By John Earl
Surf City Voice

A “special” meeting of the Board of Directors of the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC), originally designed by Best Best & Krieger of Irvine– the largest public agency law firm in California – to schmooze its new clients, became a public embarrassment Tuesday when the plush solitude of its penthouse-view executive board room was invaded by a small band of transparency advocates.

MWDOC meetings are normally held on the ground (and only) floor of its home office, humbly but conveniently located next to the County’s sewage treatment plant in Fountain Valley.

Despite the surprise BBK location, in addition to the usual inconvenience of morning meetings that are designed to accommodate MWDOC’s directors, most of whom are retired from professional life, but not the working public, 10 citizens at large—a rare turnout by MWDOC standards—attended, barely fitting into a small setting that clearly wasn’t intended for them.

But that setting was perfect for MWDOC’s seven water buffaloes: a towering view of Irvine’s skyline to be enjoyed with two large bowls of salad, what looked like two large dishes of lasagna, and plenty of chunky chocolate chip cookies, all nicely placed buffet style.

BBK’s recent additions, partner Russell G. Behrens and counsel Daniel J. Payne, both know what six of the seven MWDOC directors like (the seventh, Wayne Osborne, is a new comer) because they worked for them before as part of Kidman Behrens and Tague.

In January they left KBT for BBK and took MWDOC with them, entering into a five month test, according to MWDOC’s General Manager, Kevin Hunt. The purpose of Tuesday’s meeting was for BBK to seduce and corral MWDOC’s water buffaloes, thus sealing the deal.

So BBK’s managing partner, Eric Garner, used his very brief presentation to try to impress the board with the firm’s expertise in public agency law in general and water law in particular.

“When I’m not managing lawyers, I do still practice water law,” Garner cheerfully explained. “It would be a great privilege to work with the district if the opportunity ever arises for the need for my expertise. I can’t imagine ever practicing any water (sic) but water law to me. It is by far the most fascinating, interesting area in the legal world.”

Garner might get that opportunity to use his expertise sooner than he expected; but, judging from the sour look on his face, he wasn’t happy to hear former Huntington Beach mayor Debbie Cook infer that the opportunity would only arrive due to BBK’s incompetence. Continue Reading

By Joe Geever
Surf Rider Foundation

Joe Geever is the Water Programs Manager for the Surf Rider Foundation, which works to protect ocean resources. He made these comments at the May 15 meeting of the Board of Directors of the Municipal Water District of Orange County. Originally, the directors had planned to go into closed session to discuss pricing arrangements for water to be delivered from an as yet unpermitted and unfinanced ocean desalination plant proposed by Poseidon Resources Inc. to be built in Huntington Beach, California. The meeting was criticized as a violation of California’s open meetings law, the Brown Act, and postponed until September.

My name is Joe Geever and I’m with the Surf Rider Foundation.

I don’t know if all the board members remember – the staff certainly does – that we actively supported your  desal pilot plant in Doheny. And we did that for two reasons. One, because we thought that research needed to be done to identify what the best intake for minimizing marine life mortality was. But also because of the assurances that staff gave us that this would be a completely open, transparent, public process in everything that went on with that project. And they have kept to that promise.

Now what I read is that this process [for the closed Poseidon meeting] is quite different. It feels as if you’re trying to find what the legal limits are for avoiding public transparency.

I guess I would urge you to lean in the other direction, to be as open and transparent and involve the public as much as possible from the beginning.

In my mind, it’s kind of ironic that you’re waiting to see how things play out with San Diego Count with the water purchase agreement from there because I think that’s the model for how not to do it.

The project proponent [Poseidon Resources] would like to blame all the delays on regulatory processes, when actually that project has been stalled because of information withheld or information that was submitted to regulatory agencies that was later discovered to be false. And all of this was happening behind closed doors. It hasn’t helped them move the project forward and it hasn’t engendered any kinfo of public confidence in the project at all.

You can get attorneys together and argue for minimal transparency and public participation and probably have a lot of legal battles over that. Or, you can lean the other way, toward as much transparency and public participation as possible, like you have in Dana Point, and see where the chips fall. So, I would urge you to lean that way.

