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Sentinel 02-05-16

By Mark Gutglueck
Events are on the brink of overtaking San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos, as an examination of his move to shut down several grand jury investigations has resulted in revelations pertaining to his motives for doing so, including trying to prevent his own participation in graft and the spoils of corruption from lurching into public view.
As the county’s top prosecutor for more than thirteen years, he was heretofore gone beyond the limits of his actual authority, thereby influencing the direction and intensity of law enforcement and prosecutorial actions by local investigative agencies he did not have the constitutional or legal right to control, such as in cases where he dissuaded past civil grand jurors from delving into issues problematic to himself and various institutions, departments and individuals with whom he is aligned. His status as district attorney is now in jeopardy and his remaining authority is now eroding because of his too careless and arrogant push to prevent the current grand jury, a few of its members in particular, from completing investigations they had opened.
As a consequence, attention has now turned to a set of circumstances involving bribes provided to Ramos himself – money given to him in return for his changing the course of both investigations and prosecutions.
At the center of these depredations are two entities, one being the dominant organized crime configuration in California and the other a company that in recent years has muscled in and established itself as the predominant purveyor of bail bonds.
The first of these – the Mexican Mafia, has benefited from its largesse to Ramos through decisions by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office’s not to pursue criminal charges relating to criminal activity members of that organization have engaged in within San Bernardino County, or by mishandling, downplaying or undercharging in those cases it does pursue.
The second of these is Bail Hotline Bail Bonds, a company that has experienced explosive growth over the last eight years, in large measure based upon its aggressive tactics in marketing itself, including within San Bernardino County’s jail system. As complaints with regard to these tactics have cropped up, including allegations that Bail Hotline Bail Bonds has engaged in an illegal tactic known as bail capping, Ramos moved to quell the complaints and the investigations never gained any traction. Further information has surfaced regarding irregularities occurring when the court makes a determination as to whether bail is to be granted, what the amount of that bond is to be and under what terms. That information suggests that certain defendants, particularly ones who are Bail Hotline clients, have received more favorable bail recommendations from the district attorney’s office than other defendants charged with the same crimes who exhibit no more and in some cases less flight risk.
Ramos’s arrangements for receiving the payoffs have ranged from the relatively straightforward and crude to more sophisticated methods in which the money is laundered.
It is likely Ramos would have been able to continue with the pattern he has adopted of enriching himself by means of bribes or kickbacks from those he would otherwise target for prosecution had it not been for a series of miscalculations he made with regard to a single individual – a retired police officer named James Wiebeld.
Wiebeld, who retired after more than 30 years in law enforcement with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department where he had served as a detective, goes by the nickname “Buddy.”
Perhaps bored, perhaps genuinely concerned about the state of the county, perhaps on just a whim, Buddy Wiebeld signed up to serve on the grand jury in 2014 and was among those selected to serve as a grand juror when that investigative task force was impaneled. Owing in some measure to his law enforcement background, Wiebeld was selected to serve as the 2014-15 Grand Jury’s sergeant-at-arms. The grand jury term runs with the governmental fiscal year, from July 1 to June 30. The 2014-15 Grand Jury took up a number of issues that term, including the Bloomington sewer contract, the phenomenon of bullying in the county’s schools, management and financial record-keeping practices in the City of Colton, code enforcement policies and procedures in the City of San Bernardino, conditions in the detention centers/jails run by the sheriff’s department, policies at the county’s Devore Animal Shelter and whether the county was adhering to state law intended to emphasize the adoption of sheltered animals rather than slaughtering them, conditions and operations at the City of San Bernardino’s animal shelter, the sheriff’s department’s policies and procedures with regard to the impounding and towing of vehicles and reports that department personnel eventually took title to some of those impounded vehicles, misuse or improper use of the sheriff’s department’s helicopters, and an examination as to how well the Newberry Community Services District had complied with recommendations with regard to its operations made by the 2012-13 Grand Jury.
Wiebeld, as a one-time member of the sheriff’s department, took a special interest in the investigations into the conditions at the jails, the department’s vehicle towing policy and the use/abuse of the helicopter. As it would turn out, all three of those investigations were short-circuited, failing to plumb to the true depths of the issues taken up.
Even as the grand jury was looking into the conditions in the county jails, four separate lawsuits were filed in roughly the same time frame alleging a pattern of guard-on-prisoner brutality that included beatings, the use of electric shock and sadistic sexual abuse, triggering an FBI investigation. In April 2014, the FBI sent several agents into the West Valley Detention Center in response to reports of widespread abuse there and “walked off,” i.e., escorted from the premises, four deputies who worked there. The four jailers were subsequently, along with three other deputies, fired by the department. Nevertheless, the 2014-15 Grand Jury Report made no mention of the abuse of prisoners.
The investigation of the department’s towing procedures came about after complaints were made that vehicles impounded by tow companies with towing service arrangements with the sheriff’s department’s various substations were subsequently purchased by department personnel at lien sales conducted by those towing companies. While the grand jury report acknowledged reports of “employees purchasing vehicles at lien sales after a vehicle has been impounded by a tow company or after a vehicle had been seized during an investigation,” the report made no specific references to the sheriff’s department personnel who had actually made those purchases. Rather, the report provided a rather languid recommendation that “In order to avoid any appearance that a seizure was for personal gain, employees shall not possess property that has been seized by the department. This includes the purchase of seized property by a third party for an employee’s use.”
The grand jury’s review of the sheriff’s aviation division resulted in similarly bland conclusions. “Not all flights are recorded in the Aviation Flight Logs,” the report stated, while further noting, “Staff personnel are not adhering to division standard operating procedures.”
In the same rough time frame that the grand jury was looking into these matters, a recently retired sheriff’s department sergeant, Tim Jordan, and current deputies Brian Moler and Jeff Wetmore, represented by attorney Christopher L. Gaspard filed a lawsuit against San Bernardino County and the sheriff’s department alleging they experienced retaliation from their immediate superiors and other higher ranking department members for resisting their superiors’ imposition of a “a 200 traffic ticket per month quota and … a traffic citation tracking system in an effort to ensure they met that quota.” Contained in the suit was the assertion that “In early 2011 Sgt Jordan discovered that sheriff’s personnel assigned to the department’s narcotics unit would routinely tow vehicles and flip them by purchasing the vehicles at lien sales and selling them for profit. The sheriff’s personnel who were flipping towed cars would call a particular tow company owned by the father of a deputy sheriff. This would occur regardless of the location from which the car was towed. When the vehicle came up for lien sale the owner of the tow company would contact the deputies and offer them the first chance of purchasing the vehicle. The owner of the tow company would discount the vehicles, often selling them for thousands of dollars below bluebook value.”
Wiebeld, who was held over with six others from the 2014-15 Grand Jury to serve on the panel in 2015-16, was unsatisfied with the fashion in which the previous grand jury had soft-pedaled the jail brutality, purchase of impounded vehicles by sheriff’s personnel and helicopter misuse issues. Recognizing that the FBI was already aggressively probing the abuse of prisoners in the sheriff’s department-run detention center, Wiebeld laid off that issue, not wanting to step on the FBI investigation. But with regard to the issue of department members’ acquisitions of impounded vehicles, which he recognized to be far more widespread than the previous grand jury had acknowledged, and the sheriff’s department’s misuse of its aviation fleet, which involved ferrying department higher-ups, politicians, their wives and mistresses to distant locations beyond the county on highly inappropriate pleasure flights and junkets with no conceivable relationship to law enforcement, public safety or search and rescue operations, Wiebeld began pushing his grand jury colleagues to again take up those matters.
Ramos, who had learned of Wiebeld’s agitating along these lines, was already alarmed at the situation, concerned that he might be faced with a rogue grand jury he could not control. His fears and alarm, as well as that of other high-ranking county officials, were confirmed 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. This week, David Wert, the county’s official spokesman, told the Sentinel, “Greg [Devereaux] did not speak to the DA on August 28, and he has never spoken to the DA about Children and Family Services or grand jury matters. Greg does occasionally meet with the DA on county budget issues.”
Forthwith, county officials in August and September 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.
Wiebeld was suspected of being Fox 11’s source for its August 27 report and subsequent follow-ups. Ramos accompanied his office’s grand jury advisor, deputy district attorney Michael 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.
That move appears to have had a fateful, and perhaps what yet may even prove a fatal, consequence on Mike Ramos’s career as district attorney.
If by shedding Wiebeld Ramos believed the issues lurking below the surface in San Bernardino County would remain on the down low, he both underestimated the former sheriff’s detective’s resolve, determination, investigative prowess and networking capability and overestimated his own ability to use the power of his office to obfuscate, intimidate and prosecute his way out from underneath a situation in which his own action and that of his closest associates implicate him in criminal activity and a long running conspiracy to keep it under wraps.
Wiebeld, like all detectives, lives by the mantra of “motive, means and opportunity” in seeking to determine the perpetrator of a criminal act and prove his culpability.
Though grand juries do not typically deal with criminal matters, per se, and are chartered to focus primarily on oversight of government institutions at the county level or lower, if in the course of such an investigation the grand jury comes upon indications or evidence of real or potential criminal activity, it is at liberty to gather that information and both pass it along to the appropriate law enforcement agency and document it in a report, in either ad hoc form or in the annual grand jury report put out toward the end of its term in June.
