Coronado Common Sense

Coronado Tunnel Audit Completed

 

The final Tunnel Audit is now up on the City of Coronado website. Richard K. Kikuchi, principal CPA in the Tunnel Audit, appeared at City Council meetings and met with Audit Committee.

 

Here is the complete Tunnel Audit.

Coronado City Manager And City Council Have Responsibility To Select Straightforward Auditing Firm

During the December 7th City Council meeting, the Coronado City Council agreed with a 5-0 vote to hire an auditing firm to review the 12-year Coronado Tunnel Project and how the money was spent. This said, it is of interest all the articles written in recent weeks scrutinizing various auditing firms.

State Controller John Chiang critized the firm of Mayer Hoffman McCann, P.C. for conducting a "rubber stamp" audit that didn't catch what they should have caught . . . the plundering of public funds by Bell city officials. The Irvine-based auditing firm is also working with San Diego, National City, Santee and San Marcos. The mayor of Santee will propose dropping the firm from the Santee payroll. Chiang's report found that Mayer Hoffman McCann failed to fully comply with 13 of 17 auditing standards.  You will have to read San Diego Union-Tribune writer Tanya Sierra's article "Bell's city auditor does work across county." You will not believe the items that were "overlooked."

An article in The Los Angeles Times written by staff writer Jeff Gottlieb further discusses problems with auditing firms:

"Bell was not the only city with auditing problems. A Times review of state and local records found that the independent audits cities are required to obtain frequently fail to uncover fraud and mismanagement.

Many cities hit with corruption or mismanagement allegations over the past decade, including San Diego, Compton and South Gate, received clean audits, even in cases where officials later were sent to prison.

When firms provide negative audits, they risk being replaced. In the case of Victorville, for instance, the new auditors gave the city a clean rating after the previous auditor found numerous problems."

You will want to read "Bell's auditors should have spotted most of the alleged corruption, state controller finds."

 

Let's hope that our City Manager and City Council do a better job of selecting an auditing firm for our Tunnel Project audit. A clean, easy-to-read audit will help us obtain federal funds if we need to do so in the future . . . and will keep Coronado out of the news.

Is This How Coronado's Tunnel $$$ Was Spent?

“'Get me some oysters! Get me some steamed crabs! Get me a rack of lamb!' Mr. Magliocchetti would tell the cooks, strolling into the kitchen. 'Every day a different thing,' the chef and owner Ermanno Tonizzo recalled fondly. 'I don’t think he has ever seen the menu.'

 

That impresario act — pulling bottles from the private wine locker labeled “Mags” to entertain lawmakers at the clubby Capital Grille steakhouse, sending gift baskets or wine to lawmakers and their aides, or leasing each of his lobbyists a Lexus — helped Mr. Magliocchetti, a protégé of the powerful Representative John P. Murtha, build his lobbying firm into one of the 10 biggest in Washington."

 

Read “Star Lobbyist Closes Shop Amid F.B.I. Inquiry” written by David D. Kirkpatrick and Charlie Savage in The New York Times on March 29, 2009 for the rest of the story.

Did This Guy Get Our Tunnel Money?

Councilwoman Barbara Denny Requests Agenda Item

Councilwoman Barbara Denny wrote the following six-page letter to City Manager Blair King. In the letter, Ms. Denny requests an agenda item be added to tomorrow’s Council Meeting to end the contract with The Ferguson Group for lobbying purposes.

Here are the links to the two attachments she includes in her letter:

 

“Ex-lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti charged with campaign-finance fraud” | Washington Post | August 6, 2010

 

“Earmark lobbyists mount effort to defend bringing home the bacon” | The Hill | May 17, 2010

History Of City Of Coronado / PMA Group Partnership

The City of Coronado worked with the PMA Group for approximately eight and a half years.

10.19.00   Coronado makes first payment to Paul                                      Magliocchetti Associates (PMA Group)

01.09.01  Council votes to extend contract (exclusively for                         lobbying for the Coronado Tunnel Project)

11.25.08   PMA Group office raided by FBI agents

03.25.09   Coronado makes last payment to PMA Group    

Here are the January 9th, 2001 notes from the agenda:

Jim Benson, Director of Project Development, worked and advocated for the Coronado Tunnel Project (CTC). He retired in April 2009 after working for ten years with the City of Coronado. (He was brought back as Interim City Manager in the months leading up to Tunnel vote in June 2010.)

