The year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass, with multiple stumbles before and after the epic January blaze that obliterated Pacific Palisades, so it was hard to imagine that things could get worse in the closing days of 2025.
But they have.
A blistering Times investigation found that the Fire Department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps.
In other words, there was a blatant attempt to mislead the public.
And Bass representatives said they requested that her comments in the final minutes of a video interview — in which she admitted that “both sides botched it” in the Eaton and Palisades fires — be edited out because she thought the interview had ended.
Please.
Together, these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history. We’re a long way from knowing whether she can survive and win a second term, but Austin Beutner and any other legitimate contenders are being handed gifts that will keep on giving.
In the case of the altered report, kudos to Times reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle, who have been trying all year to keep the LAFD honest, which is no easy task.
In the latest bombshell dropped by the two reporters, they dug up seven drafts of the department’s self-analysis, or after-action report, and found that it had been altered multiple times to soften damning conclusions.
Language saying LAFD did not fully pre-deploy all crews and engines, despite the forecast of extreme conditions, was removed.
Language saying some crews waited more than an hour for their assignments during the fire was removed.
A section on “failures” became a section on “primary challenges.”
A reference to a violation of national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter injury and death was removed.
The central role of the earlier Lachman fire, allegedly started by an arsonist, was also sanitized. A reference to that unchecked brushfire, which later sparked the inferno, was deleted from one draft, then restored in the final version. But only in a brief reference.
Even before the smoke cleared on Jan. 7, I had one former LAFD official telling me he was certain the earlier fire had not been properly extinguished. Crews should have been sitting on it, but as The Times has reported, that didn’t happen.
What we now know with absolute clarity is that the LAFD cannot be trusted to honestly and thoroughly investigate itself. And yet after having fired one chief, Bass asked the current chief to do an investigation.
Sue Pascoe, who lost her home in the fire and is among the thousands who don’t yet know whether they can afford to rebuild because their insurance — if they had any — doesn’t cover the cost of new construction. Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, had this reaction to the latest expose:
“To kill 12 people, let almost 7,000 homes/businesses burn, and to destroy belongings, memorabilia and memories stored in the homes — someone needs to be held accountable.”
But who will that be?
Although the altered after-action report seems designed to have minimized blame for the LAFD, if not the mayor, the Bass administration said it wasn’t involved.
“We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report,” a spokesperson told the Times. “We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”
Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times she noticed only small differences between the final report and an earlier report she had seen.
“I was completely OK with it,” she said, adding that the final report “did not in any way obfuscate anything.”
Well I’m not OK with it, and I suspect a lot of people who lost everything in the fire feel the same way. As I’ve said before, the conditions were horrific, and there’s little doubt that firefighters did their best. But the evidence is mounting that the department’s brass blew it, or, to borrow a phrase from Bass, “botched it.”
As The Times’ David Zahniser reported, Bass said her “botched” comment came in a casual context after the podcast had ended. She also said she has made similar comments about the emergency response on numerous occasions.
She has made some critical comments, and as I mentioned, she replaced the fire chief. But the preparation and response were indeed botched. So why did her office want that portion of the interview deleted?
Let’s not forget, while we’re on the subject of botching things, that Bass left the country in the days before the fire despite warnings of catastrophic conditions. And while there’s been some progress in the recovery, her claim that things are moving at “lightning speed” overlooks the fact that thousands of burned out properties haven’t seen a hammer or a hardhat.
On her watch, we’ve seen multiple misses.
On the blunderous hiring and quick departure of a rebuilding czar. On the bungled hiring of a management team whose role was not entirely clear. On a failed tax relief plan for fire victims. On the still-undelievered promise of some building fee waivers.
In one of the latest twists on the after-action report, Tchekmedyian and Pringle report that the LAFD author was upset about revisions made without his involvement.
What a mess, and the story is likely to smolder into the new year.
If only the Lachman fire had been as watered down as the after-action report.
The Visalia Unified School District’s public board meeting in March was a festive and upbeat affair with a performance by a student chamber music group and a commendation for a high school cheer squad.
When the seven-member board went into closed session, the agenda was decidedly grimmer: Six former students were suing the district over sexual abuse they said they suffered decades earlier at the hands of a kindergarten teacher.
Out of public view, the board unanimously approved a $3-million settlement with provisions intended to keep the community in the dark forever.
Under the terms of the agreement, the women, their lawyers and families were prohibited from disclosing any aspect of the deal, including the amount they were paid.
“The Parties agree that they will respond to any inquiries they may receive from any third parties regarding the lawsuit by stating only that ‘the matter has been resolved’ without any further elaboration, discussion or disclosure,” the settlement instructed.
