Letter to Mr. Calvert

Click this link to see an eye-opening letter to Mr. Calvert posted online. It's worth a quick read.

Jurupa Community Services District puts little stock in grand jury's criticisms

By SANDRA STOKLEYThe Press-Enterprise

MIRA LOMA - The Jurupa Community Services District's draft response to a critical grand jury report expresses "disappointment" with the investigative body and asserts that directors did nothing improper when they sold land to Rep. Ken Calvert and his investment partners.

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Jurupa services board has some answering to do

The Jurupa Community Services District's Board of Directors isn't going to explain itself until it's good and ready.

But we expect the board to be ready to tell the public what it's been up to and why at its next meeting on Monday night.

Despite being slammed by a Riverside County grand jury report that found the board had violated the law in a couple of significant ways, the board majority has been mum - waiting instead for the general manager and the board's legal team to explain the board's actions.

The grand jury report makes it look like amateur hour down at the JCSD, pointing out legal and ethical violations that must have resulted from ignorance, inattention, or worse.

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Board avoids talk of sale

Bids discussed, land dismissed
By Jesse B. Gill, Special to the Daily Bulletin

The Jurupa Community Services District board on Monday stayed away from addressing a land sale to Rep. Ken Calvert that the Riverside County grand jury said violated state law.

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It's money time on the Hill

Letter from Washington: Lawmakers jockey to bring home the bacon.

BY DENA BUNIS

Washington Bureau Chief - Orange County

It's the spending season in the Capitol. And this year, the cloud of secrecy that has always surrounded the process by which lawmakers get money for their districts and states has been lifted – a little bit.

We probably have last year's elections and ethics scandals to thank for it.
The spending lawmakers are battling for are called earmarks. The term dates back to the 1600s. Back then, earmarks were cuts in the ears of sheep and cattle and served as a sign of ownership, like a brand. In legislative speak, earmarks are those things in a bill that are placed there at the behest of a particular lawmaker.

Up until this year, the earmarking process has been a totally secret one. There have been famous – or I should say infamous – earmarks over the years, most notably the bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Sen. Ted Stevens, probably the senator most known for his earmark prowess, succeeded in getting $223 million for a bridge to be built to Alaska's Ketchikan Island, where 50 people live.

These projects have traditionally appeared out of nowhere in these spending bills. You could find out the name of the project and how much money was being set aside for it. But there was no way to see which member asked for it, unless the member said something.

Most of the time lawmakers do crow about getting money for a local project. But not always. And rarely have they been willing to talk about the projects they couldn't get funded.

Some still aren't. This year, out of the six members who represent all or part of Orange County, Reps. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, John Campbell, R-Irvine and Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, released their earmark requests. Reps. Gary Miller, R-Diamond Bar and Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, did not. And both of California's Democratic senators – Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein – said no.
Miller's office said he wanted to negotiate with the appropriators for which projects would be funded – not publicly through the press.

Sanchez told me she didn't want those cities whose projects didn't get submitted to have hurt feelings and didn't want to pit one community against another when it comes to the federal funding process. And, she said, she worried about raising expectations since only a fraction of requests actually get funded. Feinstein's and Boxer's offices said something similar about raising expectations.

Now for the first time in the House and Senate, the earmarks listed in the spending bills will also say which member or senator requested them. And both chambers have asked lawmakers to sign a statement saying they won't benefit personally from these projects.

The request lists are a window into a member's thinking about what is important and about how they believe federal money should be spent.

Take Campbell. He only asked for two earmarks. And both were for projects first supported by his predecessor – former Rep. Christopher Cox.
Campbell really doesn't believe in earmarks. In fact he told me he'd prefer not to see any at all, and he has been part of a small group of GOP lawmakers who have been trying – unsuccessfully – to slash them from the spending bills.

Campbell's views on spending, of course, will not endear him to House appropriators and probably make it difficult for him to get any funding. As it happens, he wasn't the only lawmaker seeking support this year for the Upper Newport Bay dredging project. Besides him, Calvert, Royce and Sanchez asked Energy and Water appropriators for that project. They got some money – $1 million – but that's far short of the $14 million they asked for.

The process the lawmakers follow on these earmarks is pretty standard. They and/or their staffs meet with representatives from the cities, universities, counties and other government entities they represent. They take all the requests and then decide which are most important and go on to the appropriations panels.

Most of the members said they received fewer than 100 requests each year. The senators get many more. Feinstein's office reported getting 1,600 pitches this year. They wouldn't say how many requests the state's senior senator ended up putting in. But they expect to get up to maybe 10 percent of what she asks for.

That's the formal process. But what really makes or breaks a lawmaker's request is whether they have a good relationship with the cardinal of the subcommittee who has sway over their request. If they do, they may have to enlist the aid of a fellow member to help push something through. It's the ultimate who-you-know kind of game. These cardinals are the chairs of the dozen subcommittees that make up the powerful Appropriations Committee. And they aren't named after the bird. They are called cardinals because of the power they wield over these spending bills.

The statement that lawmakers have to sign saying they won't personally benefit from any of the earmarks they are requesting has given some of them pause. Staffers report that sometimes it's difficult to decide what to do about a particular project.

If a member lives or owns property near a proposed new freeway ramp or grade crossing, should he or she not put in for that project?
Campbell, whose family owns car dealerships throughout the region, decided he would not put in any transportation projects lest there be an appearance of a conflict.

