as a lobbyist. By 1977, he became the representative of the Manufactured Housing Institute.
Around that time, in his late 40s, he had ballooned to 215 pounds. To lose weight, he became an avid runner, rediscovering the athleticism of his youth. He moved up to greater and greater distances, eventually running his first marathon when he was 50, at an event in Griffith Park in 1979, completing the 26 mile 385 yard distance in 3 hours 38 minutes and 8 seconds. At another marathon in Irvine in January 1980, he covered the distance in 3 hours and 30 minutes.
While training, he would commonly run from his house on Sixth Street to Euclid Avenue and go varying distances up the Euclid median, on some days into San Antonio Heights and onto the steep fire roads there. His wife, Lois, occasionally accompanied him, riding a bike.
At the Fiesta Bowl Marathon in Scottsdale, Arizona on December 5, 1981, he clocked the course in 3 hours 18 minutes and 21 seconds.
What was said to be his best time was recorded at the Boston Marathon in 1982, but the exact time has been lost to posterity. Later that year, in October, he completed a 50-mile run in a single day. That feat, unfortunately, had untoward repercussions, as he hurt the balls of his feat in the undertaking, which impacted his training over the next several months, such that when he ran in the Boston Marathon in April 1983, his time increased to 3 hours 25 minutes and 23 seconds, placing him 4,292 among the 6,600 official runners.
Though he had never particularly enjoyed eating bagels, his fellow marathoners had said he should try them because they were ideal complex carbohydrates, which can boost a runner’s performance. He began to make his own, using a recipe that involved whole wheat. In 1983, he founded the Better Baked Bagel Company in Rancho Cucamonga, which became his most lasting business legacy.
In 1986, a year after the Ontario City Council deeded the Ontario Airport to the City of Los Angeles, Snider reentered the political fray, running for mayor and winning. He served for four years and ran again in 1990, but lost. It was the second, and last, loss of his political career. He retired from politics permanently thereafter.
He was socially active throughout his life. He was the district chairman of the Golden Eagle District of the Old Baldy Council of the Boy Scouts of America; on the board of directors of the Ontario-Pomona Association for Retarded Children; on the board of directors of the United Fund, he was chairman of the city-county coordinating committee of the county’s transportation agency, known as the San Bernardino County Association of Governments; he was a trustee on the board for the First Baptist Church in Pomona; a member of American Legion Post 112; a member of the Masonic Lodge; active in the Native Sons of the Golden West; the Ontario PTA; Kiwanis Club and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. He held a membership in the Construction and Shipyard Laborers Union, Local 507.

Painting By The Mayor

Relatively late in life he took up painting, gravitating primarily to landscape and nature subjects, sometimes traveling to the mountains, the river or places like Yosemite for inspiration. He had some of his work published on postcards under the label Painting by the Mayor.
His wife, Lois, predeceased him by 19 years, dying in July 1993.
Howard Snider died in September 2012 at the age of 83. He was survived by his daughter, Sharon Speer; son, Joshua Joseph; and grandchildren, Coltrane Snider, Austin Speer, Kathryn Speer and Laine Speer.