It was Visalia’s fifth secret settlement in the last three years, one of a flurry that districts are quietly approving statewide.
A Times investigation found that California’s public schools, faced with a historic surge of sex abuse lawsuits, are increasingly using nondisclosure agreements and other tactics that celebrities and big corporations rely upon to protect their reputation.
At least 25 districts have resolved suits or other claims in ways that hinder taxpayers from learning about the allegations, the cost of settling them or both, The Times found. These hidden settlements total more than $53 million. Legal experts say that these settlements may be in violation of state law, and that some should be investigated by the state attorney general.
While shielding the names and identifying details of sex abuse victims is widely accepted, courts have repeatedly said the public has a right to know allegations leveled against government employees and the money spent to compensate accusers.
Lawmakers in California have also largely banned the use of confidentiality provisions for settlements involving sexual assault and harassment, on the belief that transparency helps victims heal and leads to public accountability.
“There’s very significant problems with government agencies acting like private companies and requesting or insisting on these kinds of nondisclosure or non-disparagement clauses in settlement agreements,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, based in San Rafael. “Because at the end of the day, the government works for the people and the people have a very compelling interest in knowing about claims and allegations of misconduct.”
California’s school districts are now grappling with a deluge of sex abuse cases resulting from a 2019 law that changed the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse and created a new window — from 2020 to 2022 — in which anyone could file a lawsuit for past alleged abuse.
The Times identified more than 1,000 lawsuits against school districts filed since 2020, with more than 750 filed due to the new law. Some lawsuits allege abuse as far back as the 1950s. Most cases are still making their way through the courts, but more than 330 have settled for roughly $700 million, with $435 million paid out for claims related to the new law. The state projects that local education agencies will ultimately pay out between $2 billion and $3 billion once cases work through the court system. Much of this is taking place outside the public eye.
Sex abuse cases against California school districts
The Times reached out to more than 930 school districts in California and submitted public records requests seeking information about all sexual misconduct suits and claims filed against districts and copies of settlement agreements for all sexual misconduct suits since Jan. 1, 2020. Click on the expand icon to see details for settled cases including court documents and settlement agreements.
Case information is up to date as of March 1, 2025, although some cases may have since settled and are not reflected. Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District refused to turn over any records. Los Angeles Unified only provided a list of AB218 cases as of June 2024, and settlements executed through January 2025. See something missing or incorrect? Contact matt.hamilton@latimes.com.
Gabrielle LaMarr LeMeeLOS ANGELES TIMES
In Visalia, confidentiality clauses negotiated by district lawyers acknowledged the public’s right to obtain the information — and then attempted to make sure they never would. Four agreements specifically barred former students receiving secret payouts from “directly or indirectly” encouraging others to file a request under the state Public Records Act — the method The Times used to review copies of agreements referenced in this story.
A spokesperson for Visalia Unified declined an interview request, and the school district did not answer written questions.
Anaheim Union High School District paid three men, who said they had been abused by a junior high teacher, $3.3 million in 2023.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Several districts attempted to prevent allegations from becoming public by paying off accusers before they filed lawsuits that would have detailed the claims of sex abuse for anyone to see.
Anaheim Union High School District paid a trio of men who said they had been abused by a junior high teacher $3.3 million in 2023 after their attorney sent the district a draft of a lawsuit he said he was prepared to file in Superior Court.
The terms of the payout two years ago required that the men and their lawyers “not seek publicity relating to the facts and circumstances giving rise” to their claims, and indeed, the settlements have not been previously reported.
John Bautista, a spokesperson for Anaheim Union, said in a statement that the district and its insurer settled the draft lawsuits after going through discovery in a related case and “did not want to incur additional expenses of filing a lawsuit.”
“Nothing in the agreement would prevent the claimant/plaintiff from speaking with the press concerning the facts of the case if the press contacted [them],” Bautista said.
At least one district paid an accuser before anything was put in writing, records show. Victor Elementary School District in the High Desert negotiated a $350,000 settlement with one former student after his lawyer relayed abuse allegations in a phone call. Asked by The Times for a document describing the claimed misconduct, a district official said no such records existed.
Some districts suggest the confidentiality restrictions are needed to avoid a “snowball effect” of further litigation.
San Diego Unified, hit by more than a dozen lawsuits over alleged sex abuse since 2020, has settled four for a total of $2.44 million, each with a confidentiality clause that, at a minimum, prevents the accuser or her lawyer from disclosing the settlement amount. One of the settlements blocks the accuser from discussing the matter with anyone except her lawyer or financial advisor or in response to a subpoena.