CALPERS reports his pension payment to be $9,889. per month and $118,668. per year:

Mr. Benson will bank $1,186,680 every ten years. Just an observation.

The Coronado Lobbyist Era (2000-2010 . . . )

Coronado has spent between $40,000 and $120,000 a year on lobbyists for the past ten years, for an average expense of $90,000 a year. Fact.

What do we have to show for it? Who knows.

 

Who were the Coronado leaders during the discussions and votes that approved payments to these lobbyists you ask? Here are the names of the City Manager, Mayor, and Council Members during that time period of 2000-2010.

 

An audit of the Tunnel Project by an independent auditor (not the City of Coronado) would answer questions, "clear the palate" for the next course, and clarify what our money has bought us.

PMA Group & City Of Coronado: Hanging Out With The Wrong Crowd

Well it looks like Coronado is in the news again. First it was all the hoopla about the tunnel. Now it more ado about the tunnel, but this time it’s about the underground parts.

 

Channel 10 News did a live broadcast, followed up by “CEO Of Lobbying Firm Hired By Coronado Indicted—Coronado Hired The PMA Group To Help With Projects Like Coronado Tunnel” which appeared on their internet site.

 

The item read:

 

“The 10News I-Team has learned the city of Coronado spent $933,198.40 from 2000 to 2009 on the PMA Group and its lobbying services.

 

The PMA Group's offices were raided by the FBI in 2008, and on Thursday Magliocchetti was indicted in Virginia for giving influential politicians hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions.”

 

It continues with the reasoning behind why the city of Coronado hired the PMA Group in the first place. Councilwoman Barbara Denny speaks out against the use of lobbyists and Mayor Casey Tanaka speaks of the lobbyists in a positive light.

 

“The contract between the city of Coronado and the PMA Group said the city needed lobbyists to ‘seek support and financing for the Coronado tunnel project.’

 

‘If the elected officials and the city staff do their job and advocate at all times strongly for the city of Coronado, we don't need to outsource it to lobbyists,’ Coronado City Councilwoman Barbara Denny said.

 

Coronado Mayor Casey Tanaka said, ‘PMA was successful in getting funding for the tunnel project.’”

 

And in another place, I found this interesting tidbit:

 

“It seems the largest local client for PMA was the City of Coronado, which paid almost PMA $1 million in support of the Tunnel project and other projects. Interestingly, Coronado was the only government client of PMA on a 2008 client list, the others being mostly corporate and academic. Coronado still retains on the payroll 2 of the 4 Tunnel lobbying firms. Barbara Denny is right to insist that her fellow Coronado councilmembers get the lobbying firms off the taxpayer's back.”

 

When I read this comment on SignOnSanDiego about “Lobbyist: What stories does he have to tell?” written by Pete Yost of the Associated Press, it made me take a eyes-wide-open look on Coronado’s vulnerability.

 

I spent several hours last night on the internet and Coronado is tied into the PMA Group everywhere I look. They even have their own Muckety page now which is usually reserved for less-than-savory characters. (Be sure to double-click on the + sign on the PMA Group box.) There is so much information out there that I couldn’t cover it in just one article. So look for more information to come.

Resident's Impassioned Plea Appears In Draft Minutes Of Final Tunnel Commission Meeting

Yesterday I received (from the Engineering Department) the Draft Coronado Tunnel Commission (CTC) Minutes from June 10, 2010. This was the CTC meeting after the election and after the vote strongly indicated that the residents of Coronado did not want to continue with the tunnel study.

The minutes of all Commissions are written up as a draft and once they are reviewed by the Commissioners and corrections are made, a vote is taken for approval of said minutes. The CTC has been dissolved by our City Council. It is no more. So there will not be another meeting to read these draft minutes for approval.

I was at this CTC meeting to record it for posterity. It was very interesting to read these minutes after so much has transpired.

Probably the thing that sticks out most in my mind is the resolution put before the Commission by Commissioner Steve Clarey.  Commissioner Clary stated that he felt that the voter turnout was not high enough and accused those opposing the completion of the study of “promoting misinformation.”

The minutes read:

“With that in mind, Mr. Clarey recommended to his fellow commissioners that they pass a resolution to recommend that the City Council continue to complete the PR/ED, including agency and public review as scheduled.  Less than one-third of the citizens in Coronado voted on whether to suspend a $14 million, 14-year effort, in a campaign where there was unfortunately a lot of misinformation and the public did not have access to information regarding the size of the tunnel, the safety features, and emergency access.  

