Dire Dingleberries of Sordidity (Bauer's FPPC complaint against Tom Fuentes)

Faxed to the FPPC at 3:25 today

     As you know, former SOCCCD trustee and current OC Public Guardian/Administrator, John Williams, has been up to his eyeballs in controversy for some time now. Remember those two “scathing” Grand Jury reports that described his incompetence and, well, his highly-questionable management decisions?
     Yeah, and we’ve been complaining for years about Williams’ love of junkets to Orlando (even when he says he's downtown) on the taxpayers’ dime. (He’s got family in Orlando, you know. Wadda bum.)
     And then there’s the fact that’s he’s flat stupid. Have you ever heard that guy try to speak?
     We were the first to report the undoing of Williams’ effort to seize control of the estate of Charles David Lewis, Jr. (aka “the Mask”)—very strange, that. We didn’t quite know what that meant at the time. Something fer sher. But, since then, a big, nasty picture seems to have developed. Williams, some allege, pounced on the $10 million Lewis estate (Lewis owned a chunk of TapouT) for the fee his agency gets administering it, which, in this case, is big.
     It made his bottom line look good, or so he bragged, reportedly.
     Yeah, but when his pouncification was nixed on appeal, he was in trouble, bottom-line-wise, or so the story goes. Some say that he started making desperate moves, pouncing on other estates that he had no business touching.
     Some guardian!
     That, of course, led to complaining phone calls from the daughter of some poor oldster, and one such phone call was made to then-Assistant DA Todd Spitzer.
     Naturally, Spitzer called up Williams’ office to find out what was goin’ on. Williams, acting precisely as though he were a very guilty (and stupid) man, freaked; he ran caterwauling to DA Tony Rackaucas, who took the opportunity to fire Spitzer (The nerve of the fellow, asking questions!), who, in truth, had his sights on Rackaucas’ job. (The story is that Rackaucas hired Spitzer just so he could punk him, i.e., keep him from running for DA for now. That’s how this crew works. Remember Rackaucas’ one-time good pal, Mike Carona?)
     It sure looked hinky. It didn’t help that Rackaucas' fiancé was Williams’ second-in-command.
     There were other dire dingleberries of hinkitude, but I’ll leave it at that.
     Now, everybody knows that Fuentes was brought onto the SOCCCD board of trustees (replacing resigning Holocaust-denying Neanderthal, Steve Frogue, in 2000) to enhance the futures of the various political wannabes on the board, including Williams, Don Wagner (who recently joined the state Assembly), Nancy Padberg (who later ran for judge), and Dave Lang (who recently flamed out in a pricey & disastrous run for GOP candidacy for OC Treasurer).
     Many were amazed when, not long after Fuentes’ arrival, supremely unqualified dim-bulb Williams suddenly emerged as a candidate for Public Administrator—and, when he got that gig, he soon parlayed it into the super-gig of Public Administrator/Public Guardian, complete with a car and fabulous cash prizes.
     He promised to save the County big money. Well, as it turns out, they misunderstood him, or he misspoke, or something. He meant to say that he would cost the County big money, and sure enough that’s just what the stolid fellow did! Or so said the OC Grand Jury. But that was OK, ‘cause Williams’ attorney just happened to be the semi-official attorney for Bad Republicans (viz., Phil "ethics-challenged" Greer, who represented Chriss Street and Beelzebub and Raghu Mathur) and, conveniently, the attorney for four of the five Supervisors. And so, amazingly, Williams got to keep his lucrative gig and keep making those trips to Orlando, Florida, supposedly to keep his colleagues on the SOCCCD board of trustees apprised of the latest techno whizz-bangery. Like email and white boards.
     But Williams runs a seriously hinky ship down at the County, and people started looking at some of his curious actions over the years, such as his arranging for LFC (a local online real estate auction firm) to sell property for the County. But wait. Didn’t LFC contribute to John’s recent reelection campaign (as we reported, inspiring nada)?
     Yep.
     (Oddly, after a bit, John returned the money. He doth return too much, methinks.)
     And didn’t John’s colleague, Tom Fuentes, have a relationship with LFC? Sure he did. Gosh, as it turns out, Tom helped bring LFC (owned by long-time pal "Buffalo" Bill Lange) and the County together! Or so he says.
     Hey! That doesn’t pass the smell test, does it?
     But yes! It does! ‘Cause Fuentes only happens to be associated with LFC. As he explained to the Voice of OC, he had an office at LFC only ‘cause LFC was a supporter of the Claremont Institute (a think-tank for Neanderthals), and Fuentes was a trustee (or Cave Man) there. Yeah, that’s it!
     And the LFC email account? And the title of “LFC Senior VP”? Why, that’s nothin’.
     Here at Dissent the Blog, we weren’t so sure.

     Here’s a curious, much-ignored factoid for you to consider: back in early October (Was Tom Fuentes a shill for LFC re the Coast Rabbit Island sale?), I reported that I had received an email from a Coast Community College official, who confirmed our suspicion that Fuentes has been an energetic agent of or advocate for LFC—as recently as three years ago. Here’s the email:

Roy:

     I didn’t want to post this on your DTB web site, as I am not in a position to have this attributed directly to me but thought you would be interested to know: When the Orange Coast College Foundation was selling its donated island in British Columbia–Rabbit Island in 2007—Lang had Fuentes call one of our trustees and Chancellor Yglesias and essentially try to get the Orange Coast College Foundation to use LFC as the auction agent for the sale. The Coast District and our trustees were not micromanagers and they said it is a Foundation Board decision and we are not going to force you to do anything. We found that LFC's commission structure was higher and we questioned if we would be best represented by an Orange County firm trying to sell a British Columbia property. LFC also tried to scare off a few reputable BC brokers by telling them they had a guaranteed listing on the property. We ended up going with a local BC broker who sold the property with good results and their commission was about 3% lower than LFC*, which wasn't chump change on the $2.2 million sales price. Bottom line is I definitely got the idea there was a connection between LFC and Fuentes and Fuentes wasn't shy about pushing LFC and using his contacts to do so.

— A reliable source at the Coast Community College District. Name withheld by request.

(*3% of $2.2 million is $66,000)

     Gosh! What do you suppose it all means? Could it be that Tom did more than grunt and draw elk on the walls at his cozy little LFC cave re Claremont's Flintstonian think-tankery?
     Well, today, I filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission (see graphic above). I’ve been itchin’ to do that for months. Kept threatenin' to do it. And then, last week, belatedly, the Reg started talking about the obvious hinkitude of it all, what with Fuentes not declaring any economic interest in LFC. They put out the same report in today's print edition (see above).
     Where’s it all going? Who knows.
     But know this. This county is run by creeps.