The Brief

"Mob behavior." "Rampant corruption." "Strategic manipulation of the electorate."

These are some of the phrases that have been used to describe the wide array of potentially unethical and even criminal behavior uncovered at Anaheim City Hall. But, for years before an independent investigation revealed the broad extent of pay-to-play politics in the city, a small group of community activists called out many of the same alleged misdeeds.

They filed public records act requests, compiled campaign finance data, and gave piercing speeches at city council meetings.

Some worked together, while juggling full-time jobs, coordinating messaging and organizing protests at City Hall. Others left their jobs entirely, determined to bring wrongdoing into the light.

These residents, described as "a small, rag-tag group of rebels" by a former city manager, were largely ignored and sometimes gaslighted by the elected officials they targeted and those who supported those officials. But now, the results of a year-long independent investigation released at the end of July has corroborated many of their allegations.

"I had so many people calling, saying, 'You were right, you were right. Doesn't it feel great?'" long-time activist Cynthia Ward said after the investigators' final report came out. "I'm like, 'No, I'm horrified,’ because this is the public image of my city ... My heart is broken."

Ward and most of the community activists included in this story were among more than 120 witnesses interviewed for the report, which was carried out by the investigative firm JL Group at the behest of Anaheim's previous city council.

The report builds upon the FBI’s investigation into former Mayor Harry Sidhu and several other key players in Anaheim and Orange County politics for corruption and other alleged crimes.

What was in the independent investigators’ report

The report's main findings include:

• A "potential criminal conspiracy” to divert $1.5 million in federal COVID recovery funds to a nonprofit affiliated with the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. 
• Potential abuse of the city's policies for giving away tickets for major sporting and entertainment events. The chamber and its former CEO have been the biggest recipients of free tickets, worth well over $23,000 since 2016, according to the report.
• Potential violations of city lobbying rules, including failures to register and lobbying on behalf of clients soon after leaving public office.
• Contributions by Angels baseball leaders to Sidhu that the report said "increased notably" after the city executed a deal with the Angels to sell Angel Stadium. In a search warrant released last year, the FBI alleged that Sidhu was planning to solicit a $1 million campaign contribution in exchange for leaking confidential information to Angels leaders during the stadium negotiations. 

To date, no city official or staff member has been charged with any crime in connection with the alleged misdeeds laid out in the report or in the preceding FBI allegations. Two prominent civic figures, former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce president Todd Ament and former OC Democratic Party leader Melahat Rafiei, were charged and pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes stemming from the FBI investigation. Neither has been sentenced yet.

Sidhu did not return LAist requests for comment for this story.

[Read more from LAist about the independent investigation.]

Duane Roberts: 10,000 pages of documents

"You scare the hell out of the power structure when you know what's going on," said Duane Roberts, long-time community watchdog and publisher of the blog Anaheim Investigator.

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Duane Roberts said he sat with the city-contracted investigators for 5 ½ hours of interviews and gave them 500-800 pages of documents that he had collected "on one case alone." That case was the city council's denial of a permit to open an Arco gas station across the street from an existing gas station, a Shell, owned by a friend of — and campaign donor to — former Mayor Sidhu.

The gas station case takes up 26 pages of the investigators' recent report on pay-to-play politics in Anaheim. It’s one of several issues in the report that are bolstered by information Roberts gathered on his own and passed off to investigators.

Roberts writes the blog Anaheim Investigator, where he makes ample use of the California Public Records Act to document ties between local politicians and business and union leaders. Roberts estimates that each year he reads at least 10,000 pages of documents from his public records requests to the city of Anaheim.

"Some people like to collect postage stamps, some people like to watch Monday night football, some people like to ride roller coasters, I like to file public records act requests," he said, "and seeing what our public officials are doing behind closed doors."

Roberts dove into activism in Anaheim after he graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 1997, organizing protests against police brutality, then moving on to advocate for affordable housing and immigrants' rights, he said. For decades, he attended and spoke up at city council meetings — the now-shuttered OC Weekly named him Best Gadfly in 2013.

He also had four unsuccessful runs for public office over the years: twice for Anaheim City Council (2012 and 2018), once as a Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate (2010) and once for a spot on the Anaheim Union High School District school board (2000).

