The Brief

A massive report released this week on corruption and influence-peddling in Anaheim city government details a wide range of wrongdoing, including possible theft of taxpayer money.

The 353-page independent report is the result of a nearly year-long investigation carried out by an outside legal firm, JL Group, run by a former police investigator. It was commissioned last summer by city officials in an effort to demonstrate transparency and restore public confidence after the FBI revealed it was investigating former Mayor Harry Sidhu and other key Anaheim figures for corruption.

Investigators said their findings "tended to reinforce" observations laid out by the FBI that a small group of powerful individuals wield heavy influence over city government.

Key findings

The report’s key findings include:

• The city awarded large contracts to the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce "with little or no oversight or meaningful deliverables."
• A "potential criminal conspiracy” to divert $1.5 million in federal COVID recovery funds to a nonprofit affiliated with the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. The report describes it as a possible “theft” of public money.
• Former Mayor Harry Sidhu engaged in "influence-peddling" with former Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Ament. "The evidence pointed to the fact that individuals who wanted to meet with the Mayor first had to meet with Ament and then pay some form of tribute in order to reach Mayor Siddhu," investigators wrote. 
• The Anaheim Chamber of Commerce took over or supported various community groups and city initiatives, and then used them to gather personal data in order to target residents with campaign materials for candidates supported by the chamber.
• The chamber "acted virtually as a money-laundering operation" for cannabis businesses and lobbyists who sought to influence city policy for the industry.
• Two former elected city officials, former Mayor Curt Pringle and former Councilmember Kris Murray, may have violated the city policy by lobbying on behalf of clients soon after leaving office. 
• Jeff Flint, whose clients included the Angels and reportedly Disney, and several other high-profile lobbyists, including Pringle, routinely failed to report lobbying activities as required by city law. Investigators also found that city officials failed to enforce its lobbying rules.  

Also of note:

• Less than 40 pages of the report contain redactions. Some watchdogs had worried that the public version of the report would be heavily redacted and shield people involved in wrongdoing. The full report is being shared with the Orange County District Attorney, the California Attorney General and the FBI. 
• The Walt Disney Company and Angels baseball "flatly refused to cooperate at all" with the investigation, according to the report. In a statement to LAist, Disney disputed that part of the report, saying it wasn’t asked to participate beyond a request for an interview to the company's chief lobbyist, Carrie Nocella, who declined to talk to the investigators.
• The report includes a matrix created early in the investigation that outlined 58 potential crimes, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, theft or bribery, and misuse of campaign funds.
• The report also mentions “rumors” that Nocella bragged about having inside information from city council closed sessions, which would be illegal to leak to her. Investigators wrote they couldn’t confirm this because Nocella refused to talk, though they did not outline any other attempts to verify the claims. 
• The city-hired investigators met with O.C. District Attorney Todd Spitzer and his staff in early February to provide information about possible crimes — specifically around the diverted $1.5 million. But Spitzer’s office didn’t follow up with the independent investigators and it’s unknown whether the DA launched an investigation, according to the report. In a statement, Spitzer’s office told LAist the information is being reviewed.

LAist also requested comment from Sidhu, Nocella, Pringle, Ament, Flint, Murray and current Anaheim Chamber of Commerce CEO Laura Cunningham. None returned calls and messages Tuesday.

Current mayor: ‘Rampant’ wrongdoing in city

Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken told LAist Tuesday the report "confirms the wrongdoing that was rampant in the city."

Aitken ran for mayor in 2022, and won, on a platform of reform following the FBI revelations.

"Am I shocked about the information contained in the report? No," she said. "But am I livid? Absolutely."

Aitken said she planned to form an advisory committee of city leaders from different sectors to review the report and make recommendations for changes to campaign finance and other city laws.

"I don't want this to just get put on a shelf and a year from now people can say nothing has changed. I'm not going to let that happen," she said.

Last week, Ely Flores, executive director of the nonprofit Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development, told LAist despite campaign promises from Aitken, he hasn't seen any related action from the mayor or current city council so far.

"No one is championing any campaign finance reform ideas or proposals at all," he said, referring to Anaheim’s operations as "business as usual."

Aitken told LAist it would've been "premature" to take action before the report was completed.

"But now that the report has been concluded and we have an outside source that has looked at us and has documented all of these wrongdoings, I think it is time to look at our election system because the biggest losers in all of this are the people," she said. "We're diluting our own residents' vote and our own residents' voices by allowing these actions and lobbyists and these PACs and [independent expenditures] to just go unfettered."

Former City Councilmember Jose Moreno was a vocal critic of the Anaheim stadium deal during his time in office and regularly called out the influence of the Chamber of Commerce and Disney in city governance. He told LAist Tuesday the report reflects his experiences in office.

