What happens when someone makes a false or misleading statement or accusation during a meeting of a government body?
Well, if the government body has any sense of ethical behavior, they conduct an extensive investigation to determine if the claim is valid.
That’s what happened in Lompoc a few months ago when a local attorney claimed during a meeting of the Lompoc City Council that they had failed to exercise their oversight responsibilities over Visit Lompoc, Incorporated (VLI), which does business as Explore Lompoc.
The attorney also asserted that “money was missing” from VLI’s annual report to the council.
Let’s be clear, citizens have a right to address any grievances with a government body, but when making an allegation of wrongdoing they should at least speak to the correct entity.
In this case, VLI is a separate Property and Business Improvement District and it has an independent Board of Directors that conducts monthly public meetings to discuss, among other things, the financial status of the organization.
VLI manages the Lompoc Tourism Improvement District (LTID) using funds collected from special assessments that were approved by voters.
Apparently, this citizen thought the city of Lompoc had some oversight responsibilities and had failed to perform their duties, thus failing to identify an alleged loss of funds by VLI.
The city attorney conducted an in-depth investigation. During a report to the City Council, he informed them:
“After review, staff has determined that the majority of (the citizen) claims are without merit.” And he indicated that the claims had factual errors and the “missing funds” weren’t missing, and were properly identified in other accounting documents.
The citizen wasn’t happy with this response and subsequently the County Grand Jury received a complaint making the same allegations.
The Grand Jury investigated and made several recommendations, so the city of Lompoc was obligated to expend more resources to respond to their report.
Ultimately, it cost more than $50,000 and many hours of staff time to explain that the Grand Jury was poorly informed about the relationship of the city of Lompoc to VLI, and that none of their recommendations would be implemented.
According to the letter responding to the Grand Jury, Lompoc “continues to hold, the opinion that as a pass-through agent of non-City funds, the City does not hold responsibility to audit nor to impose regulations other than those specified in the VLI agreement on VLI, and that spending time on such activities would be a misuse of taxpayer funds if the City were to devote additional staff time to researching, analyzing and opining on an entity outside of the City’s purview.”
This entire exercise was an expensive, and time-consuming investigation by the city, which could have been resolved if this citizen had simply attended one or more of the Lompoc Tourism Improvement District Board meetings to discuss his concerns with them.
Instead, he chose to use the City Council meeting, which is televised on a local public broadcast channel, in an attempt to gain some sort of notoriety as a protector of public funds.
Instead, all he did was demonstrate his lack of understanding of the relationship of one governing body to another and the many accounting practices that govern how government funds are managed.
References:
About Explore Lompoc – Lompoc California
Visit Lompoc Management Agreement: 638515368734070000 (cityoflompoc.com)
Lompoc response to Grand Jury: 638515368725800000 (cityoflompoc.com)