He read a draft of the resolution:

‘In consideration of the small voter turnout for the June 8, 2010, advisory vote on Proposition H, the unavailability of the project report and environmental documents (PR/ED) on the State Routes 75/282 Transportation Corridor Project, and the considerable misinformation promoted by the opponents of the Proposition, the Coronado Tunnel Commission recommends that the City Council exercise its leadership responsibility to complete the PR/ED and agency/public review as scheduled.’

Mr. Clarey moved to recommend to the City Council that the PR/ED and agency/public review be completed.  Mr. Moutes seconded the motion with Mr. Clarey, Mr. Clark and Mr. Moutes voting aye and Mr. Sarich and Mrs. Meadows voting nay.”

 

So the final vote was 3-2 and the decision made to take it to the Coronado City Council and let them vote on it. There was much unrest, shocked gasps and whispered anger in that room of onlookers. But as it was an official meeting, this was not the time for the public to make comments.

 

Near the end of the meeting, an attendee stood up and remarked that it was unfair to present a resolution and vote on it and not allow the public to respond. This item was not on the agenda so the public was caught off-guard.

 

It was then agreed to allow anyone to make a comment who desired to do so. And there were many. But this one, as reported in the minutes, was probably the most to-the-point, heartfelt and sincere:

 

“I would like to echo that as well.  I think the voters went two to one against the tunnel, no matter what your count is.  Voters went directly to the sources that were available in the library and in fact, misinformation actually came from the City and I found that very offensive and an attempt to manipulate the voters.  (A) The wording of the measure was extremely confusing and misleading and (B) The pros and cons that came out on that extremely expensive handout that was included in the Eagle was also not the truth.  We can go down it and we certainly point out to you what parts of the information was misleading to voters.  I think it’s offensive that you should try to manipulate voters.  I think that by the techniques you used to get this on the ballot, I think the voters have spoken incredibly loudly, I find it extremely offensive that you say now, afterward, ‘Well, we didn’t have enough voters, they don’t count, it’s not significant enough.’  I think the voters have spoken.  I think the honorable thing for any commission to do is to acknowledge that and I don’t understand why this committee would not do that.  I honestly do not.  I know you spent a lot of time, but we all have a lot of things in our lives that don’t turn out the way you think they’re going to turn out and you have to know when to graciously say ‘We’ve given it our best, we’ve done our best for the community,’ which I think probably you have but the voters have spoken; you are a committee that’s been formed at the will of the voters and I think you have no business, four of you, compared to how many thousands showed up for the vote, to be submitting this to the City Council.  I find that very, very offensive and I think once this gets out to the community there’s going to be an awful lot of outrage because people did take it upon themselves to become informed because they were not getting two sides from the City.  It’s very clear that four members of the City Council were all in favor of this tunnel, but the citizens said ‘no.’ It’s a joke.”

 

You may read more comments in the 06.10.10 Draft Tunnel Commission Minutes.

 

The resolution never was presented at the Council Meeting, maybe because it had to be on the agenda in order to be discussed at the 06.10.10 CTC meeting.

A Brief History of The Coronado Tunnel Commission, Part 10

A Common Sense reader has been sending in brief histories about the Coronado Tunnel Commission using information acquired via public records requests.  Here is the 10th article received (with his comments in parenthesis):

 

From a meeting in 2000:

 

3.  Federal and State Funding Issues:

 

Mr. Benson had an update on a past topic:  The City is looking to resurrect the $700,000 that US Congressman Brian Bilbray tried to get in.  They think it can still get in.  Bilbray has a commitment from the Chair of the House Subcommittee on Defense. The Senate side on the Conference Committee is where we missed the loop. Bilbray was asked who has the contacts to the funding for FY01 and he suggested talking to Paul Magliocchetti Associates.  There's a logistics problem with people on vacation now, but a conference call is set for next week with the City Manager. The City needs to finish working on FY01 and get in line for FY02.

 

Mr. Hollingsworth urged the City to get as good a lobbyist as it could and have him tell us how to go about it.  A good lobbyist can come back with a program of action and tell you if it's feasible.  However, he felt that until we have a study that confirms a tunnel can be built, along with an estimated cost, we can't expect Council to spend $30,000 to talk to a real professional.

 

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Minutes from Coronado Tunnel Commission Meeting

Thursday, April 8, 2004

 

Present:  Sut Clark and Art Osborne (Yep, 2 out of 7 present)

 

Absent:  Steve Clarey, Bill Huck, Al Hollingsworth, Al Ovrom and Casey Tanaka (City Council Representative).