San Diego officials acknowledged that confidentiality is ultimately limited — the documents can be disclosed via public records requests — but the district proceeded with pursuing restrictions on the accusers and their representatives.
“The purpose is to keep plaintiffs’ lawyers from using these settlements as marketing tools,” said James Canning, a spokesman for San Diego Unified.
Former state Sen. Connie Leyva, seen here while in the Legislature in 2019, said she was taken aback by school districts using confidentiality provisions. “That sounds illegal,” Leyva said.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Efforts to curb the use of secret settlements gained momentum in the 1980s, with growing public awareness of how confidentiality agreements had kept the public in the dark about environmental or health hazards, such as asbestos.
In 2016, California prohibited settlement agreements that block the disclosure of factual information about sexual abuse or any sex offense that could be prosecuted as a felony.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, lawmakers in 2018 passed the STAND Act, which prohibits nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment, discrimination and other sexual assault cases that don’t rise to felony prosecution. Three years later, the Silenced No More Act widened the prohibition on nondisclosure agreements to include any harassment case. The law still gives victims the option to protect their identity.
The lead sponsor of both bills, former state Sen. Connie Leyva, said she was taken aback by school districts using confidentiality provisions.
“That sounds illegal,” said Leyva, now the executive director of public radio and TV station KVCR. “We did not speak specifically about children or about schools, but it shouldn’t be happening.” She added, “Our bill was meant to apply to everyone everywhere.”
Several settlement agreements obtained by The Times included caveats by stating they were “confidential to the extent allowed by law,” or contained similar carve-outs. Experts said such provisos still have the effect of muzzling a victim’s speech and hindering public accountability.
“While it’s possible that these work-arounds don’t violate the letter of the STAND Act, they certainly violate its spirit,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School, who co-authored a study on the effect of the STAND Act in L.A. courts.
Southern Kern Unified School District agreed to pay $600,000 to a former student who alleged sex abuse and included an acknowledgment of the STAND Act in the agreement. Still, the settlement bars the former student, Corey Neufer, from “actively” publicizing the deal.
Reached by phone, Neufer said that although he deliberately chose to sue under his own name, rather than as John Doe, he was told that the confidentiality provision was standard and necessary for the final settlement.
“That was one of the stipulations — that I don’t speak about it or give any details,” said Neufer, who indicated the confidentiality was far broader than the text of his settlement suggests. “My lawyer instructed me to not talk about the case.”
The STAND Act allows for plaintiffs or claimants to put language in a settlement agreement that shields their identity and disclosure of any facts that could lead to their identity. However, if a public official or government agency — such as a school district — is part of the settlement, that language cannot be included.
Of the dozens of settlements reviewed by The Times, two specifically noted that the accuser wanted confidentiality to shield their identity.
Several had restrictions that appeared to exceed the STAND Act, such as a 2024 settlement for $787,500 paid by Ceres Unified to a custodian who said she was sexually harassed by a colleague. The signed agreement states that the settlement, its terms and any belief that the district or its employees engaged in unlawful behavior were all confidential. If asked, the custodian could only say, “The matter has been resolved.”
David Viss, an assistant superintendent at Ceres Unified, said in an email that the agreement complied with the law: “We believe the settlement agreement is consistent with the STAND Act.”
The overwhelming majority of sex abuse cases filed against school districts reach a settlement. For districts, a settlement can be more cost-effective than mounting a legal defense through a jury trial, and unlike a panel of jurors, a settlement provides a level of fiscal certainty. At times, the decision to settle is driven less by school board members than an insurance company or liability coverage provider.
John Manly, whose law firm specializes in childhood sex abuse, said school districts and their insurance providers frequently ask for confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses when negotiating a payout.
Lawyer John Manly, seen at his law offices in Irvine in 2023, has represented sex abuse survivors for more than 20 years. He says that confidentiality agreements “benefit one person, which is the perpetrator, and those who enable them.”
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“We get these requests all the time, and we decline,” Manly said. “Confidentiality agreements benefit one person, which is the perpetrator, and those who enable them.”
At Los Angeles Unified School District, scores of people accused former San Fernando High School wrestling coach Terry Gillard of abuse. In 2022, LAUSD agreed to pay 23 accusers a total of $52 million to settle molestation and abuse claims — a settlement negotiated by Manly’s law firm.
A year later, LAUSD agreed to pay three other women who alleged abuse by Gillard a total of $7.5 million.
Although those represented by Manly’s team did not have a confidentiality or non-disparagement agreement in their settlement, LAUSD sought an extensive confidentiality agreement for the payout to the three other women, curtailing discussion of the settlement and underlying abuse claims.