By Debbie Cook

Environmental attorney Debbie Cook is a former Huntington Beach City Council member and two-term mayor of that city. She served on California’s State Desalination Task Force and as a city official voted against the ocean desalination plant proposed by Poseidon Resources Inc. Cook has been monitoring government transparency at local water districts. She made these public comments at a special meeting held by the Board of Directors of the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC), May 15, 2012, in the penthouse floor that lodges the offices of MWDOC’s legal counsel, Best Best & Krieger. She addressed the board’s postponement of a closed session item concerning water rate negotiations between MWDOC and Posedion Inc. after receiving protests. Cook explains why that meeting would violate the Brown Act, which requires government agencies to hold meetings open to the public.

There has been an unsettling trend among water agencies to conduct more and more of the people’s business in closed session under the guise of the “real estate negotiations” exception. While you can always pay an attorney to argue any absurd position, I urge you to reconsider such a course.

The Brown Act allows very narrow exceptions to conducting the public’s business in public and the real estate exception is perhaps the most narrowly drawn of all of them.

Poseidon is not selling, nor are you buying, real estate or real property within the meaning of the legislature’s intent. It is a contorted analysis that says otherwise.

Real Property is land and whatever is erected or growing on or affixed to it. But once severed from the land, things that are growing or attached to it are considered “goods.”

There is no “goods” exception to the Brown Act. The legislature never intended for water or mineral rights or crops to be bootstrapped onto the real estate exception. Any contrary interpretation of their intent would swallow the exception. Continue Reading

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Confronted by complaints of illegality, the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) dropped a scheduled closed session section of a meeting of its board of directors scheduled for today (May 15) at 11 a.m.

General Manager Kevin Hunt had scheduled the closed session in order to meet with officials of Poseidon Resources Inc., the company that proposes to build the as yet unfinanced and unpermitted $750 million ocean desalination plant that would convert about 100 million gallons of ocean water into 50 million gallons of drinking water every day.

The public meeting will go ahead minus the Poseidon item, but instead of holding session at MWDOC’s regular location in Fountain Valley, the seven board members will meet at the offices of the agency’s new legal team, Best, Best & Krieger (BKK).

Lunch will be served, according to the agenda.

The topic of discussion for the now deleted closed session item, according to the original agenda, was “price and terms of payment” for the water that Poseidon would produce.

California’s open meetings law, the Brown Act, requires that all legislative meetings be open to the public, with certain exceptions like negotiations for the sale or lease of real property. Water rights are treated as real property and Hunt, under advice from BKK, assumes that Poseidon holds water rights for the drinking water it will presumably produce, according to Hunt, a view that is disputed. Continue Reading

By Merle Moshiri
Special to the Surf City Voice

Last week I sent a complaint to the California Fair Political Practices Commission asking it to investigate what I believe are serious violations of the California Fair Political Practices Act, including failure to report income and conflict of interest voting, by John V. Foley, Chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD).

Foley is not an elected representative of the people. He was appointed to the MWD by our own Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC). He was then elected by MWD members to be chairperson of that body.

The details of Foley’s apparent misconduct have been provided in reports by the Surf City Voice and the Voice of OC. According to those reports, Foley failed to disclose over $600,000 in past income, most of it to his wife, from government and private sources. Also, according to those reports, he arguably cast illegal votes (as an MWD director) on matters related to that income.

Those details have been ignored by the OC Register and the Los Angeles Times even though they have been contacted repeatedly by myself and other concerned citizens. That is why I feel compelled to take action as a public citizen: our public officials and our largest self-proclaimed watchdog institutions have failed us, so concerned citizens must act to take back control of their government.

I filed my complaint last week, but doing so was partly the result of a frustrating process that started 10 years ago.

At that time, many of us in living in southeast Huntington Beach became concerned with plans to build a private ocean desalination plant in our area.  Initially, it appeared to be yet another piece of ugly industry being added to our community that already played host to the AES power generator, with its huge smoke stacks, the OC Sanitation District’s sewage treatment plant, the City Trucking depot, and the ASCON toxic waste dump—38 acres of hazardous waste material dumped close to our homes and schools—that still needs remediation.

Did yet another industry need to be built on our share of the coast?

Upon closer scrutiny, we discovered that the company planning and pitching the desalination plant, Poseidon Resources, Inc., had never built a fully functioning ocean desalination plant before.