Cooper’s Hawk

Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) is a medium-sized hawk which goes by several common names, including big blue darter, chicken hawk, hen hawk, Mexican hawk, quail hawk, striker and swift hawk. Cooper’s hawk is native to North America. A member of the goshawk genus Accipiter, it was first described by French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1828. The bird was named after the naturalist William Cooper, one of the founders of the New York Lyceum of Natural History and later the New York Academy of Sciences in New York.
Accipiter cooperii is found from Southern Canada to Northern Mexico.
Cooper’s hawks have short rounded wings. The wing chord measures 8.4 to 0.9 inches long. It has a relatively long tail, 6.7 to 8.1 inches long, with dark bands, round-ended at the tip. As in most accipiters, the tarsus is relatively long, measuring 2.2 to 3 inches, and the bill is relatively small, with the culmen from the cere measuring only 0.59 to 0.83 inches. Adults have red eyes and have a black cap, with blue-gray upper parts and white underparts with fine, thin, reddish bars. The tail is blue-gray on top and pale underneath, barred with black bands. Immatures have yellow eyes and have a brown cap, with brown upper parts and pale underparts with thin black streaks mostly ending at the belly. The tail is brown on top and pale underneath, barred with dark bands. The eyes of this hawk, as in most predatory birds, face forward, enabling good depth perception for hunting and catching prey while flying at top speeds. They have hooked bills that are well adapted for tearing flesh of prey. Immatures are somewhat larger than a sharp-shinned hawk and smaller than a northern goshawk, though small males nearly overlap with large female sharp-shinned hawks, and large female Cooper’s hawks nearly overlap with small male goshawks. Cooper’s hawks appear broader-chested and larger-headed than sharp-shinned hawks, with generally more robust features.
The Cooper’s hawk appears long-necked in flight and has been described by birdwatchers as looking like a “flying cross”. The Cooper’s hawk is seen mostly flying with quick, consecutive wing beats and a short glide, though they may also soar.
As in many birds of prey, the male Cooper’s hawk is smaller than the female. The birds found east of the Mississippi River tend to be larger on average than the birds found to the west.
The average mass of an adult male ranges from 7.8 to 15.5 ounces with a length between 14 and 18 inches. The adult male is significantly smaller than the average female, which weigh 12 to 25 ounces and measure 17 to 20 inches in length. Its wingspan ranges from 24 to 37 inches. Individuals living in the eastern regions, where the genders average 12.3 ounces and 20.0 ounces, tend to be larger and heavier than those in the western regions, where the respective genders average 9.9 ounces and 16 ounces.
Their breeding range extends from southern Canada to northern Mexico. They are generally distributed more to the south than the other North American accipiters, the sharp-shinned hawk and the northern goshawk. Birds from most of the Canadian and northern U.S. range migrate in winter, and some Cooper’s hawks winter as far south as Panama.
The Cooper’s hawk occur in various types of mixed deciduous forests and open woodlands, including small woodlots, riparian woodlands in dry country, open and pinyon woodlands, and forested mountainous regions. They now nest in many cities. They were once thought to be averse to cities and towns, but are now fairly common urban and suburban birds, especially those cities which provide plenty of rock pigeon and mourning dove for the Cooper’s hawk to prey on.
Although adaptable in habitat, studies have indicated that the species still more often than not prefers sizeable tracts of woodland for breeding and migrating to fragmented, developed areas.
These birds capture prey by stealth, moving from perch to perch in dense cover, listening and watching, then putting on a burst of speed to overtake prey. They sometimes cruise low over ground, approaching from behind shrubbery to take prey by surprise. This is a dangerous hunting style. Some 23 percent of 300 Cooper’s hawk skeletons investigated revealed healed fractures in the bones of the chest. Cooper’s hawks prey almost exclusively on small to mid-sized birds. Typical prey species include American robins, other thrushes, jays, woodpeckers, European starlings, quail, icterids, cuckoos, pigeons and doves. Birds preyed on can range in size from wood-warblers to ring-necked pheasants. They may also prey upon the raptor American kestrel and other smaller raptors, including their cousin the sharp-shinned hawk. They have been known to rob nests and may supplement their diet with small mammals such as chipmunks, hares, mice, squirrels, and bats.Even more rarely, they may prey on lizards, frogs, or snakes. A raptor normally catches its prey with its feet and kills it by repeatedly squeezing it and holding it away from its body until it dies. They have also been seen drowning their prey, holding it underwater until it stops moving. The hawks often pluck the feathers off their prey on a post or other perch. They also hunt songbirds at backyard feeders, perching nearby and then swooping down and scattering the birds to single one out in flight. They may pursue prey on the ground by half running and half flying.
Cooper’s hawks are monogamous, but most do not mate for life. Pairs will breed once a year and raise one brood per breeding season. Courtship displays include stylized flights with the wings positioned in a deep arc. During their flight displays the male will begin by diving toward the female. A slow speed-chase follows, involving the male flying around the female exposing his expanded under tail coverts to her. The male raises his wings high above the back and flies in a wide arc with slow, rhythmic flapping. Courting usually occurs on bright, sunny days, in midmorning. After pairing has occurred, the males make a bowing display before beginning to build the nest.
Their breeding habitats are forested areas. The breeding pair builds a stick nest in large trees. Over a two-week period the pair builds the nest. The nests are piles of sticks around 28 inches in diameter and 5.9 to 6.9 inches high with a cup-shaped depression in the middle that is 8 inches across and 4 inches deep. Their nests are built in pines, oaks, Douglas firs, beeches, spruces, and other tree species, usually on flat ground rather than on a hillside. The nests typically are between 25 to 50 feet high off the ground, halfway up the tree, and out on a horizontal branch. The male feeds the female for up to a month before she begins laying eggs.
The clutch size is usually 3 to 5 eggs. The cobalt-blue eggs average about 1.9 inches × 1.5 inches and weigh about 1.5 oz. The female incubates the eggs between 30 and 36 days.The hatchlings are about 0.99 ounce and 3.5 inches long and are completely covered in white down. They are brooded for about two weeks after they hatch by the female, while her mate forages for food. The male brings food to female, and then incubates for a few minutes while female is eating. The male brings food, gives it to the female at perch near nest, and she feeds it to young. Young may climb about in nest tree after about 4 weeks, and can fly at about 4-5 weeks, with the fledging stage being reached at 25 to 34 days of age, though the offspring will return to the nest to be fed until they become independent around 8 weeks. Eggs and nestlings are preyed on, rarely, by raccoons, crows as well as other competing Cooper’s hawks. Adults rarely fall prey to larger raptors, namely red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, peregrine falcons, golden eagles, and northern goshawks.
Cooper’s hawks communicate using vocalizations and displays. Vocal is probably preferred over display, because the denseness of their habitat could prevent displays from being seen from a distance. Males are usually submissive to females and will listen for reassuring call notes the females make when they are willing to be approached. The males have a higher pitched voice than females.
Cooper’s hawks live as long as 12 years in the wild. The oldest known Cooper’s hawk was 20 years and 4 months old.