Grand juries have the authority to charge public officials with “willful or corrupt misconduct in office.” Such accusations under the California Constitution and state law are to be tried in the same manner as a criminal indictment, and may not be dismissed for political or extra-legal motives. The definition of “willful misconduct in office” specifies serious misconduct that constitutes criminal behavior or “purposeful failure to carry out mandatory duties of office.”
It thus appears that Ramos, in shutting down the grand jury’s several investigations, violated the law. So, what was Ramos’s motive in doing so? It appears that he was concerned that an aggressive inquiry into misfeasance or malfeasance by other county officials would lead, ineluctably, to an examination of his own malfeasance, one that grew out of greed.
At this point, Ramos, as district attorney receives $374,027 in total annual compensation, including both his salary and benefits. Nine years ago, however, he was being paid somewhat less, somewhere in the $305,000 per year range. That, he stated repeatedly to those in his orbit, was simply not enough money. He deserved more, he insisted. In 2007, he called a meeting with several of the county’s other at-large elected officials – then- assessor Bill Postmus, auditor controller Larry Walker and then-sheriff Gary Penrod – to discuss what he said was the county’s inadequate pay situation. He broached the idea of having the board of supervisors sponsor a countywide ballot measure aimed at increasing the pay of those elected officials serving in countywide office. Then-county counsel Ruth Stringer was brought in to determine if such an initiative could be put before county residents. Postmus used money in his electioneering fund to conduct a poll to determine if county voters would support such a measure. The effort died quietly, however, when Postmus was implicated in a political corruption scandal involving politicking from the assessor’s office.
In 2008, Ramos’s desperation for money was again given demonstration when his electioneering committee, The Friends of Mike Ramos, in the period between January 1 and June 30 of that year paid Gretchen Ramos $10,000 for “campaign services.” Gretchen Ramos was at that point Mike Ramos’s wife of 27 years
Ramos’s payment of $10,000 to his wife for “campaign services” that year was highly irregular. 2008 was not an election year for the district attorney’s post in San Bernardino County. Furthermore, Ramos failed to disclose the $10,000 payment to his wife on his California Form 700 income disclosure documents. Form 700s are intended to provide disclosure of the full range of elected and appointed governmental officials’ economic interests. Since California is a community property state, Ramos should have declared the payment to his wife as income to his household.
The conversion of that money, intended for electioneering purposes by its donors, into cash that went into Ramos’s pocket raised the specter of money laundering and potential bribery.
Notably, Ramos prosecuted other politicians, charging them with felonies, for similar action.
In 2009, the degree to which Ramos was hungry for cash was again demonstrated when then-supervisor Neil Derry floated the concept of creating an ethics commission. Ramos swung his support behind the idea, volunteering to take on the position of the county’s chief ethics officer on the proviso that he be provided with a $20,000 per year stipend for doing so. That too fell through.
In the intervening years, Ramos appears to have abandoned the efforts to boost his income through augmentations to his salary, and instead crossed the line once more, as he did with the ploy of transferring money out of his political fund to his wife, into the realm of illegality and graft, trading upon his authority and ability to suspend that authority in return for money.
Recently surfacing as a result of Wiebeld’s forced departure from the grand jury is the account of a witness that served as a courier between the Mexican Mafia and members of the San Manuel Indian Tribe in Highland involved in a drug distribution network. That witness, known by the code name “Rico Doe” has said that Mike Ramos was handed a package containing a substantial amount of cash that originated from Mexican Mafia-related illicit narcotic activity during a designated rendezvous at the Pechanga Casino in Temecula. According to Rico Doe, the money was provided to Ramos as part of an arrangement to insulate members of the Mexican Mafia and San Manuel tribal members from prosecution. The witness hinted at other occasions when money was provided to the district attorney.
What has been suggested is that one of the examples of Ramos showing favoritism toward members of the San Manuel Tribe is a matter involving two tribal members, Stacy Cheyenne Barajas-Nunez, and her brother Erik Barajas, who contracted with members of the Mexican Mafia to kill Leonard Epps, a one-time bartender at the Brass Key nightclub/restaurant in Highland they believed had too much knowledge about illegal activity they were involved in. That planned execution was botched, but was discovered as a consequence of a massive drug bust led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration during which evidence of the attempted hit turned up during the serving of search warrants on several San Manuel Reservation homes, including those of Barajas-Nunez and Barajas.
Because the basis of the case had been laid by federal agents, Ramos did not have the luxury of dispensing with the case without a prosecution. Ultimately, Ramos accepted a plea agreement from both. Barajas-Nunez pleaded guilty to participating in the murder-for-hire scheme and to two drug charges. Her brother pleaded guilty to an assault with a deadly weapon charge in connection with the murder-for-hire scheme. The deal Ramos approved allowed them to avoid any jail time and remain at home and be monitored electronically. Barajas-Nunez agreed to a 365-day home detention sentence and her brother agreed to 180 days of home sentencing.
As a result of the attempt on his life and the injuries he sustained, Epps, represented by attorney Frank Peterson, filed a civil suit against Barajas Nunez and Barajas. Epps and Peterson prevailed in that suit and a jury has already awarded Epps $6.577 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Epps is still a target for Mexican Mafia executioners and has had to assume a new identity and relocate himself and his family to a secure location.
Petersen said there are “deep” levels of drug distribution activity emanating from the San Manuel Reservation, involving massive infusions of monetary investments from tribe members sustaining that illicit operation.
Ramos’s willingness to look the other way with regard to the criminal activity involving the Mexican Mafia that is ongoing at the reservation is complicated by the consideration that the tribe has made an arrangement, approved by the board of supervisors, to pay the district attorney’s office $1,048,909 yearly to prosecute criminal cases originating on the reservation and at the San Manuel Casino located on reservation grounds and operated by the tribe.
Another allegation relating to the district attorney engaging in a quid pro quo arrangement whereby he has pulled his prosecutorial punches in exchange for money is that relating to irregularities with the bail bond operations at, around and in the county’s detention facilities and jails.
While bail bondsmen are permitted to market their services, utilizing inmates to do so, an activity known as bail bond capping, is illegal under California law. Early in Ramos’s tenure as district attorney, in 2004, he prosecuted, with much fanfare, employees of a bail bond company owned and operated by members of former sheriff Floyd Tidwell’s family.
In recent years, however, Ramos has failed to investigate let alone pursue a case against another company alleged to have engaged in bail bond capping on an even grander scale than the company owned by the Tidwells.
Bail Hotline Bail Bonds, a company founded by the McGuire Brothers eleven years ago, began operating in San Bernardino County in earnest in late 2007. In March of 2008, according to numerous other local bail bond operators, Bail Hotline took command of the lion’s share of business out of San Bernardino County’s jails. Beginning in April of 2007, complaints were made with regard to Bail Hotline’s activity.
Communication by several bail bond business owners with a member of the sheriff’s department’s command echelon, Deputy Chief Greg Garland, resulted, at least temporarily, in preventing Bail Hotline’s representatives from maintaining an overwhelming presence at the jails and monopolizing bail bond business in San Bernardino County. In time, however, Bail Hotline reasserted itself. That was followed by numerous complaints of bail bond capping related to the company, including ones made to the sheriff’s department, the district attorney’s office and the grand jury. No grand jury ever took the matter up as an official investigation. No prosecutions ever ensued.
Moreover, reports began to trickle in and then flood in with regard to favorable treatment accorded to Bail Hotline’s clients during bail hearings, with little or no resistance to most bail requests by the district attorney’s office being registered, peppered with very few token oppositions in some exceptional cases.
According to one attorney who requested anonymity, a check from Bail Hotline Bail Bonds made out to Ramos was spotted on his desk at the district attorney’s office.
According to numerous individuals, the McGuire Brothers paid for Ramos’s travel and accommodations on a holiday to Park City, Utah.
Efforts to reach the McGuire Brothers to get their explanation for the provision of money and vacation accommodations to Ramos were unsuccessful. They have publicly maintained that they get ahead by offering ethical and quality service to their customers.
Marco McGuire told ESPN 1700, “Today’s times is a tough economic time, so we have to work with our clients. Usually, back in the day, the client would put a credit card and pay off in one shot. But nowadays it’s tough. We work with our clients with payment plans. There’s no collateral. Their signature for Bail Hot Line is pretty much their freedom. That’s pretty much the way the company is ran. We go by whoever is signing for the individual. It’s an insurance bond and its usually charged between eight and ten points.”The company’s website states, “Bail Hotline Bail Bonds, is a family business. We have flourished by providing families like yours services that are honest.”
On his statements of economic interest, known as California Form 700s, going back to 2007, Ramos makes no mention of receiving any income or gifts from Bail Hotline or its principals. Nor does he make any reference to money received from those associated with the San Manuel tribe, though he did list the receipt of a $75 concert ticket as a gift from James Ramos, the one-time chairman of the San Manuel tribe, who is now the chairman of the board of supervisors.
In recent weeks, the examination of Mike Ramos’s penchant for shutting down investigations has accelerated, following an effort by the grand jury to look into a report of county jail inmates being provided with alcohol. Reports abound that the grand juror who was pressing to look into the matter, Rebecca Fults, was threatened with prosecution if she did not desist.
Efforts to elicit a response from Ramos with regard to the bribery accusations that have surfaced in the aftermath of the sacking of Wiebeld from the grand jury were unsuccessful.
Similarly, deputy district attorney Dauber, the grand jury advisor, spurned multiple offers to him to let him give his input for this article.