But Poseidon pitched its project as a purely private one. The public would pay nothing; it would reap the benefits, but without taking the risks.  Four miles of our streets would be trenched for pipelines, but apparently we were supposed to accept that as one of the hazards of living that came with having a home in our area.

As our research progressed, we learned that there wasn’t any real need in Huntington Beach for desalinated water. We also learned that the “no cost to the public” promise was a pipe dream because ocean desalination was the most expensive alternative source of water. By contrast, water recycling (the Ground Water Replenishment System in Fountain Valley), conservation and retention were all much less expensive water sources.

The more we learned about the Poseidon project, the more skeptical we became.

Why would our public officials be so quick to jump on such a super expensive, energy exhausting, environmentally damaging and out-dated form of technology when there were other readily available and more viable means of meeting our water needs?

When we delved into Poseidon’s dealings with our local city and water officials we were struck by the lack of accountability and transparency that we found while those officials were proposing to spend hundreds of millions of rate payer dollars with apparently little regard for how they would be spent.

Positions on water boards may be seen by some as plumb pickings with nice stipends, health insurance, expense accounts and other benefits along the way. But with election or appointment to these offices comes the responsibility to be ethical and follow the law.

I regularly attend many MWDOC meetings.  About a year ago it was announced that John Foley was going to share some office space at the agency’s headquarters in Fountain Valley.  I knew that he was the chairman of the Metropolitan Water District.  I noticed in a MWDOC expense report that Foley’s wife had been paid by MWDOC for consulting services. I asked about the legality of her contract and what the protocol was for selecting her out of all the other possible consultants.  The answers were not readily available.

Now it appears that Mr. Foley violated the law by not reporting his wife’s income (and some of his own) on his 700 forms and that he created an illegal conflicts of interest by voting on desalination issues that his wife was paid to work on and for contracts for companies that she worked for.

When asked by a local reporter about not reporting his wife’s consulting income, Foley said he didn’t know he was supposed to do that.  But Foley, who has been on the MWD since 1989 and undergoes ethics training by MWD every two years, should have known what his reporting obligations were.

So I ask, is his failure to comply with the law from ignorance or arrogance?  Either one does not go far in protecting the public.

Public trust goes hand in hand with transparency and truth.  Those endowed with the public trust have an obligation to give their constituents no cause for doubt.

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

A Huntington Beach activist has filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission against the chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), John V. Foley, for alleged violations of the Fair Political Practices Act.

Since 1989 the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) has paid Foley as one of two appointed (non-elected) public officials who represent it on the MWD board. In turn, in Jan. 2011 MWD elected him as its chairperson for the second time.

As chairman, Foley runs MWD board meetings and appoints all members of all committees. He also attends some MWDOC meetings for discussion but not for voting.

The complaint, submitted by Merle Moshiri, president of Residents for Responsible Desal, alleges a spate of violations by Foley, including multiple failures to report income—totaling at least $640,000—that he received through his wife’s consulting business and another $15,000 earned from his own consulting business.

His wife, Mary Jane Foley, consults for government water agencies and companies to help them navigate through environmental regulations and obtain permits for water management projects, like ocean desalination.

Under California law, spousal income is considered a 50/50 split unless property is legally separated by a prenuptial agreement.

The complaint also alleges Foley cast four votes since 2005 that were illegal because they related to his wife’s consulting contracts with MWD, MWDOC and other water agencies.

State law requires public officials to disclose all reportable income on financial disclosure (700) forms that are open for public viewing. Those officials must recuse themselves from votes that could result in financial benefit for them or their spouses.

Fines of up to a $5,000 can be levied for each violation.

In an op-ed column published by the Surf City Voice, Moshiri says that her complaint follows a “frustrating process that started 10 years ago” with a city proposal to allow a large ocean desalination plant to be built in southeast Huntington Beach. That process has been marked by a “lack of accountability and transparency,” she wrote.

Merle Moshiri: Photo by John Earl

But Moshiri’s complaint also follows recent disclosures in the Surf City Voice and the Voice of OC (not a related publication) about Foley’s apparent failures to comply with various state conflict of interest laws.

The Surf City Voice first reported that Foley failed to report well over $200,000 of income from his wife’s consulting work (for public agencies only) and subsequently reported that Foley also failed to report $15,000 from his own consulting work.

