Note:Diary updated and expanded
In response to formal requests from legal counsel from the OC Board of Supervisors, the Attorney General’s office has responded by advising that the blatant violations of the law be prosecuted by the local DA, who stood silent as Sheriff Carona became such a cancer that federal prosecutors intervened.
Is Jerry Brown out of touch? How does he think he’ll get the votes of over half a million Democrats in Orange County if he continues to blow off the scandal surrounding the sale of the Orange County Fairgrounds?
The story is simple yet complex. Eight patronage appointees of the Governor run a state agency, the 32nd Agricultural district, which runs the Orange County Fair. Until scandals erupted, they gave themselves and their friends hundreds of thousand of dollars a year in free passes and front-row concert tickets. Sheriff Mike Carona’s wife Debbie was a Fair Board Director, and there are reports of a concert where 300 of her friends had free tickets to a sold-out concert.
Earlier this year, the Fair Board lobbied to have the state sell the Fairgrounds as part of a budget package and simultaneously created a corporation to buy the Fairgrounds.
The details have trickled out, but it’s an ugly story where the rule of law was a victim.
And the legal representative for the Fair Board has been a Deputy Attorney General, somehow silent or complicit while there was an open conspiracy to violate public meeting laws, as well as clear conflicts of interests, and failure to comply with laws regarding lobbyists.
Does Jerry know about the scandal himself?
Yep, I cornered him at the E-Board meeting, where he admitted he was aware of the issue. He can’t deny that he is protecting his inept Deputy AG’s, while ignoring a conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers of the state, with blatant conflicts of interests, a conspiracy to violate open meeting laws and illegal lobbying by Dick Ackerman.
The story started with coverage of the Fair Board by one local blog, where activists alerted us the stench and we’ve been writing about this since February. This OC Progressive post that was cross-posted at Calitics lays out the story.
Now it’s breaking news on the teevee and reported in the Orange County Register as the scandal grows by the day.
The Attorney General’s office is the legal representative for the 32nd Agricultural district, which controls the Fairgrounds, and the Deputy AG who has been at the meetings has been disappeared, with an email address that bounces back and a disconnected voice mail.
Democrats now have a candidate with a knit hat and a red and white striped sweater, hiding in the background of the picture.
Where’s Waldo, err, Jerry?