Why are Neighborhood Councils being warned not to pass motions regarding possible ethics violations?
Published in Medium.com on July 20, 2020
West Valley People’s Alliance's photo taken prior to Mitchell Englander’s July 7th court appearance
After one neighborhood council called for the LA City Ethics Commission to begin an investigation into a current council member’s trip to Las Vegas in 2017 taken while working as a staffer, the City Attorney’s office interfered with similar resolutions by two more neighborhood councils.
THE BACKGROUND
This saga concerning pay to play politics came to light in March of this year when Mitchell Englander, who resigned his CD-12 position on the city council in 2018, was arrested on federal charges.
A federal grand jury indicted Englander on January 16, 2020, charging him with one count of participating in a scheme to falsify material facts, three counts of making false statements, and three counts of witness tampering.
But it wasn’t until March 9th that Englander surrendered to the FBI and the indictment was made public. According to the indictment, he had allegedly accepted money, hotel rooms, a lavish dinner, a $24,000 bar tab, and other gifts during a trip to Las Vegas in 2017. Englander admitted to taking $15,000 in cash from a businessman, identified in court documents as Businessman A, during trips to both Las Vegas and Palm Springs
The FBI attempted to conceal the identity of Businessman A, but during the March 13th hearing, the Assistant US Attorney said the man operated two companies, one that sold cabinetry and another that sold electronic equipment used in homes. The businessman was interested in selling his products to developers and saw developing relationships with council members as a way to accomplish that goal.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Englander had stated on an ethics disclosure form that he had received $250 worth of food and beverages on June 1, 2017 from a man named Andrew Wang. Per the LinkedIn page for “Andy Wang,” he has been the president for NextData Technologies since March 2016. The company’s LinkedIn page says the company’s mission is to “create value throughout the building development process for our clients” for “all their commercial and residential development project’s technology needs.” The website link from LinkedIn and Manta apparently no longer works.
A week after the Vegas trip, Businessman A and a real estate developer had a lunch meeting, arranged for by the council member.
Englander, who was elected to succeed his former boss Gregg Smith in 2011, suddenly announced in late 2018, he was resigning his seat on the council to take a job at the Oak View Group as its new executive vice president of government affairs. When he was arrested this March, many of his constituents wondered if the FBI investigation was the real reason he left the City.
On July 7th, Englander pleaded guilty to a single felony charge, one count of scheming to falsify material facts, after a plea deal had been made to dismiss the other six counts. Sentencing is tentatively scheduled for September.
The indictment: https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/65/5e/f78c45264b4baac3bb9b4525068c/city-hall-englander-indictment-1.pdf
CITY STAFFER B
Among those accompanying Englander on the trip, paid for by Businessman A, was “City Staffer B,” who was described as working for Englander until June 2017, which coincided with the time that John Lee had left his position as Englander’s chief of staff.
Because there was still a little more than a year left on Englander’s second term of office, a special election was held on June 4, 2019. The two top finishers were Dr. Loraine Lundquist with 19.7% of the vote and John Lee with 18.7%. They met in a run off on August 13th, with John Lee winning 51.5 to 48.5%. The two ran again in the March 3, 2020 election for the full term that begins in 2020.
As this arrest came out after the election for the new council term was held, several residents were understandably not happy that voters weren’t told about the investigation beforehand. Also, many knew that Englander had endorsed his former chief of staff during last year’s special election to fill the vacancy as well as this year’s election. Within a day or so of Englander’s arrest, a petition was started, calling on Lee to resign.
Here’s the petition: https://www.change.org/p/council-member-john-lee-resign-immediately. As of July 19, 1,894 have signed it.