Last September, Foley told the Surf City Voice that he didn’t know he had to report his wife’s income, stating that that “I never felt it was required. You know, I don’t have no problem with it.”

A month later, however, Foley updated his 700 forms back to 2004 by including his wife’s income. But he did not include his own consulting income in the updates.

On two subsequent occasions in January the Surf City Voice asked Foley by email what specifically had led him to believe that he didn’t have to report his wife’s income. Foley did not respond. During a phone interview on Feb. 7 he said that he still didn’t think he had to report his wife’s income because he had no access to it. He had updated his disclosure forms only for appearance’s sake, he said.

If Foley and his wife had signed a valid prenuptial agreement stipulating the separation of their property, there would have been no conflict of interest or requirement to report the income. He had never mentioned such an agreement before, and when asked the next day if such an agreement existed, he said no.

Then on Feb. 27 the Voice of OC reported that from 2007 to 2010 Foley had voted to approve three contracts—over $9 million worth—with engineering firms that had paid his wife over $20,000 for consulting.

The Voice of OC report also estimated that – including income from his wife’s consulting work for private firms – Foley had failed to report at least $640,000 of income prior to revising his 700 forms.

In that report, Foley reversed course and asserted that he and his wife did have a prenuptial agreement to keep their income separate.

But the Voice of OC noted that Foley had revised his 700 forms as if he had a share his wife’s income, indicated by filling in the part of the form that asks to “Identify … your pro rata share of the gross income to the entity (trust).”

In the same Voice of OC report Foley claimed that his prenuptial agreement also freed him to vote on the contracts.

The next day Foley made a public statement while chairing the MWD’s Executive Committee in Los Angeles, far from the view of the MWDOC ratepayers he represents. He and his wife have an agreement, he said again, which led them to believe that her income wasn’t reportable.

“It was further our understanding,” he added, “that Mary Jane would never work for any agency that had any connection with Metropolitan (MWD). I now realize that it would have been better for me to have abstained from votes pertaining to contracts between Metropolitan and firms that Mary Jane may have consulted with and I plan to do so in the future.”

Foley did not make a statement to the MWDOC board despite an invitation by Chairman Jeffrey Thomas to do so.

And, so far, Foley hasn’t responded to requests by the Voice of OC and the Surf City Voice to see the prenuptial agreement; but, if the FPPC investigates, he will be asked to show proof of it.

But even though a public official’s suspected actions turn out to be legal they aren’t necessarily ethical—a consideration that is big in the MWD’s ethics manual, which Foley and all the other MWD directors presumably have read.

MWDOC doesn’t have an ethics manual, but Chairman Thomas has invited the FPPC and legal experts to put on a workshop titled Ethics & Conflict of Interest Disclosure today (Monday, March 19) from 1:30 – 4:00 p.m. Invited public officials, not just from MWDOC, will learn how to fill out 700 forms.

Thomas explained his reasons for the workshop at a joint meeting of MWD and MWDOC directors that included Foley.

“Given a lot of us having questions on ethics and filing 700 forms and all the nonsense that goes into having to try to remember what you did and what you should report, what is reportable and non reportable, I thought what we would do is have a little mini seminar here.”

Thomas, who has since revoked his “nonsense” remark, invited members of the public to attend as well. The workshop will be held in MWDOC’s meeting room from 1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

At another meeting held last week, MWDOC Director Brett Barbre proposed that 700 forms for all MWDOC’s directors, its appointed MWD directors, and its employees, be vetted by the board to weed out any potential conflicts of interest. “I just think it’s smart for us to be proactive and as transparent as possible,” he said.

The idea will be discussed at April’s general board meeting and voted on at a subsequent meeting, the committee agreed.

Public citizens like Moshiri wish that MWDOC and the MWD would have been more proactive long ago, but they will probably appreciate even small steps in the right direction.

As Moshiri notes in her commentary, “Those endowed with the public trust have an obligation to give their constituents no cause for doubt.”

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Following recent revelations by the Surf City Voice that one of MWDOC’s own failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars of consulting income and voted on projects that could affect his wife’s business, Director Brett Barbre is proposing a novel change in policy designed to prevent conflicts of interest by the agency’s staff and public officials.

Barbre’s proposal would have the MWDOC (Municipal Water District of Orange County) board certify that to the best of its knowledge no conflicts of interest exist for its elected directors or for representatives that it appoints to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). The certification would also apply to all MWDOC employees who are required to report under state disclosure regulations.

