By: Cassie Macduff | Original Article at PE.com
A few years ago, after an FBI/District Attorney’s Office raid on an Inland city, I wondered out loud why our area seems to attract the taint of public corruption – or at least the suspicion of it.
Moreno Valley, San Jacinto and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority all were subjected to surprise search warrants and subsequent prosecutions of public officials or private businessmen.
The answer to my question seems to lie in the Inland Empire’s wide-open growth and development.
Where there’s money to be made – as in land development – there are people who will try to exploit it by gaining favorable decisions or advantages from local government.
Authorities haven’t said whether the raid on Beaumont by the FBI and the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office on April 22 was linked to a public corruption probe.
But the fact that City Hall was raided, along with the offices of a consulting group that formerly contracted city department heads to Beaumont – and the home of the longtime city manager – would appear to point that way.
Beaumont certainly fits the profile of a fast-growing Inland city. Between 2000 and 2010, the Banning Pass town grew from 11,383 residents to 36,877. Today more than 40,000 people call it home.
Throughout the Inland region’s housing boom, Beaumont set itself on a deliberate course to attract development. In 2004, then-consulting City Manager Alan Kapanicas told The Press-Enterprise the city planned to add 1,200 new homes per year for the next decade.
By 2006, Beaumont was the fastest-growing city in California.
I tried to reach Kapanicas to find out whether the city was able to keep up that homebuilding pace after the 2008 recession. He didn’t respond to a voice mail and an email from me on Tuesday.
As a consultant hired in the early 1990s, Kapanicas help dig Beaumont out of a deficit. His services were for hire through his consulting company, General Government Management Services.
The City Council apparently was persuaded Beaumont could save money by filling its top department posts with consultants. The city would be spared the cost of pensions and benefits, and could dismiss consultants more easily than if they were regular, full-time employees.
Kapanicas worked his way from Beaumont’s consulting administrative services director and deputy city clerk to city manager, all on contract.
He simultaneously was city manager of Calimesa, Yucaipa and, briefly, Canyon Lake – all part time, as a consultant. If his loyalties were divided, none of his city councils apparently was concerned.
In March 1995, a few years after Kapanicas came on board, the city hired consultants as the planning and economic development directors. The public works director also was a consultant.
Soon, the planning, economic development and public works directors formed Urban Logic Consultants and in March 1995, the city gave their firm a $2.04 million contract to run Beaumont’s new sewage treatment plant.
Beaumont residents alarmed by the rapid growth – and traffic, habitat-destruction and water demands that go along with it – protested the use of so many consultants.
And city government experts say the practice is unusual. Even cities that fill a lot of positions with contractors hire top managers and department heads as regular employees to oversee them.
In Beaumont, the consulting firm didn’t like the criticism. In a lawsuit brought by Urban Logic against Beaumont Citizens for Responsible Growth, the company alleged defamation and trade libel, asking the court to muzzle the citizens group.
Urban Logic argued that the “dissident group of citizens” was hurting its chances to get contracts with other cities, a state Court of Appeal opinion said. The firm argued that its principals were not Beaumont employees. The distinction is important because libel against public officials is harder to prove; the public has greater freedom to criticize them.
But the appellate court said Urban Logic’s principals acknowledged that they were “public figures.” The court declined to gag the dissidents.
The lawsuit illustrates one more reason why cities should be very careful about relying heavily on consultants for key positions. The public can be forced to fight harder for transparency when private companies are doing the public’s business.