"Sometimes you wish you were wrong but on this one, unfortunately, we were not," he said.

Moreno said he hoped the results of the independent investigation would help people understand that the corruption and influence peddling at Anaheim city hall extends well beyond Sidhu, the former mayor.

"How were they able to get five councilmembers regularly to vote consistently with little discussion on major public projects, land sales, ordinances?" he asked.

Moreno said the fact that Disney and the Angels declined to participate in the investigation was telling.

"The Disney Corporation … they're the purse string to all of this," Moreno said.

In a statement to LAist, a Disney representative said the report "erroneously states that there were repeated requests for Disney to participate. While Carrie Nocella was asked to be interviewed and her attorney declined, no other Disney staff were ever asked to participate.”

Moreno said the core problem is the lack of strong campaign finance and lobbying rules in the city. As a councilmember, Moreno proposed enhanced campaign finance rules several times in recent years, including limiting the amount of time that candidates can fundraise. But he failed to get them passed.

"It's very difficult to ask a working class city of its residents to keep monitoring their elected officials," he said. "You gotta mitigate as much as possible the influence of money in the elections."

In the report, investigators renewed calls for the city council to approve campaign finance reforms put forward last year by Moreno.

‘Like mob behavior’

Jodi Balma, a Fullerton College political science professor who closely follows Anaheim politics, says the report shows a “blatant disregard for the law” and feels “like mob behavior.”

“It felt like the worst of Tammany Hall, which resulted in those Boss Tweed political machines,” Balma said, referring to infamous corruption in New York City in the mid-1800s.

That corruption, she noted, “resulted in the progressive movement that really reformed government.”

That means Anaheim has an opportunity, Balma said, to develop reforms “that will not just stop the next scandal from happening, but give themselves a city that is transparent, that is responsive, and that truly serves the people of Anaheim.”

“That's what my hope is.”

Read the full (redacted) report

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Voyager Technologies unveiled a 140,000-square-foot facility Tuesday in Long Beach that will be used for designing and producing parts for missiles and commercial spacecraft.

The company wrote in a news release that the facility, which will employ 150 to 200 people, will be used to advance a number of the company’s ventures into aerospace and defense for the U.S. military and other clients.

“We are standing up capacity at Space Beach for one purpose: to deliver for our customers,” Matt Magaña, president of Space, Defense and National Security at Voyager, wrote — using a nickname for Long Beach’s burgeoning space industry.

The Denver-based company, which launched in 2019, has nearly a dozen locations across Ohio, California, Colorado and Texas. This announcement comes two months after it opened a 150,000-square-foot facility in Pueblo, Colo., also focused on missiles, defence and weaponry.

Through a network of former companies it has purchased, Voyager has researched and designed a variety of parts for spacecraft or rockets, from long-range radios and GPS guidance systems to commercial airlocks and propulsion systems.

It’s known for its Starlab project, a venture propelled by a $217 million NASA contract to replace the International Space Station, which is slated to retire in 2030.

But a majority of the company’s business is in defense. The net sales last year for its defense and national security program jumped 59%, making up $123 million of the $166 million it made. In the last quarter of 2025, the category made up nearly two-thirds of its sales.

By contrast, the company’s sales for “Space Solutions,” which designs spacecraft for commercial and research purposes, declined by 36% in 2025.

The company is working with Lockheed Martin to develop a new missile interceptor system — coined the “Next Generation Interceptor” — and has contracts to build parts for hypersonic missiles and military-grade payloads. Top officials at Voyager say they have a strong interest in competing for contracts on Golden Dome, a 10-year, $151 billion missile defense program.

It’s unclear whether the Long Beach facility will focus on a particular program or take on work as it is needed. In a release, company officials wrote it will help design A.I. software and other parts for “next-generation propulsion and defense systems and integrated sensing, communications and autonomy technologies.”

The company said it is working with neighbors Anduril Industries and True Anomaly, who recently set up facilities in Long Beach, to meet some contracts, but did not specify the venture.

It’s the latest in a wave of space tech companies to join “Space Beach” by moving to the 430-odd acres of industrial and warehouse space once used to build cargo planes outside Long Beach Airport.

In January, Anduril, an artificial-intelligence-backed weapons manufacturer, announced that it was building a $1 billion campus nearby to make drones and other A.I.-enabled weapons.

It’s an industry where successful businesses often curry favor with the federal government and military, and local representatives are eager to attract defense tech firms to create high-paying jobs.

Mayor Rex Richardson, left, and Matt Magaña, president of Space, Defense and National Security at Voyager. Photo Courtesy Voyager Technologies “We’re proud to welcome Voyager to our growing Space Beach ecosystem with a 140,000-square-foot facility advancing aerospace innovation, domestic manufacturing, and national security capabilities,” said Mayor Rex Richardson. “This investment brings high-skilled jobs, strengthens our local economy, and further establishes Long Beach as a national hub for the industries shaping our future.”