“I believe we need to police ourselves,” Barbre said, in an e-mail to the Voice.

California’s Political Reform Act requires public officials to report income and to disclose possible conflicts of interest prior to voting and to recuse themselves when a conflict is determined to exist. And Govt. Code 1090 prohibits public officials from holding a financial interest in any contract made by “any [government] body or board of which they are members.”

But efforts to prevent conflicts of interest by local public officials traditionally have consisted, at best, of legal advice such as city attorneys often give at city council meetings and that relies upon the prior and presumably honest disclosures of public officials.

As first reported by the Surf City Voice, John V. Foley, MWDOC’s appointed representative on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), failed to report an estimated minimum of $248,000 of income his wife, Mary Jane Foley, earned as a consultant from various southern California water districts, including MWDOC and the MWD.

His wife’s consulting work mostly involved permitting, regulatory and promotional issues related to a proposed Dana Point ocean desalination plant and ocean desalination in general.

Foley is currently chairman of MWD’s 37-member board of directors. He can vote only on items before that body but attends MWDOC board meetings and partakes in discussions by that body.

The $248,000 income estimate, which the Voice as since revised to $218,000 after reviewing newly acquired invoice records for 2005, does not include his wife’s other previously unreported income from the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and several private water related companies going back to 2004. Nor did the estimate include another $15,000 of income that John Foley earned as a consultant but also did not report—also recently disclosed by the Surf City Voice.

Reducing Conflicts
Foley’s wife, Mary Jane Foley, who owns MJF Consulting, was paid as a subcontractor under a contract between Byron Buck Associates and five water agencies, including MWDOC, West Basin (Redondo Beach), City of Long Beach, San Diego Water Authority and MWD, the first four of which are involved directly in ocean desalination projects.

The contract was facilitated by the MWD and ran between 2006 and 2009 with a $125,000 limit, almost $109,000 of which was paid out including about $45,000 that went to MJF Consulting.

MWD Chairman John Foley attends a CalDesal mixer in May of 2010. Photo: Mesa Water

The contract stipulated a minimum number of hours and income for Foley’s wife for ocean desalination related permitting and regulatory work as well as for efforts toward forming a state wide desalination lobbying group to be named CalDesal, public documents obtained by the Voice show.

MWD sells water to other water agencies throughout southern California, including MWDOC, serving 19 million people, and is the largest water wholesaler in the world, according to MWDOC General Manager Kevin Hunt.

MWD exerts considerable influence over water programs and policies throughout its jurisdiction.

As MWD chairman, Foley appoints all members of all standing committees as well as chair persons for special committees for that body. Prior to becoming chairman of the board, he was a member of MWD’s Committee on Desalination and Recycling and later became chairman of the Special Committee on Desalination and Recycling.

MWD records show that on at least four occasions since 2005 Foley voted on ocean desalination issues related to his wife’s consulting contracts with MWDOC and other water agencies:

1)      June 28, 2005, as a member of the Committee on Desalination and Recycling, Foley voted for MWD to enter into agreements to financially support ocean desalination projects for four water southern California water districts, including MWDOC;

2)      July 12, 2005, Foley voted for the same proposal at a regular meeting of the MWD board;

3)      Nov. 10, 2009, Foley voted for the MWD to provide a subsidy of $350 million that would benefit an ocean desalination project in the San Diego Water District, one of five districts contracting with Byron Buck Associates (the last payment of which was made Oct. 15, 2009).

4)      June 8, 2010, Foley voted to have MWD become a member of CalDesal, an ocean desalination lobbying group that his wife helped to form, for a cost of $5,000 per year.

Foley also regularly opines on the topic of ocean desalination at MWD and MWDOC meetings. For example, as reported previously in the Voice, at June 6 MWDOC meeting Foley advocated for a MWD letter of support and $350 million subsidy that would assist Poseidon Resources Inc. to acquire financing for its proposed Huntington Beach ocean desalination plant.

“I am proposing that in April, following the filing everyone’s Form 700, the MWDOC Board will review the form 700s for all MWDOC directors, MWD directors, and all staff, to determine and certify that, to the best of our knowledge, there are no conflicts of interest,” Barbre informed the Voice by e-mail last Thursday. “We will compare 700s against a list of all active contracts at MWDOC,” he added.

