Back in March 2023 I wrote: “One local resident, Martin Bender, who claims in a blog post to have ‘a juris doctorate and have worked for both private practice law firms and for the County of Santa Barbara Superior Court’ is seriously abusing his First Amendment rights by falsely accusing Councilwoman Gilda Cordova (a member of the Visit Lompoc board of directors) of wrongdoing in a memo to the City Attorney back in February and a Facebook posting on March 2nd.”
On May 2, 2023, the city attorney reported to the City Council that “After review, staff has determined that the majority of Mr. Bender’s claims are without merit.” He also indicated that Bender’s claims had factual errors.
A 2023-24 Grand Jury report on the matter states: “A Request for Investigation (RFI) received by the Grand Jury (Jury) highlighted potential financial irregularities and other possible violations of the contract between Lompoc and Visit Lompoc LLC (VLI).”
The person or persons who made this request were not identified in the report.
“The Jury investigated whether there was any potential conflict of interest between member(s) of the Lompoc City Council and VLI. Based on the evidence presented to the Jury and the subsequent investigation, the Jury could not confirm whether a specific conflict exists.”
Councilmembers like Cordova will register an “abstain” vote when items come up on the Consent Calendar if they apply to a business interest they have.
The jury noted: “The Grand Jury of 2011-12 issued a report that identified Lompoc’s failure to monitor control of funds provided to the nonprofit Lompoc Housing and Community Development Corporation. That oversight led to an estimated loss of $1.8 million of taxpayer funds.”
Including this statement of fact leads one to believe that a similar condition might have existed with VLI; but these two cases are as different as apples and oranges.
The only similarity is that in response to the 2011-12 report that the city of Lompoc agreed to a recommendation “to establish a policy requiring annual audits prepared by an independent auditor.”
The jury investigated both VLI and the city of Lompoc oversight/audit practices. The jury determined that VLI submitted their reports late as required by the city however they also noted that the Property and Business Improvement District (PBID) Law of 1994 “does not require such reports to be submitted in that time frame.”
This seems like a plausible explanation for why the reports were “late.”
Another finding was that “For the time period 2018 through 2022 the analysis conducted by Lompoc and Visit Lompoc’s accountants of the Visit Lompoc’s financial records confirmed the >$500,000 discrepancy in unspent funds versus reported carryover values.”
The jury provided the results of their analysis to the city and “Lompoc discovered an accounting anomaly due to the different accounting methods used (accrual vs. cash). That difference amounted to $9,450.
Additionally, as a result of its analysis, Lompoc also discovered the >$500,000 cumulative difference in savings/loss versus reported carryover but only stated that VLI accounts for that value differently.”
I am not an accountant, but it appears to me there was a difference of opinion between the jury and Lompoc as to how much of an error there really was and what accounting method to use.
The Grand Jury’s key finding was “The Annual Reports submitted by Visit Lompoc to the City of Lompoc did not include all amounts that should be publicly disclosed.”
They recommended that “Lompoc City Council shall formally establish a review process to ensure there is no inaccurate or incomplete reporting on behalf of Visit Lompoc before the submittal of the 2024 annual report.”
I spoke with someone who is very familiar with accounting and taxpayer fund audits, and he said “the only way that this could be accomplished is for the City’s General Fund to contract with a forensic or other Hotel District accounting specialist firm that could give assurances that the report is accurate. To ensure there are ‘no’ errors would cost an enormous amount of money and still wouldn’t guarantee a 100% error free report.”
Mr. Bender is currently taking a victory lap in local media following the release of the jury’s report. However, it only appears that there may only be some procedural accounting, oversight, and audit issues with both Visit Lompoc and the city.
But, most importantly, the Grand Jury found no missing or misappropriation of funds or any wrongdoing by VLI or any of its board members. So, when someone accuses a person or an organization of wrongdoing, they should get their facts straight before smearing them in public forums.
References:
Staff report concerning Mr. Bender’s initial complaint: 638182066181100000 (cityoflompoc.com)
Grand Jury Report Knocks Lompoc for Lack of Oversight of Tourism Group, Funding | Local News | Noozhawk
Grand Jury Report: Lompoc-Tourism-Improvement-District-Management-Agreement.pdf (sbcgj.org).
Property-and-Business-Improvement-District-Law-of-1994.pdf (northparkmainstreet.com).