The 2013 San Bernardino Political Revolution lurched through its final cycle this week, as the prime mover of that insurrection failed in his own electoral bid.
The bottom line in Tuesday’s run-off balloting was that incumbent Jim Mulvihill was chosen by voters to serve four more years as the city’s Seventh Ward councilman and Bessine Littlefield Richard will succeed councilman Rikke Van Johnson in the Sixth Ward.
When Mulvihill and Littlefield Richard are sworn in, five-eighths of the mayoral and council team in place three years ago in early 2013 will have been changed out.
A degree of irony attended the race between Mulvihill and his challenger, Scott Beard, as Beard was largely responsible for putting Mulvihill in office in the first place. Indeed, it was Beard who is in large measure responsible for the political landscape in San Bernardino being what it is today. But like Moses who led his people to the Promised Land but never made it there himself, Beard contributed with other unforeseen factors in changing several faces of power in the county seat but was denied the political office he sought.
After years of financial challenges, San Bernardino in 2012 filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. This alone cast City Hall and its officials in a poor light, which the following year a group of activists, led by Beard, sought to exploit.
Technically a San Bernardino resident with a real estate brokerage company based in Rialto with considerable holdings there, Beard was a principal in San Bernardino Residents for Responsible Government.
San Bernardino Residents for Responsible Government targeted then-mayor Patrick Morris, then-city attorney James F. Penman, First Ward Councilwoman Virginia Marquez, then-Second Ward councilman Robert Jenkins, Third Ward Councilman John Valdivia, Fourth Ward Councilman Fred Shorett, then-Fifth Ward councilman Chas A. Kelley, Sixth Ward Councilman Rikke Van Johnson, and then-Seventh Ward councilwoman Wendy McCammack for recall. The comprehensive effort to recall nine elected officials is believed to be the largest municipal recall effort in state history.
Penultimately, Beard and his confederates gathered enough signatures to qualify recall elections against Penman, McCammack and Valdivia. Ultimately, Valdivia staved off the effort to take him out of office when 705 of the Third Ward’s voters opposed his recall against the 426 who supported it. But Penman was recalled by a citywide vote of 7,730 to 5,013 and McCammack was cashiered by a ratio of 1,460 votes to 1,033. The same year, criminal charges were filed against Kelley and Jenkins, resulting in Kelley resigning and Jenkins being defeated in that year’s election by Benito Barrios. Kelley was replaced by Henry Nickel. Morris did not seek reelection in the 2013 election. He was succeeded by Carey Davis, after Davis in 2014 bested McCammack in the run off for the mayor’s post after she had gotten a plurality but not a majority of the votes for mayor on the same election day she was recalled as Seventh Ward councilwoman.
Also that day, November 5, 2013, Mulvihill, a professor at Cal State San Bernardino, outdistanced four other alternate candidates – Nick Gonzales, Paul Sanborn, Michael Thomas and Joshua Williamson – to replace McCammack.
For the last two years, the only remaining vestiges of the pre-bankruptcy council were Shorrett, Marquez, Johnson and Valdivia.
Next month, Johnson is to be replaced with Richard. Richard’s ascendency in the Sixth Ward, located on the city’s west side, represents a further inroad at City Hall by the city’s public employees. Richard is herself a public employee, She is a supervisor with the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Department. She garnered substantial public employee support, including that of the police and fire unions. Despite her declaration that she did not consider herself beholden to those who endorsed her in her run against Roxanne Williams, who is also a public employee, Richard will be called upon by her supporters to resist the city’s ongoing efforts to reduce operating costs by slashing staff salaries and benefits. In the case of the fire department and its employees, who overwhelmingly endorsed Richard, her election comes too late. The night before her election, the city council made a final settlement of claims filed against the city by the fire employees’ union pertaining to salary and benefit reductions. That settlement came as the city itself is moving ahead with dissolving its 137-year old municipal fire department and entrusting fire service in the 59-square mile, 213,000 population city to the San Bernardiuno County Fire Department.
Richard’s victory over Williams, a former teacher who now works out of the San Bernardino City Unified School District’s administrative office and is also a city parks commissioner, was a convincing one in which Richard polled 648 votes to Williams’ 353.
Beard, the scion of a wealthy family highly invested in real estate within the Central Valley, made a spirited run to unseat Mulvihill, who he believed had hijacked the recall effort he had bankrolled two-and-half years ago.
Beard, who is now president of Gerald W. Beard Realty Inc., indicated he did not believe Mulvihill embodied the spirit of reform that informed the recall movement that culminated in McCammack’s ouster. Once the campaign was under way, he attacked Mulvihill for supporting a $143 per year parcel tax as part of the fire service outsourcing plan and he was critical of the city’s use of receivorships to seize dilapidated properties from impoverished homeowners to effect urban renewal, which Mulvihill supported.
Beard, however, has a checkered past. In the 1990s, he was implicated though never indicted, in an elaborate kickback scheme relating to the county’s leasing, for use by its behavioral health division, of a K-Mart building in Rialto in which Gerald W. Beard Realty had an interest. Indicted in that scandal were former county supervisor Jerry Eaves, who eventually agreed to resign from office in lieu of going to prison, and former county administrative officer James Hlawek. Hlawek acknowledged in statements he made to the FBI that in a meeting with Beard and Eaves he was given a briefcase containing $300,000 in cash in return for facilitating the lease of the building.
While memory of that nearly two-decade old matter, in which Beard narrowly avoided being charged criminally, had faded with many, Mulvihill did make cryptic reference to it during the campaign.
In the end, Mulvihill prevailed, though by a relatively narrow margin of 803 votes — 53.57 percent — to Beard’s 696.