These companies are in tight competition to take advantage of a growing national defense budget — $895 million in 2025 from $816 in 2023 — while taking advantage of the large pools of talent near existing research and military facilities like JPL in Pasadena, Mojave Air and Space port in Kern County and Vandenberg Space Force Base.

While the budget was shrunk to $838.7 billion in 2026, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has placed an increased priority on spending on U.S.-made drones and autonomous weapon systems. Buoyed by global conflicts, defense companies in Long Beach and across the region are anxious to accelerate their designs and production of weapons and defense systems.

The story first appeared on Boyle Heights Beat.

A free community food pantry that had been set up outside a market in East Los Angeles now has a new home in Boyle Heights, thanks to community members who rallied to keep it going.

Created by East L.A. native Rebecca Gonzales, the pantry had been stationed outside of Ramirez Meat Market on the corner of Folsom Street and Rowan Avenue since November, offering produce, snacks and shelf-stable items.

Gonzales created the resource after seeing how ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and SNAP delays were affecting the most vulnerable in her community. 

A few days after Boyle Heights Beat published an article about the pantry, the market’s owner asked Gonzales to move it.

Rosa Ramirez, who has owned Ramirez Meat Market for 26 years, said she hadn’t expected the pantry to be permanent and noticed that fewer people were coming into her store when the pantry was stocked. Ramirez appreciated Gonzales’ intentions, but said the piles of donated clothes and shoes next to the pantry were difficult to manage.

Soon after learning the pantry would have to move, Gonzales posted the news on Instagram. Within an hour, she received about a dozen messages from friends and community members reaching out to help. 

“I was worried that I was gonna have to just bring it home and it’s gonna be a lapse of services,” Gonzales said. 

That same day, Yvonne I. Monje Perez, owner of SuperNova Thrift — a shop near Mariachi Plaza that sells second-hand clothing — reached out. Though she had never met Gonzales, Perez didn’t think twice about offering help. 

The East LA free food pantry now sits outside of SuperNova Thrift on 1st Street in Boyle Heights.

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Laura Anaya-Morga

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Boyle Heights Beat

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“We could benefit from something like that here in this neighborhood,” Perez recalled thinking after seeing the post. 

With coordination from Gonzales and guidance from the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce, Perez and her husband picked up the pantry last Friday and it was open for the community the following day. 

“It makes me so happy seeing people come to it and look at it, and just take from it,” said Perez. “It’s been received very well, a lot of people are very happy about it.”

Now, Perez and Gonzales have a schedule for opening and closing the pantry, and donations have continued to roll in. 

While Gonzales does not keep track of how many donations come in every day, she noticed items usually remain at the end of the day, a change from when the pantry would go empty in East L.A.  

Looking ahead, Gonzales hopes to inspire others to start free food pantries in their own communities.

“People want to help,” she said. “People want to do good things. People want to see other people not just survive, but thrive.”

The East LA free food pantry was recently moved in front of SuperNova Thrift on 1st Street in Boyle Heights.

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Laura Anaya-Morga

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Boyle Heights Beat

)

The heat isn’t the only thing to worry about this weekend.

If you’re looking to escape the summer-like weather, the beach might be a spot to cool off, but it's a good idea to stay out of some waters.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is advising people to avoid contact with ocean water at certain L.A. County beaches because of bacteria levels that exceed state health standards.

After recent samples showed unsafe bacterial levels, which may increase the risk of illness, health officials recommend beachgoers to:

• avoid contact 100 yards up and down the coast from the public restrooms of the Malibu Lagoon at Surfrider Beach.
  
• avoid contact 100 yards up and down the coast at Santa Monica Canyon Creek at Will Rogers State Beach. It's located near Will Rogers Tower 18.
  
• avoid contact 100 yards up and down the coast from the Castlerock Storm Drain at Topanga County Beach too.
  
• avoid contact 100 yards up and down the coast from the Escondido Creek at Escondido State Beach.
  
• avoid contact 100 yards up and down the coast from the Marie Canyon Storm Drain at Puerco Beach.

Good news, some beach areas have been cleared of previous warnings because of recent water samples that identified quality levels back within California standards. Those include:

• Leo Carrillo State Beach in Malibu.
  
• Mother’s Beach in Marina Del Rey.
  
• The Pulga storm drain at Will Rogers State Beach.
  
• And last but not least, the world-famous Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica.

You can find the latest information and a map on beach conditions online here. You can also find information on the last 30 days of beach water quality across L.A. County at Heal The Bay's Beach Report Card.