Since the pandemic, when he lost his job teaching English at a private language school, Roberts has largely focused on writing up the results of his public records requests and other investigations on his blog. "You scare the hell out of the power structure when you know what's going on," he said.

Mike and Jeanine Robbins: A family affair

Mike and Jeanine Robbins in their home in Anaheim. "When you just don't think you're getting anywhere … if you just get their goat every time you've done something," Mike Robbins said of the couple's frequent speeches before city council.

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For Mike and Jeanine Robbins, investigating Anaheim became a family affair. Mike Robbins said he started sending information to the FBI and California Attorney General and asking them to investigate the Angel Stadium deal at least as early as 2020. He would compile news clippings and add bits of his own analysis and tips he got from community members. The Robbins' adult son researched campaign contributions to Sidhu and other city councilmembers and fed the information to be included in the documents.

Mike Robbins never got a response and doesn't know if his prodding helped lead to the FBI's investigation. But he and his wife Jeanine, along with a small group of activist friends, applied constant pressure to Anaheim officials, showing up to nearly every city council meeting or tuning in when meetings were held remotely during the pandemic. They asked questions, lobbed accusations, gave patriotic speeches and crafted stinging poems and songs.

"In Anaheim, everything is done with bribes," Robbins said at the city council podium on July 16, 2019, comparing the city to developing countries. "This is the disruption of the American system of government that men and women died for … It is a disgrace to those who fought for a great ideal to have it slashed by corporate interests and the people that acquiesce to this system of government."

Robbins' eyes twinkled recalling the many times he and his wife got under the skin of Anaheim officials. "The best thing we could do is just make them mad up there," he said.

"When you just don't think you're getting anywhere … if you just get their goat every time you've done something," he said.

Mike and Jeanine Robbins are part of an organization, the People's Homeless Task Force Orange County, that filed a lawsuit in early 2020 against Anaheim alleging that the Angel Stadium deal violated state transparency laws. An Orange County judge dismissed the case (it's now under appeal) but the stadium deal was ultimately voided in 2022 after the FBI made public its allegations against then-mayor Sidhu.

The People's Homeless Task Force Orange County and their lawsuit are cited numerous times in the independent investigators' report. In one section, investigators allege that former Mayor Sidhu "may very well have" violated transparency laws, including by failing to hand over public records to the People's Homeless Task Force Orange County, and to the L.A. Times, as required by law.

Jeanine Robbins, who ran for city council in 2020 and came in third, said she felt vindicated by the investigators' report. "All the time that the city council and city staff put us down personally and as an organization — they belittled us, they mocked us — all of that was just done in their own sense of self-defense, I guess, self-preservation.”

Robbins also said the independent investigators uncovered new potential misdeeds that surprised them. These included alleged irregularities in the accounting for a temporary homeless shelter built soon after Sidhu was elected in 2018.

"The corruption in Anaheim, I mean, it's been going on so long and I don't think we realized it was so pervasive in all aspects of what they were doing," she said.

Cynthia Ward: Pulling boxes out of the attic

In her free time away from civic watchdogging, Cynthia Ward volunteers as a docent at the Mother Colony House, a historic building in Anaheim. "Especially when you live in the cesspool of politics all the time like I do, you need something really pure to kind of clean it out," Ward said.

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Cynthia Ward said she began paying attention to City Hall in the early 2000s. Later, in 2007, she was a founding member of Save Our Anaheim Resort (SOAR), which started as a campaign against a proposed housing development near Disneyland and later turned into a political action committee through which Disney funnels large sums of money to support favored city council candidates.

Ward left SOAR in 2010 because, she said, she realized the organization was more interested in serving special interests than residents. "When I found out that I was being used to lie to people, it infuriated me," Ward said. "I had to make up for the misinformation that I participated in selling to them."

She "flipped" and began questioning resort-friendly policies and supporting candidates who did the same.

Ward said when she first started speaking up at city council meetings to point out what she saw as disparities, she thought her diligence would be appreciated. Instead her input on topics such as the negotiations over the Angels baseball team were belittled.

"I thought we were all on the same team and they'd be glad that I had caught something that we could fix together," Ward said. "And instead, they'd blow me off and disparage my credibility. 'Oh, this woman is politically motivated and misinformed, and there's no basis for her statement.' … That was horrifying to me to realize, no, we're not all on the same team necessarily."