SAN BERNARDINO—As anticipated, the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission has ratified the City of San Bernardino’s move to transfer responsibility for the provision of fire protection within the 59.2 square mile confines of its city limits to San Bernardino County.
The Commission, known by its acronym LAFCO, acceded to the outsourcing of the oldest fire department in the county, which has been in existence for 137 years, creating a new county-run fire protection service zone, annexing the entire city into that zone, and approving a $148 per year parcel tax on the more than 42,000 properties in the city.
Those measures facilitate the San Bernardino County Fire Department’s takeover of the San Bernardino City Fire Department, which officials said they hoped would be effectuated by July 1.
The LAFCO board unanimously approved the change, over the sporadic protests of a dozen citizens. By law, the city’s residents are now to be given the opportunity to themselves turn thumbs down on the transfer, but for that opposition to be successful, a majority of the landowners would need to register their opposition to the annexation plan by means of written protest. Local Agency Formation Commission staff are now in the process of sending by U.S. Post an explanation of each property owner’s right to lodge such a protest, together with a form to do just that to both registered voters and landowners. There has never been an instance in California history where such a protest vote has prevented a local governmental entity with proceeding with its assessment plans.
The city’s move to shed its department is a by-product of its long deteriorating financial condition which manifested in its August 2012 filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. Both past and current city leaders have stated the belief that some of the city’s financial challenge is attributable to what they characterize as overly generous wages guaranteed to the city’s public safety employees, i.e., police officers and firefighters.

