Anaheim To Release Long-Awaited Report On Influence-Peddling At City Hall

Anaheim is set to release the results of a nearly year-long independent investigation into potential corruption and influence-peddling in city government.

City spokesperson Mike Lyster told LAist the final report will be posted on the city's website in late July or early August.

Nearly a year ago, the Anaheim City Council voted to hire an outside investigative firm after FBI documents revealed an allegedly nefarious relationship between Anaheim city government officials and powerful business interests.

Corruption watchdogs hope the results of the investigation will lead to changes in city rules regarding campaign finance and lobbying.

"Giving the election back to residents and back to the voters instead of special interests," said Ely Flores, executive director of the nonprofit Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development (OCCORD).

The FBI investigation that cracked open city hall

In May 2022, the FBI accused former Mayor Harry Sidhu of planning to solicit a $1 million campaign contribution in exchange for sharing confidential information with representatives from the Angels baseball franchise to help them seal a deal to purchase Angel Stadium.

Sidhu resigned under pressure, although he still denies wrongdoing and he has yet to be publicly charged with a crime. The stadium deal was canceled.

Around the same time, the FBI released an affidavit accusing then-president of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce Todd Ament and Melahat Rafiei, a former Orange County Democratic party leader, of scheming to defraud cannabis clients and funneling the money into their own accounts, among other alleged crimes. Both pleaded guilty to crimes in connection with the plot.

The FBI documents also point to alleged widespread influence-peddling in Anaheim involving representatives of the city's big business interests, including Disneyland. In the Ament complaint, an FBI agent lays out evidence of a "covert group of individuals that wielded significant influence over the inner workings of Anaheim’s government."

But the FBI has revealed little else since last spring. To try to fill in those gaps and restore public confidence, Anaheim's city council voted in August 2022 to hire an outside legal and investigative firm, JL Group, to conduct an independent investigation into potential wrongdoing at city hall. They also hired a retired judge as a neutral party to oversee the investigation.

Recently, an L.A. Times profile of former city councilmember Jordan Brandman shed additional light on the tight relationships between government officials and prominent business leaders, including a Disney executive. The Times detailed several occasions where Brandman's votes on city council appear to be directly influenced by people with whom he had social and business connections. Brandman didn't return a voicemail left by LAist on his cell phone.

What’s the focus of the city-commissioned investigation?

The independent investigators' scope of work included:

• Identifying campaign contributions to the current and former mayors, and city councilmembers, and potential correlations between those contributions and city business. 
• Identifying potential correlations between consultants and lobbyists who were selected for city work and contributed to local election campaigns.
• Looking into developments and projects where campaign contributions may have influenced city decision-making. 
• Investigating potential violations of the Brown Act, which regulates public meetings. 
• Identifying whether and which city staff may have been involved in misconduct. 
• Recommending potential changes to local ordinances, and policies to improve transparency and accountability. 

The city paid JL Group $1.5 million for the work, Lyster said, although the total cost will be higher because the city also hired an outside lawyer to review the report. That work is ongoing.

What do city officials and residents say about the investigation?

LAist reached out to Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and all six Anaheim city councilmembers by email but didn't hear back from any in time for publication. Lyster said city officials are trying to reserve judgment about the investigation until it's released.

Aitken campaigned on a platform of reform following the scandal surrounding her predecessor. She told LAist in December 2022 that she wanted to look into tightening lobbying restrictions and campaign finance rules to "make sure that we are being responsive to the residents' needs and not allowing just a few people to kind of corrupt the system."

Flores said he hasn't seen any related action from the mayor or current city council.

"No one is championing any campaign finance reform ideas or proposals at all," he said. "That's business as usual."

David Duran is an Anaheim-based community activist and co-founder of the People's Homeless Task Force, which sued the city in 2020 for allegedly violating the Brown Act in relation to the Angel Stadium negotiations. They lost that case, and it’s currently under appeal.

Duran shares Flores' disappointment in what he described as a lack of action to reform Anaheim politics and hold wrongdoers accountable. But he said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the report would shed light on the ways that outside groups influence city decision-making.

"Public information, I think, is key. I'm hoping that, at least, at a minimum, is what comes out of this," Duran said. "And then we leave it to the judges and courts and district attorneys and all those who do what they do to decide if anybody should be charged."

Will the public get to see the whole investigation?

The city has said it has to black out some names to comply with California labor law and city privacy rules. Lyster said the final report from investigators is currently under review by an outside attorney, the Anaheim city attorney, and the city's human resources director.

He said the city manager, mayor and councilmembers have yet to see the report. "It's meant to be an independent report without influence," Lyster said. "We're going to get it pretty much when you all get it."

However, he said the city council would get to see an unredacted version, unlike the public, which raises concerns for some.

"We would like to know names," said Flores from OCCORD.

"We know that there are people on the city council currently that were there while this corruption was taking place," he said, adding that the same goes for some city staff. "So we want to know if there needs to be more done to rectify what took place."

The city council has pledged to share the full, unredacted results with the FBI, the California Attorney General and the Orange County District Attorney.

About that FBI investigation

Larry Rosenthal, a law professor at Chapman University, said in an email that the way the FBI has handled the Anaheim probe is "troubling," especially with regard to the former mayor, Sidhu.

Rosenthal was critical of the time that’s lapsed – more than 14 months – since the FBI first made public its investigation.

"Those who have been publicly accused of misconduct should be either charged or cleared with reasonable promptness," he said.

Rosenthal commended Anaheim for following through with its own investigation.

"Anaheim has good reason to seek a broader investigation that assesses the pertinent policy and ethical issues, as well as potential violations of state law. A federal investigation will not address those issues, and no city should outsource supervision of its ethical and policy issues to federal criminal investigators," he wrote.