What happens in Malibu most certainly doesn’t stay in Malibu, as our City Council just found out. When word got out through a CBS TV news show that the City of Malibu had suggested, asked or told the local Methodist church—depending on who you believe—to stop feeding the homeless (which they have been doing for years), the story went viral. Before the city could put a cap on it, or even just explain their side of it, all sorts of news outlets were picking up the story. In our world today, many of those news outlets have a political agenda and many also just repeat any story that comes their way—whether the story is true or not. Things move so fast today in a media world that runs 24/7 that the facts often lag far behind the impression left behind. The White House knows this and everybody in the political world knows this (or should know this), so the expression that you have to “get in front of the story” is very apt. If you don’t, you’re going to end up as mincemeat. A great deal of the public response is in the eye of the beholder. For example, we in Malibu like to think of ourselves as responsible stewards of the environment, caring deeply about what happens to our flora and fauna. Many outside of our little town see us as nothing more than a bunch of rich elitists, working hard to keep 26 miles of gorgeous coastal resources just to ourselves and using the excuse of environmental protection to cover up that we are just a bunch of selfish SOBs … If you look hard, there is enough evidence to justify either of these competing narratives. This column is not just an academic exercise—it’s a warning.
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We are in a battle to separate from Santa Monica and become our own school district. We see it as our right to be free and independent, to get out of what looks more and more like a shotgun marriage that no longer works for us. That’s not the way we are going to be painted in the press or on social media. Make no mistake about it. We are going to be accused of: being racist, taking money away from minority children to be spent selfishly on our already over-privileged, spoiled children; and trying to become one of the richest school districts in the state at the expense of poor little Santa Monica. No matter that Santa Monica is six times larger than us and is one of the richest cities in the state; it’s certainly, as a city, infinitely richer than we are in budget and revenue stream. This battle is going to get very nasty and there are lots of things we can anticipate are going to be thrown at us by their school board representatives and city council. But then, something new happened.
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A story broke last week in the LA Times about some potential conflicts in the Santa Monica city government that appear to raise the aroma of possible corruption. It turns out that a member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District School Board Maria Leon-Vazquez—who incidentally is a fervent opponent to our becoming a separate school district—is married to Tony Vazquez, a member of the Santa Monica City Council. Nothing wrong with that; they just appear to be a political family. But then it all gets a little murkier. Tony Vazquez is the mayor pro tem of Santa Monica and also a political consultant. You don’t need an ethics professor to tell you that you can’t personally enrich yourself being a public servant. Well, according to the LA Times article, Maria Leon-Vazquez: “has been casting votes that benefited construction management and financial advisory companies without disclosing that her husband does business with those firms, school board records as well as a sworn testimony show.”
In fact, neither Vazquez nor Leon-Vazquez appear to be particularly careful about filing all of the state-required annual disclosure forms necessitated by the California Political Reform Act. The LA Times went to Steve Cooley, the former district attorney of Los Angeles County, to get his take on any possible potential violation of the state’s conflicts-of-interest laws. Cooley said that the “arrangement raises serious questions about the California conflict of interest laws” and then said the process involves an initial inquiry be opened to see if there was any financial gain to the person or spouse, the implication being that they could be exonerated or it could go the other way and lead to a more formal process.
Today, the LA Times published an updated story that indicated the LA District Attorney’s office’s public integrity unit was reviewing the matter. Additionally, the school district also announced that it is conducting its own investigation into the matter, stressing that it recognizes the “importance of conflicts of interest.” The district Superintendent Ben Drati was quoted as saying in a prepared statement that he was not aware of any conflicts during his 10 months with the school district but said, “I take this situation seriously” and that, “My next step will be guided by facts and the law.”
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Ironically, there is also a pending lawsuit, filed by Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman, alleging violations of the California Voting Rights Act. Tony Vazquez was deposed for the lawsuit, in which he explained his role as a political consultant.
Whether this is all just a matter of sloppy paperwork or is something much more significant, we will find out fairly soon but I can’t help but feel that this may impact our quest to become a separate school district. Whether it will help or hinder is hard to know at this point but it’s all just beginning.
P.S. Kudos to the LA Times. This story took a lot of digging and old-fashioned hard work to get it all. It shows what a good newspaper and good reporters can do given the time and resources as well as how essential that is in our world.