That settlement barred their lawyer from making any sort of statement — or encouraging others to make a statement — about the compensation deal, and barred comments that could “defame, disparage or in any way criticize” LAUSD, its employees and leaders.
Only the women, their lawyer, “immediate family” and “tax professional” could know about the settlement, according to the agreement.
“If asked about the status of this dispute, plaintiffs counsel may only state, ‘they have voluntarily and fully resolved their claims against the Los Angeles Unified School District,’ or words to that effect,” declares the settlement agreement.
The lawyer for the women, Anthony DeMarco, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Manly said the State Bar of California should investigate lawyers on both sides who agree to language that they know conflicts with state law. And he called on Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate school districts that continue to lock victims into such restrictive agreements.
“It’s wrong. It’s bad for the community and it’s bad for the victim. The lawyers that do it — defense and plaintiff — should be ashamed of themselves.”
L.A. Unified, which has added confidentiality provisions in at least seven settlements since 2020, defended its practices as a way to amicably resolve litigation, according to a statement from a spokesperson.
“These settlement agreements keep the settlement details, such as the amount, confidential. They do not prohibit the disclosure of the facts behind the claims,” the LAUSD spokesperson said.
Some legal experts want Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate school districts that continue to lock victims into restrictive nondisclosure agreements.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
While several districts use secrecy provisions in settlement agreements to hide the details of sex abuse cases, others, like Visalia Unified, also are able to keep payouts quiet by approving them in closed session at regular school board meetings.
In 2021, the president of the board of Wasco Union High School District received a letter from a lawyer based in Iowa who represented a former Wasco student. The lawyer said his client had been sexually abused nearly a decade earlier by her former coach and teacher, and accused her then-principal, Kevin Tallon, among others, of not taking appropriate steps when confronted with evidence of abuse.
Tallon, now Wasco’s superintendent, was named as a defendant in the draft lawsuit, and the lawyer included a copy. He gave the district 14 business days to respond.
“If I do not hear back from you, I will proceed with the lawsuit,” wrote the lawyer, Thomas Burke.
The letter touched off a negotiation that culminated at the Wasco school board’s final meeting of 2021. The meeting’s agenda for the closed session was circumspect: “Conference with Legal Counsel — Settlement Agreement.” But behind closed doors, the board voted 5 to 0 to approve a settlement, according to meeting minutes, ensuring that there would probably never be a public airing of the allegations against the teacher or superintendent. The meeting minutes reflect only that a settlement was approved — not the amount or nature of the abuse accusations. The district paid $475,000 in the settlement, a sum that The Times obtained via records request.
Tallon, the superintendent who was named in the draft lawsuit, declined an interview but provided written responses to questions. He said the district and its staff “fulfilled its duties diligently and with integrity,” and said the settlement was approved in a way that adhered to the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law.
“The settlement was not intended to conceal allegations; it was meant to responsibly limit risk and bring closure to a sensitive situation,” Tallon said in the statement.
Legal experts agreed that Wasco’s school board complied with the Brown Act — thereby exposing that law’s limits and potential loopholes. Since the threat of litigation did not result in a filed case or formal claim, the board could treat it as “anticipated litigation” and discuss it in closed session, away from the public. And since settlement offers — like any contract negotiation — are not final until agreed upon, they too can be approved in closed session, away from the public.
Loy, the legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the Brown Act could be amended to proactively require public agencies to ultimately disclose the details and amounts of settlements. School districts, he added, could also opt to be more open, without being compelled to by state lawmakers.
“Agencies owe a duty to the public to be more proactive and more transparent, even than the bare minimum letter of the law might allow them to get away with,” Loy said.
The lack of transparency also coincides with a crisis in local news, which has resulted in far less coverage of city halls, courthouses and school boards from the Imperial Valley to the shores of Eureka.
At one time, newspapers big and small had reporters at school board meetings who probably would have noticed settlements on the agenda and submitted records requests to reveal them.
With local media absent, agencies have quietly approved settlements in closed session, with no watchdog to suss out the underlying facts.
“Diligent people or reporters know to do that: Please give me copies of every settlement approved this week or this month,” said Loy, the First Amendment Coalition’s legal director. “But that requires an extra step.”
FERNDALE, Calif. — Like many of California’s fairs, the one in Humboldt County is a cherished local institution, beloved for its junk food, adorable baby animals and exhibits of local arts and crafts. Rock star chef Guy Fieri, who grew up in town, even turns up to host the chili cook-off.
But along with its Ferris wheels and funnel cakes, the Humboldt County event shares something darker in common with a number of California’s 77 local fairs: It has been racked with fraud and mismanagement.