Ward later served as a policy advisor to former city Councilmember Denise Barnes and then ran for mayor in 2018, landing in fourth place.

Ward said she was interviewed multiple times by the city-contracted investigators, plus follow-up calls and emails in which they asked her to back up her assertions with documents.

"In one case, I had an email that was a screen capture and they wouldn't use it until I found the original email," she said. "I had my kids pulling boxes out of my attic to try and find this email."

Despite feeling validated by the report, Ward said she's not celebrating. "In large part, the folks responsible for this behavior are still exactly where they were when they were working with Harry Sidhu," she said. "So the potential for this to continue happening is there. And that's terrifying."

Ward wants to help the city make changes. Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken has appointed her to an advisory committee tasked with reviewing the independent investigation and suggesting reforms.

"We've got a lot of work to do to fix this, then I'll be ready to party," Ward said.

In cities like Anaheim, who keeps watch?

Duane Roberts has become a regular visitor at Anaheim City Hall, where he says he enjoys looking through public records.

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Larry Rosenthal, a Chapman University law professor and former assistant U.S. attorney, said community watchdogs have become increasingly important to exposing corruption as the media landscape shrinks. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center study, newsroom employment in the U.S. fell 26% between 2008 and 2020, equivalent to about 30,000 jobs.

"Traditionally, local journalists were a far more important vehicle by which local corruption was exposed than community groups," Rosenthal said. "With the decline of local journalism, however, community groups are one of the few remaining sources of pressure for transparency in local government."

Nevertheless, the Anaheim report by independent investigators cites the Voice of OC and L.A. Times several times each, and community activists noted the role these publications played in uncovering new information about alleged improprieties in the city's government.

The investigators hired by the city had much greater access to information and significantly more resources than most community activists or local journalists — the city paid JL Group $1.5 million for the work.

Former Anaheim city manager Chris Zapata praised community activists for asking questions at city council meetings that, he said, city councilmembers should've been asking themselves. Zapata is cited extensively in the investigators' final report, including his recollection of events leading up to his ouster in 2020. He was fired after questioning some of former Mayor Sidhu’s directives, including how to spend COVID-19 relief funds.

Zapata said he's also been interviewed by the FBI.

Remembering the community watchdogs, Zapata said their tactics were sometimes "pretty rough," referring to those who yelled and spat profanity into the microphone at city council meetings. But they watched out for democracy, he said.

"They were, in effect, the loyal opposition, loyal to the community," he said. "They were there from the standpoint of trying to ask questions, speak truth to power, do things that, frankly, I admired."

What happens now?

On Tuesday, the Anaheim City Council will meet for the first time since the independent investigation was released. They’re set to discuss several recommendations made by investigators in their report, including auditing COVID-19 relief money given to the local chamber of commerce, adding a hotline where employees can report misconduct and strengthening the city’s lobbying rules.

Brianna Lee, engagement producer for civics and democracy, contributed to this story.

The leader of a congressional panel warned Tuesday he would use “every tool” to get Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to testify after she skipped a hearing that put L.A.’s homeless services system in the hot seat.

It came as multiple audits, reviews and court rulings have found L.A. has failed to ensure proper tracking of large-scale spending on homeless services — particularly through the joint city-county L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA. Much of the money is federal dollars authorized by Congress.

Bass had declined to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, saying she was unavailable and that it would be a “politically motivated” attack. Her public schedule showed she planned to attend a groundbreaking of a shopping and community center in the Pacific Palisades two hours after the hearing was set to start.

Rep. Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee's DOGE subcommittee, said she won't get off that easily.

Bass "seems intent on evading accountability, but she knows we will not let her off the hook," Burchett said at the hearing. He added that he and the Oversight Committee’s chair would "use every tool at our disposal to secure her appearance if she does not cooperate.”

House committees and subcommittees can issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify or provide documents.

Just before the hearing got underway, Bass called it "the latest attack on Los Angeles by the Trump Administration and his allies in Congress.”

"I don't run LAHSA," she said, adding that she was the first mayor to sit on its board and that street homelessness has dropped since she took office. The latest official count for the city showed a 8% year to year jump in street homelessness.