Former Huntington Beach mayor Debbie Cook, who has conducted her own investigations of local water districts and advocates for greater transparency, concurred with Barbre’s call for MWDOC to police itself.

Cook stressed that disclosure laws and regulations are not meant to embarrass public officials.

“Every public agency should be policing its own officials for potential conflicts of interest,” she told the Voice. “It contributes toward improving public trust and it protects individuals who may not otherwise be aware of a conflict.”

Barbre, who was first elected to the board in 2000, is the only MWDOC board member in the past year to proactively call for greater board transparency—sometimes to the chagrin of fellow board members and staff, who have generally been reluctant to support placing expense reports online and video streaming board meetings from the MWDOC web site.

“I have been fighting staff on this one,” Barbre said, adding that he has asked that his proposal be placed on the agenda of the Committee on Administration and Finance meeting March 14. The committee would then pass on its recommendation, if any, to the full board for final consideration. If a quorum of the board attends the committee meeting the item could be decided then.

The meeting starts at 5 p.m. and is open to the public.

“If it is not placed on the agenda, look for some fireworks,” Barbre warned.

By Mark Gutglueck
The San Bernardino County Sentinel
Reprinted with permission

Belated opposition is hurriedly forming to a plan that would pump an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water per year out of the aquifer in San Bernardino County’s eastern Mojave Desert and convey it in a pipeline to Riverside, Orange and Los Angeles counties to replenish the water supply there.

The Santa Margarita Water District, which services an area that is more than 200 miles from the Cadiz Valley, is the lead agency for what is called The Cadiz Valley Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project.  As the lead agency the SMWD, the second largest water district in Orange County, will oversee the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review process for the project.

Santa Margarita will work with the Cadiz Land Company in the proposed undertaking, which is a modified version of the Cadiz Water Project floated by Cadiz Land and the Metropolitan Water District more than a decade ago. The original project called for the Cadiz Land Company pumping water from the Colorado River during wet years, storing it in an underground aquifer beneath the Cadiz Valley, and selling as much as 60,000 acre-feet of the native groundwater and Colorado River water mix to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) in Los Angeles during dry years.

That proposal was ultimately rejected by the MWD’s board of directors after conservationists raised concerns over possible environmental damage. That rejection led to expensive litigation between the Cadiz Land Company and the MWD.

The concept lay dormant for six years. But in 2008 the Cadiz Land Company, also known as Cadiz, Inc., revived the plan in modified form, emphasizing less the drawing of water from the Colorado River and instead proposing to obtain much of the water from sources feeding the area’s dry lakes that are subject to evaporation.

The revived project was given a tentative budget of $536.25 million and is to entail the sinking of 34 wells into the desert and construction of a 44-mile pipeline along a railroad right-of-way until it meets up with the aqueduct that carries Colorado River water to the Los Angeles and Orange County metropolitan areas.

Through the arrangement with the Cadiz Land Company, the SMWD will receive the lion’s share of the water. In addition, Cadiz, Inc. has entered into agreements with Three Valleys Water District, which provides water to the Pomona Valley, Walnut Valley, and Eastern San Gabriel Valley; the Golden State Water Company, which serves several communities in Southern California, including Claremont;   Suburban Water Systems, which serves Covina, West Covina and La Mirada; and the Jurupa Community Services District, which serves Mira Loma in Riverside County.

The Cadiz Valley is located just south of the Marble Mountains and northeast of the Sheep Hole Mountains near the National Trails Highway. Cadiz is home to a former railroad stop along the Santa Fe line, 17 miles east of Amboy and 70 miles from Needles.

The public hearings related to the Cadiz Valley Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project were held in Yucca Valley, which is 85 miles from Cadiz, and in Rancho Santa Margarita, which is 217 miles from Cadiz. Many people directly impacted by the project were not notified of the hearings. Neither was the Bolo Station Water Company, which serves the Cadiz Valley and the property adjoining that of the Cadiz Land Company.

Among those at the forefront of the movement to oppose the Cadiz Valley Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project is former Needles city councilwoman Ruth Musser-Lopez, who was previously employed as a Bureau of Land Management Archaeologist assigned to the California Desert District and was active in opposing the first Cadiz Water Project.