The fair’s former bookkeeper is due in federal court early next year after pleading guilty to stealing $430,000 from the fair, according to documents filed in federal court. Police had arrested her after catching up with her at a local casino.
Humboldt is hardly an outlier. A Los Angeles Times investigation has found that one-third of the state’s 77 fairs — hallowed celebrations of the state’s agrarian tradition — have been plagued by an array of problems. Workers from at least four fairs have been prosecuted in the last few years for theft, bribery or embezzlement, with more than $1 million stolen, according to a Times review of criminal court filings. State auditors have accused officials at dozens of other fairs of misspending millions more, according to a Times review. Ventura suffered a cash heist, Santa Clara a kickback scheme, and across much of California, public funds have been spent in violation of state rules, including on prime rib steaks and fancy wines while once-proud fairgrounds crumble into disrepair.
A great horned owl performs for visitors during the raptor show at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Drawing on thousands of pages of court filings, audits and public records from more than three dozen counties, along with scores of interviews, The Times identified at least 25 fairs where prosecutors, state auditors or government officials have accused employees in the last decade of misusing taxpayer money, pressuring businesses for bribes or treating public resources as their own. At still more fairs, officials have been called out in government reports or lawsuits for glaring failures of good governance.
Collectively, the fairs bring in more than $400 million a year in revenue, and many fairgoers see them as priceless cultural events honoring California‘s agricultural heritage and their local communities.
But despite their crucial role, The Times found that the state and county leaders overseeing these fairs have often failed to step in — even when problems are glaring or have been denounced by auditors or judges. The state department of Food and Agriculture oversees 52 of the local fairs through district agricultural associations. An additional 22, plus the state fair and two citrus fairs, are in the state’s “network of fairs,” meaning they receive some state funding but are overseen by local governments and nonprofits.
“There needs to be more accountability,” said John Moot, a San Diego lawyer who represented a carnival company that has sued both the San Diego and Orange County fairs — both of which are overseen by the state.
Last year that carnival company, Talley Amusements, was paid $500,000 by the San Diego County Fair to settle a lawsuit that alleged fair officials had engaged in bid-rigging when they went to hand out a multimillion-dollar contract to run rides and games on the midway. A San Diego County judge wrote that the evidence he reviewed “supports an inference of ‘favoritism,’ fraud’ and ‘corruption’ as to the award of public contracts, although no such definitive findings are made herein.”
Local newspapers called on the state to do something. When asked about the case, California officials said only that they continue “to review the circumstances of this case to determine whether further guidance or compliance measures are warranted.”
State officials also took a tolerant stance toward problems that the California state auditor uncovered. In 2019, an audit found that top officials at the Kern County Fair and in the state had allowed “gross mismanagement to continue unchecked for years.” The audit revealed as well that the Kern district agricultural association’s board of directors, appointed by the governor, had feasted on lobster dinners and fine wines paid by fair funds but failed to provide effective oversight. Kern fair officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
County leaders and local nonprofits have not always been better stewards. Some have failed to notice or take action as fair officials stole money or allowed fairgrounds to fall into debt or disrepair — even when grand juries warned there were problems.
“Not surprised,” said David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University who is well-versed in local fairs. “There are generations of farmers and generations of networks of neighbors, friends and family members [who run these fairs]. They help each other. How business is done is insular. It’s not open or transparent.” At the same time, he said, “fairs are big money.” Put all those things together, he said, and the conditions are ripe for mismanagement and corruption.
Although many county fairs operate without incident, scandals sometimes erupt from the most mundane of matters.
Last year, Shasta County agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a 9-year-old girl and her family after sheriff’s deputies seized her goat. The girl had raised the goat, a floppy eared brown and white guy known as Cedar, as part of the fair’s agricultural program, then changed her mind about watching a beloved animal turn into meat. But fair officials refused to allow her to back out; instead the county dispatched deputies across Northern California in pursuit of the animal, which was eventually butchered.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom said “the state recognizes the challenges facing some of California’s fairgrounds and takes concerns about governance and accountability very seriously.”
In a separate statement, the California Department of Food and Agriculture said that “the difficulties uncovered at some fairs” should not overshadow their larger contributions. “These institutions serve as vital community hubs that play a key role in emergency response, as they support local economies.”
Fairgrounds are becoming increasingly important in the state’s disaster planning. During many of California’s recent wildfires, local fairgrounds have served as staging areas for firefighters and other emergency responders. Displaced animals find refuge there. They’ve also served as crucial evacuation centers — about 600 people, for example, lived at the Butte County fairgrounds in Chico for months after the 2018 Camp fire. Fairgrounds have become so essential to disaster response that the state has recently awarded tens of millions of dollars to upgrade facilities such as showers and kitchens that could be used for evacuees.