Bass stepped off LAHSA’s governing commission last week, after LAist reported she had missed most of its meetings since she appointed herself to it in 2023. The mayor cited “time and all” as her reason for stepping down. She continues to appoint — and has the power to remove — half the commission’s members, including its current chair.

What happened at the hearing

Much of the hour-and-a-half hearing focused on Republican members’ criticism that Democrat-led cities distribute drug paraphernalia and don’t require unhoused people with addictions to get treatment as a condition of living in publicly funded housing.

Some proposals raised Tuesday would change how money reaches Los Angeles.

Burchett said he will introduce the Recovery First Housing Act, to require federally funded housing to offer substance abuse treatment. He has also introduced a bill restricting federal housing dollars to only support U.S. citizens.

LA's fights on a national stage

Burchett noted LAHSA’s audit committee chair, Justin Szlasa — who was proactive in rooting out wasteful spending — was demoted by Stephanie Graves, a Bass appointee who has declined to give her reason for doing so. The move was first reported by LAist.

Burchett also made claims that don’t hold up. He said 50,000 people are homeless in the city with "another 75,000" in the surrounding county. The latest official count found a total of 73,000 unhoused people across L.A. County — a figure that includes the city.

Burchett also said, “ LAHSA recently doled out funds to an L.A.-area nonprofit whose CEO had just been indicted for fraud.” LAist recently investigated LAHSA’s awarding of funds to that nonprofit, Abundant Blessings, and found no indication that LAHSA awarded it any funds after the fraud indictment. However, the review did find that long before the indictment, LAHSA kept awarding millions in contracts to the group even after it was flagged internally as high-risk for failing to do its job.

Burchett, however, was correct in saying “a court-ordered independent assessment of LAHSA's finances found alarming financial control weaknesses that leave the door open to rampant fraud.”

On Tuesday, street safety advocates and families of victims of vehicle collisions demanded that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declare a state of emergency on traffic violence in the city.

Sandra Sanchez Loulakis’s son died last year after she said he was hit by a negligent driver.

“I’ve been struggling just to survive daily,” she said at the news conference organized by traffic safety nonprofit Streets are for Everyone. “This is what happens to a parent when they lose a child.”

The city has seen 8% more fatal traffic collisions this year than during the same period last year, according to LAPD data from the end of August.

Advocates said an emergency declaration would better coordinate resources to respond to traffic fatalities, which have exceeded the rate of homicides for the last three years.

“ This is not a matter of we don't know what to do,” Damian Kevitt, who leads Streets are for Everyone, said Tuesday. “This is a matter of we know exactly what to do. We’re just not making this a priority as a city.”

Kevitt said more than 1,250 people signed an open letter delivered to the mayor and L.A. City Council. One of the demands listed in the letter is for the city to restore transportation department staff.

Earlier this year, the city gave up $100 million in state grants to make streets safer because it did not have the personnel to complete the projects in compliance with state-mandated deadlines.

Draft executive directive on Vision Zero

It appears there had been momentum from the mayor’s office earlier this year to issue an executive directive recommitting the city to its Vision Zero goals of reducing traffic fatalities to zero.

According to emails from May shared with LAist, the mayor’s senior director of transportation told an activist that a draft executive directive was “under review” and expected to be released “within the next three weeks.”

The email was sent to Jonathan Hale, who organizes community members to paint crosswalks where there have been pedestrian-involved collisions.

The executive directive has yet to be released.

LAist submitted a public records request for drafts of the executive directive, but on Sept. 14, the mayor’s office responded saying it could not disclose any records.

“[The records] include drafts and/or deliberative process for which the public interest served in nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public interest served by the disclosure,” the office said.

The mayor’s office has not responded to requests for comment about the draft executive directive.

A new report commissioned by Olympics organizers estimates that the 2028 Games will generate at least $20 billion in economic output across Greater Los Angeles.

The analysis, prepared for LA28 by the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation’s Institute for Applied Economics, looked at the economic effects of L.A. hosting the Olympics and Paralympics. It includes organizing committee spending, capital investments, publicly funded transportation and security investments, and tourism. 

In total, the report projects that new economic activity across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties could total somewhere between $20.5 billion and $25.4 billion and add around 126,000 and 152,000 jobs to the economy.