Musser-Lopez decried the project as one that would confiscate a vital and rare resource from the desert region. She said the Cadiz Land Company and the SMWD had formed an unholy alliance of a rapacious corporation and a quasi-governmental agency that was abusing the approval and environmental certification processes to violate the rights of the region’s residents while depriving future generations of desert dwellers access to water.

Both the SMWD and the Cadiz Land Company have represented the project as one that is aimed at “conservation” of water otherwise lost to evaporation. A major selling point is that the project will represent a $138 million boon to the East Mojave’s economy that will directly or indirectly create 2,090 jobs for four years, involving $53 million in wages or salaries to workers or proprietorships involved in building the pipeline and other elements of the project. Continue Reading

John Earl
Surf City Voice

Lately, southern California’s top water official, John V. Foley, has been explaining his apparent violations of a state law that requires public officials to disclose their economic interests.

Foley is chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD).

The Surf City Voice recently reported that Foley, who was appointed to the MWD by the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC), failed to report an estimated $248,000 of income that his wife, Mary Jane Foley, earned as a consultant for various water agencies in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, going back to 2004. That disclosure came from public records obtained by the Voice.

Now, more public records obtained since then reveal that Foley also failed to report over $15,000 of his own income as a private consultant for the Moulton Niguel Water District (Moulton) in south Orange County going back to late 2008.

His failure to report that income was “an oversight,” Foley told the Voice.

The newly obtained documents include the invoices that Foley filed at Moulton when he worked as a private consultant for that agency under a contract (also obtained by the Voice) that is still open.  But he did not report that income on the original financial disclosure (700) forms he filed with the MWD nor in amended versions that followed, records show. Continue Reading

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

The chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), John V. Foley, says that a recent Surf City Voice story, that exposed the omission of his wife’s income from years of financial disclosure statements he filed with the water agency, did him an “injustice by just making your own interpretation, which, quite frankly, is totally different than what mine is.”

The story pointed out that Foley had not reported an estimated $248,000 of income that his wife, Mary Jane Foley, was paid by various southern California water agencies for consulting work going back to 2004.

State law requires government officials to publicly disclose their relevant economic interests, including spousal income, within 30 days of assuming office and annually thereafter.  Fines of up to $5,000 can be levied by the Fair Political Practices Commission for violations.

Foley has served on the MWD as the appointed representative of the Municipal Water District of Orange County since 1989. He was chosen by the MWD to be its chairman for a second time in 2011.

In September Foley told the Voice that he was unaware that he had to report his wife’s income. But in October, after advice from MWD legal counsel, he amended is Statements of Economic Interest, which are filed on “700” forms, to include that income.

“The advice was: rather than get in a big battle over this why don’t you go ahead and report it,” Foley said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I decided for the sake of solving this, and not having it look like it has been hidden—put it in there.”

Mary Jane Foley and husband John V. Foley, MWD Chairman

Foley says that all of his wife’s consulting income goes into a separate trust fund for her children, that he has no access to it and that there is no “co-mingling” of her income with his. He and his wife have separate bank accounts, he adds, and file separate tax returns – all of which he believes exempt him from the state reporting law.

“To be extra safe, I went ahead and reported,” despite his exemption, he said. “I really to this moment think that I don’t have to report it,” he insisted.

But Foley’s interpretation of the law, however sincere, is conclusively incorrect.

Public officials must report spousal income unless they have a pre or post nuptial agreement, according to Tara Stock, a spokesperson for the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Stock would not comment on Foley’s case, but told the Voice by e-mail that “The general rule is that in order for a spouse’s income to possibly be exempt from reporting, there must be a valid prenuptial or postnuptial agreement and a separate property agreement.”

When asked if he had a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement with his wife Foley responded, “Separate tax returns, separate accounts. Yes.” But when asked again, specifically, if he had any nuptial agreements with his wife, Foley said he did not.

Even if Foley had signed a nuptial agreement with his wife, however, he would not have been required to file it with the FPPC or MWD. In fact, according to Stock, the Commission would only seek verification of such an agreement if an official complaint had been filed with her agency.

Foley said that his wife is winding down her consulting work. “In the last two years she’s done very little work and probably will close her business because she does not really want to spend that much time on that stuff anymore. She kind of hates the regulatory field.”