Calvert, who owns property in and around his congressional district, decided to put in a request, for example, for a Corona Transit Center project. But the Corona Republican wrote a letter to the House ethics committee asking whether it would be a conflict for him to do so. They wrote him back saying it would not.

Calvert is now a member of the Appropriations Committee and as long as he stays on that panel he can expect to be lobbied from both ends on spending bills – by those seeking projects and by fellow lawmakers who want money for their districts.

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Board silent on grand jury report

Sale to Calvert called illegal
By Jesse B. Gill,
Special to the Daily Bulletin
July 14, 2007

The Jurupa Community Services District board Monday night refused to address a grand jury report that said the district broke the law by selling a piece of land to Rep. Ken Calvert without first putting it up for sale to other public agencies.

Board members declined to respond to the report's recommendations at their meeting Monday night, instead opting to first closely examine the legal outcome of such a response.

"We want to wait because it's the prudent thing to do," said board member James Huber. "There are just some legal aspects that we need to have our attorney look over."

The board voted 4-1 to delay a response to the report, with board member R.M. "Cook" Barela the lone dissenter.

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Illegal Calif. land sale does not deter Calvert, for now

By Susan Crabtree/The Hill
July 11, 2007

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) has not ruled out selling a disputed piece of land back to the organization that he and two investment partners bought it from, even though a grand jury last week found that it was sold illegally. Through a spokesperson, Calvert said he is only one of three partners and not involved in the day-to-day operations of turning the land into a Dollar Storage facility, as planned.

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Panel to focus on reproach

Jurupa leader promises action
By Mark Petix, Staff Writer

The Jurupa Community Services District Board of Directors will meet Monday to tackle a Grand Jury report that indicates the agency violated state law by selling four acres of public land without first offering it to other public agencies. The board's vice president, R.M. "Cook" Barela, is promising action and accountability. "We don't want it to drag out," he said.

The Riverside County Grand Jury report released Tuesday cites the services district for selling a 4-acre parcel off Limonite Avenue to Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Riverside, and his business associates for $1.2 million.

The Grand Jury is recommending that money from the sale be given to the Jurupa Area Recreation and Park District, which had long expressed interest in buying the land.

The Grand Jury also wants the services district to adopt and enforce specific policies requiring it to work with the county Economic Development Agency in future land sales.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Friday called on Calvert to explain the land purchase.

"Representative Ken Calvert is a land developer first - he put his business' profits before a public park for his constituents," said Jennifer Crider, DCCC spokeswoman.

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Grand Jury Doesn't Buy Calvert's Land Sale Story
Posted by Brandon English
July 5, 2007
DCCC Press:

Representative Ken Calvert (R-CA) has maintained that his purchase of public land from the Jurupa Community Services District was legal. This week the Riverside County grand jury that has been investigating the case found that the sale of public land to Calvert, with a no-bid contract, violated state law.

"Representative Ken Calvert is a land developer first – he put his business’ profits before a public park for his constituents," said Jennifer Crider, Communications Director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Representative Calvert needs to come clean and reveal whether he sought preferential treatment in securing a no-bid contract to purchase the land? Whether he used his influence as a Member of Congress to purchase this public land? Whether his Congressional office had any role in the land deal?"

Background
In 2005, Representative Ken Calvert and investment partners in Calvert Properties purchased four acres of public land in a no-bid contract from the Jurupa Community Services District for $1.2 million in order to build self-storage units. Calvert owns a one-third stake in the property. [Riverside Press-Enterprise, 8/18/06]

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Government entity's land deal with Rep. Calvert violated law

July 5, 2007
From Crew (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)

The Jurupa Community Services District, the entity that oversees many governmental services for the unincorporated sections of Riverside County, California, arranged a land deal with a partnership including Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA).

Rep. Calvert was named by CREW as one of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress, in part, because he used his position to earmark funds to increase the value of his own property. In other words, the earmarks benefited Calvert's own land deals. One of those land deals we questioned was with the Jurupa Community Services District. CREW raised the concern that Calvert received "preferential treatment" in that $1.2 million deal.
Now, a grand jury has determined that the deal with the District violated California law:

The Jurupa Community Services District violated state law when it sold 4 acres of public land to Rep. Ken Calvert and his investment partners without first offering it to other public agencies -- including the local park district that wanted it, the Riverside County grand jury concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The grand jury recommends that the water and sewer agency turn over the $1.2 million it pocketed from the sale, minus costs, to the Jurupa Area Recreation and Park District.

Hat tip Think Progress.

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Grand jury finds Jurupa agency violated laws

July 3, 2007
By SANDRA STOKLEY- The Press-Enterprise

RIVERSIDE - The Jurupa Community Services District violated state law when it sold 4 acres of public land to Rep. Ken Calvert and his investment partners without first offering it to other public agencies -- including the local park district that wanted it, the Riverside County grand jury concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The grand jury recommends that the water and sewer agency turn over the $1.2 million it pocketed from the sale, minus costs, to the Jurupa Area Recreation and Park District.

The report, which concludes a five-month investigation, also found that:
Unnamed management officials used district credit cards to buy clothes, food and other personal items;

No-bid printing contracts were awarded to the relative of a district official, in violation of the California Public Contract Code;

Management recommendations for action were generally accepted without question.

The grand jury recommends that the district publish a policy and procedures manual to set out provisions for responding to such issues in the future.

The Jurupa Community Services District provides water, sewers, streetlights and graffiti removal to the unincorporated Riverside County communities of Eastvale, Pedley, Glen Avon, Sunnyslope and parts of Mira Loma.

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