A second less conservative methodology employed by the researchers estimates the overall economic output could be even higher, between $35.4 and $40.6 billion and up to 224,000 new jobs.

“ Together, they provide a responsible range, not an exaggerated promise,” Stephen Cheung, CEO of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, said at a news conference announcing the report on Tuesday. “ If we work together with intention, the Games can leave Los Angeles with more than unforgettable memories. They can leave us with stronger businesses, greater opportunities, and a more connected regional economy.”

Despite the 2028 Games being advertised as a "no-build" Olympics, the biggest chunk of spending laid out in the report is on capital projects, including the $2.6 billion L.A. Convention Center renovation, billions in LAX improvements, major transit projects like Metro ExpressLanes on the 105 Freeway, and venue renovations, such as upgrades to Rose Bowl Stadium.

The report also estimates that around $5.7 billion of LA28’s spending will be in the five county region. LA28 has a $7.1 billion budget and has pledged to keep 75% of its spending in the Greater L.A. area, and put 25% toward small businesses.

“ That economic impact is going to be felt far and wide and across Los Angeles, as well as the Southern California region,” LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said Tuesday.

The report is the second economic analysis forecasting the effects of the 2028 Games to come out this month. A separate report submitted to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in early September estimated that the Games would produce more than $13 billion in direct spending and a total economic output of $19.2 billion in Los Angeles County alone.

The same report also laid out the potential uneven distribution of economic benefits to the region, including limited benefits for Olympic venue sites that are not tourist destinations and parts of Los Angeles being excluded from the Games altogether.

HR&A Advisors, the consultant group that put the report together, identified Carson, Pomona, the City of Industry and Exposition Park as locations that are hosting Olympic events, but that could end up being “passthrough areas.”

“Although these areas may be active during the day, they may struggle to capture spending from visitors who pass through but do not spend money outside the venue,” the report states.

The county report also questioned what economic benefits will flow to parts of L.A. County that will be disconnected from Olympic and Paralympic activities, like Antelope Valley and Southeast Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the analysis found that L.A.’s typical tourist destinations — including downtown L.A., Old Town Pasadena, downtown Long Beach and the Venice Boardwalk — can expect to be active areas for economic activity during summer 2028.

The Palisades and Eaton Fires last year destroyed thousands of homes in Los Angeles County. Thousands more were left standing, but choked with toxic fire residue.

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills that will make California the first state in the nation to establish smoke damage testing and cleaning standards for insurance companies.

Assembly Bills 1642 and 1795 will require insurers to test for smoke damage, cover the cost of cleaning contaminants, and keep paying for a homeowner’s alternative living expenses until the home is found safe to reoccupy.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control will have until the end of 2028 to develop testing and cleaning standards for lead and asbestos, and until the end of 2029 to set rules for heavy metals and other pollutants.

Reaction to the bill

According to the state Department of Insurance, property owners filed 13,000 smoke damage claims for standing homes after the January 2025 fires. While insurers have covered testing and cleaning in many cases, other homeowners are still unable to return home as they battle with insurance companies over addressing smoke damage.

In a news release Tuesday, the governor and an author of one of the bills praised the changes to state law.

“These new protections will make insurer obligations clearer and give homeowners more financial flexibility when they need it most,” Newsom said.

Assemblymember John Harabedian said: “Science, not an insurance company’s opinions, will determine whether a home is safe.”

Insurance industry groups had opposed shifting rules and regulation away from the state Department of Insurance and to the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Altadena residents pushed for change

Testing efforts by a group known as Eaton Fire Residents United found that lead, asbestos and heavy metals were still present in homes even after they were cleaned by professional remediation companies. Jane Lawton Potelle is the group’s executive director.

“California is leading the nation in how to recover safely after an urban wildfire,” she said in a news release about the laws’ passage.

Public health officials said smoke from the L.A. County fires was particularly toxic because it emanated from urban areas. The structures that burned often had lead paint and asbestos insulation.

The fires also destroyed cars, appliances and other human-made materials. This created more pollutants than smoke from fires in rural areas, which mainly burn through vegetation.

LAist covered the push to change smoke damage policies in a recent episode of our podcast Imperfect Paradise, which breaks down what these changes could mean for insurers, homeowners and how California adapts to climate change.