A provision put into the San Bernardino charter by means of a citywide vote in 1939 – known as Section 186 – requires that the city’s public safety employees – firefighters and police officers – be paid on a scale equal to the average pay of police officers and firefighters in ten similarly-sized California cities.
San Bernardino, the county seat and the largest city in the county, has a population of 213,708. Yearly, city officials and police and fire union heads start with a list of California cities with populations between 150,000 and 250,000. In turns, each removes a city from that list until ten remain. Salaries are then computated upon the average pay to that particular group – firefighters or fire department management or policeman or police management – in the remaining ten cities.
Despite the city’s bankruptcy filing it continued to give firefighters and police officers raises in keeping with the provisions of Section 186 of the city charter.
In September 2014, Riverside-based Federal Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury acceded to the city’s request to abrogate its labor contract with the firefighters union and impose a contract with terms more favorable to the city and less advantageous to the firefighters.
In 2014, the city council put on the ballot a referendum to remove Section 186 from the city’s charter. The city’s police and fire unions strongly opposed the initiative, known as Measure Q, and in the face of the spirited campaign against it, the initiative was defeated.
In April 2015, the San Bernardino City Professional Firefighters, the bargaining unit representing San Bernardino’s firemen, filed a pair of lawsuits, asserting the city had run afoul of the municipal charter in imposing rampdowns on firefighter pay and benefits.
In the current fiscal year, police department and fire department operations represent 68 percent of the spending out of the city’s general fund. Salaries make up the lion’s share of those departments’ operating budgets. While some celebrate the city’s firefighters as brave heroes, others see them as overpaid prima donnas who do little actual work and spend most of their time on the clock sleeping or lounging around the city’s various fire stations. A majority of the city council became convinced that the continuation in the escalation of public safety employee pay in a city that has declared bankruptcy and is stiffing its other creditors is both unseemly and unsustainable. Confronted with the unwillingness of the fire department’s employees to adjust their salaries and benefits downward, as expressed through the action of the firefighters’ union action with regard to Measure Q, former city manager Allen Parker, in conjunction with Mayor Carey Davis and assistant city manager Nita McKay, moved full speed ahead toward liquidating the fire department. In doing so, Davis elected to damn the torpedoes represented by the resistance or opposition of the firefighters and their unions.
Unlike the San Bernardino City Professional Firefighters, the San Bernardino Fire Management Association, which represents seven of the fire department’s senior staff, had not been vocal about the developing plans to outsource the fire department. But when that plan was at last on the brink of being initiated last summer, San Bernardino Fire Department Battalion Chief Michael Bilheimer, the management association’s president, at last went on record against the ploy to save the city money, stating in a communiqué intended for all city residents, “Outsourcing the fire department is a bad idea for San Bernardino.” Bilheimer continued, “We remain confident that your current fire department is best suited to provide all aspects of fire protection to our community. It remains our position that we are able to provide an unparalleled level of service for the lowest cost possible. The San Bernardino County Fire Department has proposed full annexation as the means by which to provide fire protection. This will result in no control of the cost for your fire department. More importantly, this results in the forfeiture of all property tax funds to the county of San Bernardino ($30 million per year). The loss of property taxes will become even more costly in years to come as property values and development continue to increase. The San Bernardino Fire Department has been providing fire protection to the community of San Bernardino for 137 years, and it would be shameful and irresponsible to see it discarded. There is no replacement for the experienced and knowledgeable firefighters currently serving this community; any substitute stands to compromise public safety.”
The LAFCO vote renders Section 186 moot with regard to the city’s firefighters, who will no longer be city employees but rather county employees.
The Local Agency Formation Commission approval of the annexation came nearly simultaneously with the San Bernardino City Professional Firefighters arriving at a so-called tentative “global settlement” with city officials to bring to a close the litigation it had engaged in against the city with regard to economies the city instituted that impacted the department and its firefighters.
With roughly a dozen city residents telling the LAFCO board that they were opposed to the proposed annexation and creation of the fire assessment district because they wanted to keep the city fire department in place, that they considered the tax unreasonable and excessive and that city officials had created the fiscal crisis by a series of poor decisions, the board members paid lip service to their sentiments but found that the drastic fix was needed to ensure that public safety in the county’s larges city be maintained.

Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown appears to be cruising toward an easy reelection later this year after she put down an incipient intraparty insurrection led by a sister Democrat at a pre-endorsement conference on Saturday.
The Region 9 division of the California Democratic Party held its pre-statewide conference in Palmdale on Saturday at which local delegates made their recommendations for party endorsements.
First elected in 2012, Brown represents the 47th Assembly District, in which voter registration strongly favors the Democrats. On Saturday, Brown was faced with a relatively rare challenge for an incumbent in a “safe” district, when Eloise Gomez Reyes, a Colton-based attorney and longtime Democratic Party activist who in 2014 unsuccessfully vied for Congress in California’s 31st Congressional District, tested her strength in supplanting Brown.
As an incumbent, Brown was on track to receive the party’s routine automatic endorsement. Gomez Reyes moved to challenge her, but succeeded in capturing only 20 percent of the endorsements from the party’s Region 9 delegates. The 80 percent show of confidence in Brown exceeded the 70 percent threshold the statewide party considers the necessary benchmark upon which to award an endorsement. The California Democratic Party will hold its state convention in San Jose on February 26, 27 & 28.
Brown sought to wallpaper over the temporary challenge to her primacy in the 47th District. “We’ve been working hard to bring Democratic unity to the Inland Empire, and today’s confirmation of support validates this effort,” she said.
In State Senate District 21, Jonathan Irving and Star Moffatt are fighting it out for the party endorsement. Irving captured the endorsement of 39 delegates, while Moffatt pulled down six.
Congressman Pete Aguilar is the only official Democratic candidate in California’s 31st Congressional District, though Bob Conaway is contemplating a run, having taken out papers to do so but having not yet filed them. Conaway, like Gomez Reyes, stands virtually no prospect of wresting the state party endorsement from the incumbent Aguilar, though Conaway appears intent on making an issue of the consideration that Aguilar voted with his Republican Congressional colleagues against giving social security recipients a cost-of-living increase while simultaneously conferring upon members of Congress a raise.
Scott Markovich, who was formerly a Republican and as such vied for election in 2014 as 33rd District Assemblyman, is now running as a Democrat in the 33rd yet again, looking to knock off the incumbent, Republican Jay Obernolte, who was victorious in 2014 in his first attempt at state office. Perhaps because of distrust over his status as a former member of the GOP, Markovich, the only Democrat competing in the 33rd at this point, received only three endorsements.

The East Valley Water District and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority have settled the lawsuit brought by the water district in October 2013 which sought removal of the obstruction to the construction of a water treatment plant on Sterling Avenue.
The district was represented by the Irvine-based law firm of Buchalter Nemer. The airport authority was represented by the Ontario-based firm of Cota Cole.
The flight regulations at San Bernardino International Airport prevented construction at the Sterling Avenue location. It now appears that the district has resolved to use an alternative location to construct the plant off of Del Rosa Avenue. It will yet refer to the plant as the Sterling Natural Resource Center, despite the relocation.
The relocation has resulted in rendering the litigation moot.
At its Wednesday, January 27 meeting the East Valley Water District Board announced an agreement to end the suit had been reached.
Details of the settlement were not disclosed.

