County Counsel Fires Shot Across Fair Board Bow; Will Ackerman Get Hit?

Nothing beats money and influence...
Heh, heh. Nothing beats money and influence...

We’ve been tracking the Sell the Fair (To Us) Movement recently and noted that Dick Ackerman had already admitted to being hired by an insider Board cabal whose intent was to get the State to sell the Fair – to themselves.

A couple days ago word leaked out that the County had gotten into the act, possibly to forestall the sale of the Fair, and to own it themselves.

Attached is a copy of letter sent by the County’s top lawyer, Nick Chrisos, to the local Attorney General representative. You’ll notice that Chrisos spends no time fingering the Board and it’s lobbyist, Dick Ackerman. Chrisos wants the AGs office to open an investigation. Why? Because by the time the Board got around to hiring Ackerman’s law firm on July 29th 2009, to help pull and persuade the RFP, they had already hired them to create their non-profit “Foundation,” with the intent of buying the fair themselves. Apart from the evident open meeting and conflicts of interest, Chrisos wants to know about what public expenditures were made by the Fair Board to hire lawyers to work for the benefit of their own foundation.

POST UPDATE: Click here to download the Chrisos letter.

Gee, this looks awfully official...
Gee, this looks awfully official...
Page 2 - the plot thickens...
Page 2 - the plot thickens...

As they say: hilarity ensued. We’ve been told that the AG tossed the issue into the lap of the OC District Attorney. Why? Because the State AG represents the Fair Board! DA Tony Rackaukas has been signally dilatory in going after criminals who don’t have gang tatoos so we will have to wait to see what, if anything happens.

In the meantime, here are the Fair Board minutes of the meeting in question:

Who's minding the store?
Who's minding the store?
Ah, there's more!
Ah, there's more!
Climax and Denoument?
Climax and Denoument?

Check out the language of the motion: go hire “consultants” (Ackerman) to carry out the intent of the Governor and Legislation. What noble public servants! Let’s not fight it. Let’s work with the State!

But let’s not forget the troublesome little problem that Dick Ackerman himself has admitted: being involved with developing the enabling language in the budget bill in the first place. Whose idea was that? And who paid him for that? Hmm.

It’s very difficult to conceive of a scenario in which Ackerman is not involved in this little cabal right up to his eyeballs. Did he lobby the legislature first, and then the Governor’s office regarding the specifics of the RFP? If he did he broke the law since he hadn’t been out of the Legislature for a full year as State law requires. Ah, those pesky laws! Enforceable? Again that’s up to the DA to determine. We are not encouraged.

8 Replies to “County Counsel Fires Shot Across Fair Board Bow; Will Ackerman Get Hit?”

  1. can anyone say “handcuffs”?
    Dick, “meet Bubba your new wife, now be easy on him Bubba, he’s a politician and from Irvine”!

  2. Can you post links to the documents in .pdf format? They are impossible to read as is. Maybe scan them into a pdf directly?

  3. We just have to keep watching in a way DA Rackaukas cannot ignore without risking his own career.

    Much like they did with Corona & also the priests, the OC Weekly will stand watch in a public way now that they’ve picked up the story. I’m getting to really wish they had a Fullerton edition, but then…they’d really have to hire a lot more investigative journalists to handle our dirty secrets.

    Appreciate the cont. coverage here as well. Cheers

  4. Hi, my name is Tim. Just wanted to say hi to the forum, I been creeping around here for a while now, but tend to participate more. Looking forward to make some new friends. Ciao!

    Tim

    NY, NY

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