Yet in many counties, fairgrounds are in a state of disrepair. The Times identified more than a dozen that are plagued by leaky roofs, corroded and unsafe electrical systems, faulty plumbing, dangerously dilapidated grandstands and other unsafe conditions. This is partly because of mismanagement, but also because state funding for fairs has declined in recent years. Fair finances have also been hard hit by the declining popularity of horse racing.
“I think back to how full the fair used to be,” said Jeannie Fulton, gesturing to Humboldt’s half-empty fairgrounds during the August celebration.
“County fairs are still really valuable, but they are mismanaged in a lot of ways. We all see the grounds just deteriorating,” added Fulton, who runs the Humboldt County Farm Bureau. “They need to be run better.”
Mindy Romero, director of USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy, said fair management may not be the most pressing issue facing state leaders but “there should be some accountability … these people are in charge of large amounts of money, and public trust and public resources.”
A judge, left, tries to decide which Boer goat has the best qualities and features during the Boer goat competition with 4-H club members, right, at the Humboldt County Fair.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
County fairs are “supposed to be a place where everybody can come together, family and friends and you bring the kids … it’s these rituals and communities that we really need to take care of. If a community hears that their local fair is stealing it can make [people] even more distrustful of government,” she said.
‘Capricious abuse of power’
California’s first fair was held in 1854, in what is now downtown San Francisco. It was so popular that the idea quickly spread, to Humboldt County in 1861, to San Diego in 1880 and to Orange County in 1890. (Los Angeles didn’t get in on the tradition until 1922.)
In 1887, the state Legislature, anxious to harness and regulate the explosion of fairs, created district agricultural associations, mini state agencies that manage the fairgrounds in each county and are run by boards appointed by the governor.
California is a dramatically different place than it was in 1887, but the governance structure of fairs largely remains. The 52 district agricultural associations each put on a fair, guided by boards appointed by the governor.
The 25 other fairs in the state’s network of fairs follow a similar program. The goal is for fairs to pay for themselves through admission prices, contracts with vendors and other sources of revenue, but they also receive state funding. District agricultural associations get about $2.6 million a year from the state’s general fund; an additional $5 million from sales tax revenue at the fairs is handed out each year to all 77 fairs in the network.
Each of the fairs strives to reflect its particular community. In Nevada County, the rides and food vendors set up beneath towering pine trees, and a central attraction this year was a model-train exhibit showcasing the historic derailment of circus cars. The Los Angeles County Fair, one of the state’s biggest, is known for its preposterous combination of junk food: deep-fried Oreos and pickles; corn wrapped in Cheetos; chicken sandwiches with funnel cake buns. The Calaveras County Fair features a frog-jumping contest, a nod to Mark Twain’s famous short story.
In small rural counties, said Jeff Griffiths, an Inyo County supervisor who is president of the California State Assn. of Counties, the fairgrounds serve as a “social and cultural hub” for the community all year.
“They are our event space,” he said. “We don’t have SoFi Stadium. Concerts, car shows, dances, on and on, they all happen at the fairgrounds.”
Lavish expenditures have for decades been part of the mix. A 1986 state audit blasted the entire fair system, detailing state funds spent on parties, meals and expensive custom belt buckles, along with other misuses of state funds. These include improper contracting — a problem that continues to plague many fairs.
Five years ago, Ventura Flores was pleased when the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds hired his firm — 4 Diamond Security — to provide security as public health officials ramped up a massive COVID-19 testing and eventually vaccination operation at the fairgrounds. It was the middle of the pandemic, and 4 Diamond had little other work.
A performer with Animal Cracker Conspiracy high-fives Ryder Lang, 7, next to his friend Abigail Fielding, 6, both from San José, after entering the Santa Clara County Fair in San José.
(Nhat V. Meyer / Bay Area News Group)
When he got the job, however, the fair’s event’s director, Obdulia Banuelos-Esparza, informed Flores that he would have to slip her cash in secret if he wanted to keep his contract, according to a statement of probable cause produced by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office.
After he refused, Flores said, Banuelos-Esparza began to complain about the work his guards were doing, accusing them of shirking their duties and sleeping on the job. Flores said he doubted the accusations but also feared he would lose the job if he didn’t pay, according to the statement of probable cause.
Flores, who did not respond to emails and calls from The Times, told investigators that he began giving Banuelos-Esparza between $2,500 and $4,000 a month, continuing for more than a year until sometime in the fall of 2021, when he said he stopped paying her. Then fair officials, who had told him they would be renewing 4 Diamond’s contract for another six months, instead terminated it, according to the statement of probable cause.