The current edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel has a blockbuster story relating to District Attorney Mike Ramos’s immersion in graft and corruption. Find a print copy of the Sentinel in the following communities:

Carbon Canyon

Chino Hills

Chino

Montclair

Upland

San Antonio Heights

Mt. Baldy

Rancho Cucamonga

Fontana

Bloomington

Rialto

Colton

Grand Terrace

Loma Linda

Lake Arrowhead

Crestline

Yucca Valley

Needles

Ft. Cady

Newberry Springs

Baker

Barstown

Trona

Victorvill

Hesperia

The effort to remove a quorem of the Montclair City Council from office met a quiet demise last month.
Sean Brunske, who has become something of an institution representing the political opposition in the city of 36,664 at the county’s West End, began circulating petitions against Mayor Paul Eaton and council members Trisha Martinez and Bill Ruh in July. He failed though, to garner a sufficient number of signatures on those petitions to force the recall matter to be put on the ballot.
In a city the size of Montclair, recall proponents must collect signatures of 20 percent of the registered voters. Montclair is listed by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters as having 12,605 registered voters. Thus Brunske and his cohorts needed to collect 2,561 valid signatures.
Brunske is a political creature who grew, at least partially, out of the economic downturn of 2007 to 2013. That recession led to the city engaging in a series of economies, including employee layoffs and salary and benefit cuts. Brunske became a mouthpiece for displaced and disgruntled employees or ones who were otherwise displeased with the pay cuts. He, along with Richard Beltran, a city resident and former city employee, received the backing of the city’s public safety unions. And while in several other San Bernardino County cities, support from fire and police unions has proved instrumental in getting council member elected, that support did not resonate the same way in Montclair in 2012 or 2014.
In launching the recall, Brunske charged city staff, led by city manager Ed Starr, with incompetence and derilection. He called Starr overpaid and he faulted the entire city council, and Eaton, Ruh and Martinez in particular, with failing to monitor Starr properly. Martinez, however, had only been on the city council for seven months when Brunske initiated the recall. Martinez bested him in the 2014 election.
Eaton has been mayor for 21 years in a city that has evinced the greatest degree of political stability in all of the county’s 24 incorporated municipalities over the last two decades.
Brunske, something of a firebrand, has sought to enliven things. From time to time, he has mixed it up with councilwoman Carolyn Raft. Significantly, however, he did not target her in the just-concluded effort.
When he initiated the recall, Brunske asserted that “The citizens of Montclair have had it” with the council. He intimated that he was working in conjunction with a committee of like-minded residents determined to assist in gathering signatures. But the committee proved inadequate to the task and Brunske did not turn any petitions into the city clerk’s office by the early January deadline.
While Brunske has claimed the backing of the police and fire unions in the past and they previously came through with a modicum of financial support of his candidacies, those were not successful and the public safety unions now seem to have distanced themselves from him, perhaps having concluded that indirectly challenging the incumbent council through him is ineffective and potentially counterproductive from the standpoint of their interests. There is nothing to indicate those union’s assisted Brunske in the recall effort.
That lack of financial wherewithal may been crucial to the recall’s failure.
While he seemed to recognize that the drive would have fared better if he had access to the roughly $10,000 to $20,000 estimated it would take to hire professional signature gatherers, it appears Brunske does not full appreciate how formidable the task can be. He gave indication that, having fallen off the recall horse, he intends to remount it. That is, he said he is preparing to submit papers once more to initiate another recall. He did not say which council members he will target in the upcoming effort.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
With next week’s New Hampshire Primary approaching, I’m getting a little nervous. I read somewhere, I’m not quite sure where, that going back probably as long as there have been primaries, there has never been a successful presidential candidate who did not win either the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire Primary. I can’t vow for the accuracy of that statement, but I read it somewhere. This means, if the pattern of history holds, that by next week we will have narrowed down to at least four people who our next president will be…
I am not quite certain that I have assimilated all of this, or at least assimilated it properly. So, with your permission, gentle reader, I will herewith engage in an exercise designed to enlighten myself as much as you…
Going back to 1952, the winners on the Republican side of the New Hampshire Primary were:
2012 Mitt Romney with 39 percent
2008 John McCain with 37 percent
2004 President George Bush with 81 percent
2000 John McCain with 49 percent
1996 Pat Buchanan with 27 percent
1992 George H.W. Bush with 53 percent
1988 George H.W. Bush with 38 percent
1984 Ronald Reagan with 84 percent
1980 Ronald Reagan with 50 percent
1976 Gerald Ford with 50 percent
1972 Richard Nixon with 68 percent
1968 Richard Nixon with 78 percent
1964 Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr with 36 percent
1960 Richard Nixon with 89 percent
1956 Dwight Eisenhower with 94 percent
1952 Dwight Eisenhower with 56 percent
Again going back to 1952, the winners on the Democratic side of the New Hampshire Primary were:
2012 Barack Obama with81 percent
2008 Hillary Clinton with 39 percent
2004 John Kerry with 38 percent
2000 Al Gore with 50 percent
1996 Bill Clinton with 84 percent
1992 Paul Tsongas with 33 percent
1988 Michael Dukakis with 36 percent
1984 Gary Hart with 39 percent
1980 Jimmy Carter with 48 percent
1976 Jimmy Carter with 29 percent
1972 Edmund Muskie with 46 percent
1968 Lyndon Johnson with 50 percent
1964 Lyndon Johnson with 95 percent
1960 John Kennedy with 85 percent
1956 Estes Kefauver with 85 percent
1952 Estes Kefauver with 55 percent
As I said, I’m not entirely sure what to make out of this. A few longshots who never panned out did well some of those years. Sometimes the obvious favorite won. Someone with more candlepower than I have might be able to see a pattern or two…
One thing that strikes me is that in the years where an incumbent was in the race, the outcome was pretty much preordained. It seems at this point the race could go in a lot of different directions. We’ll have a clearer picture and a few less variables Tuesday night…

