How Should Anaheim Respond To Corruption Scandal? Residents Want A Say

A community group is taking it upon itself to educate Anaheim residents about the problems uncovered in a 353-page report on corruption in the city's government.

The nonprofit Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development (OCCORD) held its first in a series of public forums Thursday evening. The goal: to discuss the problems at city hall laid out in an independent corruption report released by the city in late July and the preceding FBI investigations into former Mayor Harry Sidhu, and other prominent government and civic leaders.

About 90 people attended the two-hour event at the Ponderosa Park Family Resource Center in central Anaheim.

Anaheim resident Daisy Chávez showed up to get the CliffsNotes version of the 353-page corruption report, and to hear about potential solutions from community leaders she trusts. "I don't have time to go through all of [the report] so I appreciate forums like this," Chávez said.

Chávez said she feels a responsibility to collect information for her parents and others in her community who have even less time to attend city council meetings and forums, much less read the massive report.

"They're too busy having to pay bills and rent," Chávez said of her parents. "They rely on me when it comes time for election season, so it is my responsibility, and I take it very seriously, to my family and my community to be able to get information and pass it on to folks," she said.

Chávez said she wants to see more ways for community members who are less politically savvy or connected to be involved in conversations about city hall reform. "My concern is that they are not going to get to the folks who are really being impacted by this," she said.

Ely Flores, OCCORD's executive director, said the group wants to make sure the community knows how the corruption directly impacts them.

"When money is being driven to corporations, to special interest groups … and not going to the residents, well then that's how corruption affects you," he said.

A group attends a public forum at the Ponderosa Park Family Resource Center in Anaheim on the city's 353-page independent investigation into corruption issues.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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What’s happened since the independent investigation

Sidhu pleaded guilty on Aug. 16 to planning to solicit a $1 million campaign contribution in exchange for passing Angel's baseball leaders confidential information, along with lying to federal agents.

His guilty plea also potentially implicated some current city officials and staff in planning "mock city council meetings" to practice defending the controversial Angel stadium deal. It's unclear whether any mock meeting took place.

Current Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken has called for any officials or staff who may have been involved with preparing a mock city council meeting to resign.

Community input on corruption reforms

OCCORD plans to hold several additional forums on Anaheim corruption in different parts of the city. The organization is also collecting community input on potential reforms, and plans to present their findings to the current city council.

Flores and some community activists have been critical of the current city government's reticent response to the report, and are calling for more opportunities for residents to provide input.

"There's a big gap of leadership in Anaheim right now," Flores said, noting that the city has done little to disseminate the findings of the corruption report beyond posting a link on the city website. The report cost Anaheim taxpayers $1.5 million.

Steps toward reform?

The Anaheim City Council has taken some steps toward addressing the problems laid out in the report. At its meeting earlier this week, the council unanimously voted on a three-month schedule for discussing and voting on a series of reforms, including hiring an ethics officer and tightening campaign finance rules.

Anaheim residents at the Ponderosa Park Family Resource Center for a public forum on the city's corruption issues.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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At the OCCORD forum, Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento and former Anaheim city councilmember Jose Moreno, a longtime critic of pay-to-play politics in the city, said strengthening the city's campaign finance rules is critical.

Without that, "nothing else matters," Moreno said.

Before he was termed out last year, Moreno spearheaded several failed efforts to get his fellow councilmembers to pass campaign finance reforms. At the forum on Thursday, he questioned why the current council had yet to put forth reforms, despite a majority having publicly pledged support for them in the past.

"It hasn't gotten its way onto the agenda, you have to ask yourself why not," Moreno said.

Soon after current Mayor Ashleigh Aitken was elected in November 2022, she told LAist the new council needed "to really look at our elections as well as some of the rules we have around campaign finance and make sure that we are being responsive to the residents' needs and not allowing just a few people to kind of corrupt the system."

At the time, Aitken also said she "liked" Moreno's proposal to limit the amount of time that sitting councilmembers can fundraise for their next election (or pay off debts from their previous election).

But more than eight months into her term, the mayor has to yet to put forth a campaign finance proposal. Last month, following the release of the corruption report, Aitken said acting on campaign finance reform before the report was released would've been "premature."

The mayor recently formed an advisory committee of city leaders, including longtime civic watchdog Cynthia Ward, to review the corruption report and make recommendations. The corruption report itself included 14 recommendations for changes to city government policies.

Ward, who also spoke at the OCCORD forum compared the corruption scandal in Anaheim to the one that shook the L.A. city of Bell in 2010, saying what happened in Bell was "nothing compared to what we're dealing with in Anaheim."