The Santa Clara County district attorney began investigating the scheme in 2023, following a whistleblower complaint. In 2024, after reviewing Banuelos’ bank records, the district attorney charged her with extortion and bribery, issuing a statement that the fairgrounds should be “where our community goes for fairs, festivals, and fun. Not felonies.”
There had long been warning signs: A 2019 Santa Clara County grand jury report uncovered “financial reports lacking in accuracy and transparency, violations of local bingo regulations, questionable tax reporting practices” and other problems. The grand jury also called out “a relaxed level of scrutiny and oversight” by the county.
After Banuelos’ conviction, the district attorney released another statement, declaring the midway now “free of corruption.”
“Ride the Ferris wheel, see the farm animals, eat the food and have fun knowing our fair is safe,” he said.
Santa Clara’s fair is not the only one that has strayed from accepted contracting rules. State audits in recent years have called out more than a dozen fairs, including those in Santa Barbara and Turlock, for violating state policies by handing out money without signed agreements or competitive bidding.
In Fresno, officials required some vendors doing business with the Big Fresno Fair to also make donations to a foundation associated with the fair, according to a 2022 state audit. The foundation then purchased more than $21,000 in gift cards that it gifted to fair employees, along with more than $68,000, according to the audit.
In a statement, fair officials said that the fair and its board of directors “took the findings of the audit very seriously” and made corrective actions that satisfied the state. The statement added that the fair plays a vital role in the community: in addition to the fair itself, the fairgrounds host 250 events each year and are used during fires and other emergencies.
In San Diego, after Talley Amusements filed its 2022 lawsuit alleging bid-rigging, several fair officials testified in sworn depositions that Talley had actually won the bid, but that a top fair official had pressured them to change the scores to award the contract to a different company. One fair official also testified that she had shredded the original scoring documents.
Fair officials, however, admitted no wrongdoing, with a spokesperson in 2023 calling the allegations of bid-rigging “hogwash.” In a counterclaim filed in San Diego Superior Court, the fair accused Talley of submitting “a sham bid” that might have compromised public safety. In a statement, fair officials said that they agreed to settle the suit only because it was cheaper to do so than litigating it in court.
An ‘inside job’ safe heist
Every year, local fairs in California handle millions of dollars in cash — sometimes without the most basic of safeguards.
In the summer of 2022, a man working at the Ventura County Fair gave some accomplices a hot tip: A safe in the fair’s office was packed with more than half a million dollars in cash.
Alexander Piceno, who worked at the Ventura County Fair, was arrested and charged and pleaded guilty — along with three burglars — to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
(Ventura County District Attorney’s office)
On the night of Aug. 10, Alexander Piceno, 30, who worked for a company processing cash for the fair, left the front door to the state’s 31st District Agricultural Assn. unlocked. He also left instructions on how to open the office safe, according to prosecutors. Two burglars walked in, loaded up $572,000 in paper bills (which weighed upward of 50 pounds), and jumped in a car headed back to Los Angeles.
Police quickly realized they were dealing with an inside job, and four conspirators including Piceno were later arrested and charged, and pleaded guilty to felonies, according to the district attorney. Most of the money, however, was never recovered; prosecutors said they seized $6,100 and a used pickup truck purchased with proceeds from the crime.
The Times, reviewing state audits, grand jury reports, lawsuits and criminal filings, found allegations of theft or inappropriate use of public resources at more than a dozen fairs, including those in San Joaquin, Monterey,Yolo, Inyo, Fresno and Tulare counties.
In Orange County, according to a 2018 state audit, officials at the 32nd District Agricultural Assn. caught an employee embezzling more than $9,000 in ticket sales but failed to report the crime to the state as required. The audit also noted that fair officials had spent more than $220,000 on catering without explaining a clear business purpose. In a statement, fair officials said that “issues cited” in the audit “have been addressed” and “new policies are in place regarding meals.” The statement added that all audits since have been “free of any issues.”
September 2022 photo of fairgoers on the opening day of the Tulare County Fair.
(Ari Plachta / Sacramento Bee)
In several cases, including in Stanislaus County, public money went for fancy meals for the board members who are supposed to be watching over the fair’s operations. State audits sometime read like restaurant menus, with references to prime rib, salmon, ribeye steak and fine wine. It is one of many perks board members enjoy, which also often include free tickets for themselves and friends to concerts, dinners and the fair itself.
State auditors also found plenty of gifts to staff, including bowling nights and credit card charges (with and without required receipts) for flowers, gift cards and even clothes.