(Yep, Casey was the City Council Representative until Al Ovrom was re-elected to the Council, then Al took over that responsibility, then Casey became Mayor.)

 

City Staff:  Jim Benson, Gail Brydges, Ed Walton  (Yep, 3 highly paid salaried City employees)

 

Consultants Present:  Brian Pearson (PB), Richard Ledford (Ledford Enterprises) (Yep, 2 highly paid consultants)

 

DISCUSSION ITEMS:

 

A. Resignation of Betsy Gill.  Commissioner Gill submitted her resignation due to the fact that she will be out of town for a good deal of time following her husband's retirement.

 

Mr. Benson submitted the name of Lou Smith, a retired admiral and Coronado resident with a good reputation.  Mr. Walton suggested John Pizzato, former El Cajon City Engineer and current retired Senior Volunteer who lives at the Shores.  (Now wait a minute, why would salaried City employees be suggesting names for nominees to commissions?!?)

 

B. Update

 

Project Report & Environmental Documents (PR/ED):  Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) received the Notice to Proceed.  (Proceed!!!)

 

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From Draft Minutes of a Tunnel Commission Meeting 4-12-07:  (comments added)

 

B.   Reports and Discussion from Commission Members or Staff on Current Issues:

 

1.  Status of Third Street Gate Project:  The wall will come down next week and the gate is to open in mid-June.  There will be a formal dedication when the contractor is done with their work.

 

2.  Congestion Relief Working Group (CRWG) Project:  The signal design is just about done.  The City has agreements with the Navy and Caltrans to pay for a share of the signals.  The design of the bulbouts on any of the designated streets will require complete re-design of the drainage.  Bulbouts won't slow traffic, but will make it safer for pedestrians to cross.

 

3.  Vacancy on Coronado Tunnel Commission:  Mr. Clarey reported that Toni Gaylord (Toni Gaylord formerly of Coronado Main Street and now of Coronado Planning Commission?) suggested Darrell Sarich to fill the vacancy.  (Darrell Sarich, husband of Coronado Main Street's Director Rita Sarich?)  He has lived in the Cays for 25 years and in the Village prior to that (within the couplet).  Mr. Clarey made a motion to recommend his name to the City Council and Mr. Smith seconded it.  It passed unanimously.  This will be on the May 1 City Council agenda for approval.

 

4.  General Information Update:  Mr. Ovrom reported on his and the Mayor Smisek's Washington, D.C. meetings. They met with Wayne Arny (Mr. Arny was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Installations and Environment) and agreed to disagree.  They also met with Buddy Penn (as noted above). (Mr. B.J. Penn was Assistant

Secretary of the Navy) and Vice Admiral Conway (Vice Admiral Robert T. Conway, Jr. was Commander, Navy Installations Command, Washington DC). They later met with the CNO (Chief of Naval Operations);  Mr. Ovrom described him as a very to-the-point person.  He asked for information and spent 45 minutes with them.  Mr. Ovrom expressed appreciation to PMA (The PMA Group, lobbyists) and SDMAC (San Diego Military Advisory Council) for arranging these meetings.  He thinks the CNO is the route to go. Mr. Clarey observed that the budget stakeholders are not the civilians; they're the uniforms.  They recognize the operational impact of having good relations here.  PMA needs to generate an issue paper and get a POM 10 submission line.  Mr. Ovrom reported having good meetings with Boxer (Senator

Barbara Boxer) and Feinstein's (Senator Dianne Feinstein) staffs.  They also met with Senator Davis and her staff  (former Senator Susan Davis is now a member of Congress). The Mayor and he are writing a letter back to ASN Penn.

 

C.  Future Meeting Schedule:  The next meeting will be Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 4:00pm in the Police Department Community Room.

 

5.  ADJOURNMENT:   The meeting concluded at 5:23pm.

 

                                                                                            Approved:

 

 (space for signature)

                                                                                            ____________________________

                                                                                           

Jackson S. Clark, Chairman

 

 

To Be Continued (maybe)...

Editor's Note: Sources reveal US Senator Dianne Feinstein never contributed any federal grants, earmarks or other money to the Coronado tunnel studies or tunnel project.

Federal earmarks (federal taxpayers' money) received were from US Senator Barbara Boxer and US Representative Susan Davis in the combined amount of $9 million promised with over $8 million to be received after the usual federal money administration fee was taken "off the top" of the combined $9 million earmark grant.