B.G. Holmes a century ago began promoting Big Bear Lake and the community around it in such a way that it was transformed into one of the most celebrated resort communities in San Bernardino County.
Holmes is credited with being the first real estate profession to handle private vacation home rentals in Big Bear Lake. His influence was immense and today the majority of the homes that have been built in Big Bear are owned by vacation homeowners.
B.G. Holmes was born January 26, 1872, the only son of John and Amelia (Gay) Holmes, natives of Connecticut, where the former was born in 1837 and the latter in 1838. They were married in 1870. They came to Redlands in 1889, where John Holmes engaged in fruit growing. He first purchased a peach orchard of ten acres, but later planted it to oranges. His reason for coming to California had been his failing health. The California climate was so agreeable to him that in 1922, at eighty-four years of age, he was still caring for his orange grove in West Redlands. Amelia was also living and enjoying good health at that time.
After completing grammar and high school courses, B. G. Holmes entered the Redlands National Bank, and was doing very nicely when, like his father before him, his health failed, and two years later he found himself obliged to change his occupation for something which would take him out of doors. In 1894 he came to Bluff Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains to camp and recuperate, and then the next summer he, with the aid of two friends, backpacked over the trail to Big Bear Valley. When he gained his first view of this region it struck him as less than attractive, and he would later relate that only the realization of his need of some place where he could be in the open kept him from turning back, that and the innate determination to persevere in any undertaking. At some point previously, the force of the water around the old dam had killed many of the trees that bounded it, and this fringe of dead wood gave to the scene a particularly desolate appearance. In time, the dead trees would be removed, transforming the landscape. There were at that time few traces of human occupancy other than the ruins of the old mining camps.
In 1898 Holmes married at Philadelphia, Miss Blanche M. Walton, of that city, and over the years they became the parents of four children: Alden Walton, who was born at Redlands in 1899, graduated from the Redlands High School and subsequently graduated from Stanford University. Through his mother, Alden was a direct descendant of John Alden of Mayflower stock. The second child, Charles Chester, was born at Redlands in 1902, graduated from Redlands High School and also graduated from Stanford University. Two other children, J. Walton, born at Redlands in 1907, and Lillian, who was born in Los Angeles County in 1909, graduated from Redlands High School.
Having familiarized himself with orange and lemon groves through his father’s endeavors, B.G. Holmes continued to maintain his interest in the citrus industry, and his operations expanded to cover many lines, agricultural and otherwise. He built the Mission Garage in Redlands, and sold the business in 1913 to Bartlett Brothers of Detroit, retaining ownership of the building until 1920, when he traded it for an orange grove on Redlands Heights. In the fall of 1916 he purchased the Doctor Blaire group of log cabins in big Bear Valley, then thirty years old.
There was a main road frontage of 307 feet bordering that property, and he paid $5,000 for the entirety of the land, which was soon almost priceless because of the improvements he placed upon it. The following spring he bought from Judge Rex Goodcell 146 feet of road frontage, along which he built his own personal residence. Combining those properties, he arranged the cabins into a most picturesque and for the time modern camp, which he named Indian Lodge. Two years later he bought two-thirds of an acre from the Pine Knob Company, and in 1921 leased for twenty-two years four and one-half acres adjoining it. On all of this property he erected many cabins, and had them all equipped and furnished. The camp was centrally located, and soon proved popular with those sojourning into the mountains.
The camp had a capacity of about sixty people. When he came to Big Bear, there were no buildings between his camp and the I. S. store. Within five years of making his purchase, he sold a portion of the Goodcell property at sixty dollars per front foot, which added to his profits.
Mr. Holmes belonged to Redlands Lodge of the Benevolent Protectors of the Elks, but aside from that he had no connections outside his business and family ties in Redlands. Rather, Bear Valley monopolized his energy, interest and time in the main. He and the Bartlett Brothers organized the Bear Valley Chamber of Commerce, of which he was, in 1922, serving his second term as vice-president. This was a lively and spirited organization, which played an important part in the developments in Bear Valley. When Holmes acquired possession of the Indian Lodge property, it was in a dilapidated condition. The cabins were in need of repair, and they contained virtually no improvements. Setting to work with his characteristic energy, Holmes transformed the it into one of the most desirable camps in the entire valley.
John Brown and James Boyd in their book “History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties” gave a contemporaneous account of Holmes’ accomplishments.
“He has not acquired his present prosperous and prominent position by any easy road,” Brown and Boyd wrote. “From the start he has been confronted with obstacles. Some men never learn what failure means no matter what obstacles spring up in their path, being able to overcome them and come out a winner. B. G. Holmes, of Big Bear Valley, is one of these men, and his success in spite of all kinds of hard luck and former poor health ought to stimulate others to follow his inspiring example. In his citrus growing he has been frozen out and ruined by hot waves, but has persevered through them all. Best of everything his health has so improved that it is difficult for the stranger to believe that he was ever in anything but a rugged condition. It is such men as Mr. Holmes who make a region. They come into a wilderness and persist until they develop it, and to them, and not to the recent comers, belongs the real credit. From Indian Lodge can be seen a constant stream of automobiles passing over the public highway, and it is difficult to believe that the first automobiles came into the valley in 1909. Now they are as common as the ducks about the lakes, but prior to 1909 they were unknown in this part of the county. As Mr. Holmes wearily plodded over the mountain trail he not only had no conception of this method of transportation, but he would have regarded anyone as hopelessly insane who would have predicted that passengers would be landed in the valley from aeroplanes, and yet this happens so often as to now occasion no special comment. In fact Big Bear Valley has been redeemed from the wilderness and is fast taking on metropolitan features, although as long as the great mountains and wonderful lakes remain it will continue to be a health-giving resort, whose beauties beggar description. The same clean, wind-swept air blows over its spaces and fills the lungs of its people as that which refreshed the pioneer back in 1895, when he gazed with saddened eyes at the desolate scene at the old dam, and now, as then, carries with it a promise of health and encouragement.”
Holmes would later write a history of Big Bear, becoming the district’s first published historian.