Inquiry of fair board requested

The Orange County district attorney’s office will consider a complaint made by County Counsel Nicholas Chrisos about the overlapping activities of the Orange County Fair and Event Center’s board of directors, which governs the Orange County Fairgrounds, and their dual role as directors of a fairgrounds’ nonprofit foundation.

The state attorney general’s office has turned out Chrisos’ request to investigate a July 29 fair board meeting for a possible violation of a state open meeting law, the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act.

On Wednesday, Susan Schroeder, the district attorney spokeswoman, said that the D.A.’s office would take up Chrisos’ complaint once it receives the paperwork.

Chrisos sent a letter to the attorney general, dated Oct. 30, which asked for an investigation into the fair board’s activities. According to his letter, these included meeting privately without notifying the public, as well as negotiating a contract with former State Sen. Dick Ackerman to lobby on the board’s behalf in Sacramento to have the state-owned fairgrounds in Costa Mesa put up for sale.

Ackerman has said that his work in Sacramento on the board’s behalf led to the fairgrounds’ inclusion in the state budget and to the State Assembly’s vote in July to authorize its sale.

In his response to the letter from Chrisos, which was dated Nov. 13, Gary Schons, senior assistant attorney general, wrote that it would be “inappropriate” for his office to launch a criminal investigation since the attorney general’s office represents the fairgrounds’ board of directors.

Schons then suggested that Chrisos file his complaint with the county district attorney.

The county counsel’s office has yet to take any more action, said Brooke De Baca, county public information officer.

“It’s too soon to share any future plans since we just received the attorney general’s response on Monday the 16th,” she said.

The fair board’s six members formed a nonprofit organization, the Orange County Fair and Event Center Foundation, to raise funds to buy the 150-acre property. Those same six trustees serve a duplicate role as the foundation’s board of directors.

In his letter, Chrisos suggests that the fair board used public funds to hire Nossaman LLP, a law firm where Ackerman is a partner, to lobby for a fairgrounds’ sale and help in drafting a request for proposal that would “best suit the anticipated Foundation bid.”

Chrisos continues: “Since several of members of the Fair Board were also going to be on the Foundation Board, and the Foundation was incorporated as a private, non-profit entity (and not a government entity), this expenditure of public funds for a contract with the Nossaman firm was a contract that would aid the personal interests of those members.”

The Pilot requested copies of the contracts between Nossaman and the fairgrounds board almost a month ago, but has yet to receive them.

On Wednesday, David Ellis, the fair board and foundation’s vice chairman, declined comment. And Calls to Kristina Dodge, chair of both the fair board and foundation, were not returned.

On the issue of whether the board may have violated the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, Chrisos’ letter stated that a meeting of the board’s members on July 29 failed to give adequate public notice and that the meeting’s minutes failed to properly describe the actions taken then by the board.

The fair board also may have also violated Bagley-Keene when its members met privately to discuss foundation bylaws and code of conducts in October, according to an expert on California’s open meeting laws. Although the foundation is a nonprofit organization and its board can meet privately, the board members’ dual role presents a conflict of interest because the range of activities of the two groups overlap, Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, told the Daily Pilot.