One employee at the Stanislaus fair spent thousands of dollars on clothes, which he told state auditors he bought for himself and members of the maintenance staff to wear during fair events. But the audit also found that other members of the maintenance staff members “do not recall receiving these items.”
‘The fair got off scot-free’
September 2017 photo of turkeys competing in a race during the annual Kern County Fair in Bakersfield.
(Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images)
In Kern County, the state’s 15th Agricultural Assn. has put on a fair every year since 1916, except for two years during the Great Depression and in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Held in Bakersfield, in the heart of California’s farm belt, the fair has an operating budget of about $10 million and welcomes around 350,000 people each year, according to officials.
To pull it off, the fair has a permanent staff of about 20, and hires about 500 temporary employees during the season. But investigators from the state auditor’s office found that some of these workers appeared far from wholly committed to their fair duties.
In a 2019 audit, investigators found that several employees maintained second jobs — which they performed not in their spare time, but while clocked into their posts at the fair. “Several witnesses told us that Employee A and the other employees left work for almost the entire day nearly every day for weeks or even months at a time,” the audit said.
The fair’s board of directors and chief executive had their own issues, auditors found, among them a taste for expensive dinners and bottles of fine Cabernet, paid for with fair credit cards despite rules against it. In addition, auditors found that at least one of the dinners, which included six board members gabbing together across a table, may have violated the state’s open meeting law that forbids a quorum of a governing body without public notice. Over a three-year period, the audit found, the Kern County fair “spent $132,584 on credit card purchases for which [it] had no supporting receipts.”
Auditors reserved some of their harshest criticisms for the lack of oversight by state officials that they said had allowed all of these “improper governmental activities.”
The audit reported that the department’s Fairs and Expositions branch did not conduct a single compliance audit of the more than 50 fairs under its purview from 2011 to 2017.
The audit generated a series of outraged headlines in newspapers around the state, many of them focused on the fine food and wine that board members and the CEO, Michael Olcott, had feasted upon. Olcott did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The audit’s release did not bring about many substantive changes in the leadership at the Kern County Fair. Six years later, the CEO remains in his post, as do most of the board members who oversaw the fair back then. In a statement, state officials said they “worked with the fair’s leadership to implement corrective measures, including stronger financial controls, enhanced segregation of duties, and updated board and staff training on state contracting and accounting policies.” Officials also said they continue to “monitor the fair’s progress through periodic reviews and ongoing technical assistance.”
After the audit, the Kern County district attorney opened a case against the fair’s maintenance supervisor, accusing him of recycling scrap metal from the fair and pocketing the proceeds. The case is set to go to trial next year. The maintenance supervisor, Joe Hebert, maintains his innocence. He said that he is being scapegoated.
“Recycling scrap metal was part of my job and I had permission to do it,” Hebert said. “I could walk away and plead to a misdemeanor and I’m not going to do it,” he said.
Mark Salvaggio, a former Bakersfield City Council member who served on the Kern County fair board for several years ending in 2014, said he was outraged at the outcome of the audit. “The fair got off scot-free,” he said.
After the state auditor released its Kern County report, the California Department of Food and Agriculture threw its own auditing team into high gear. The division has released more than 15 audits since 2020 — after years of doing few or none.
A series of blistering reports have been issued, followed in some cases by radical changes in personnel.
In a statement, officials said they are “committed to ensuring transparency and accountability at California’s fairs.” Officials noted that audits check for compliance with state policies, and that the oversight program has been reestablished after being “drastically reduced” because of funding cuts during the Great Recession.
But some local officials say the audits, although they may be exposing examples of misspending, sometimes unfairly tarnish fair officials who often struggle to run vital community events with little training in government accounting and contracting rules.
“This is a very unique business that isn’t found anywhere else in state government,” said Corey Oakley, the CEO of the Napa Valley Expo. “We have live animals, corn dogs, flowers, drag queens, horse racing, tractors, destruction Derby …”
Griffiths of the California Assn. of Counties said he thinks the state should either fully fund fairs and “make them viable, or they should turn them over to local communities so we can run them.”
“They have to follow state requirements, but there is none of the benefit of state funding that comes with that,” he said. Meanwhile, he added, “the deferred maintenance on these things is outrageous. They’re falling apart.”
‘I pray we can keep this alive’
Bella Gantt uses her feet as she performs her blindfolded archery show for visitors at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale. Gantt is the only person in the world who performs a blindfolded archery show using her feet.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In Humboldt, where the fair is in the state’s network of fairs but not directly overseen by the state, Fair Board President Andy Titus said he is desperate to make sure his local fair survives. His is the oldest continuously operating festival in the state but is reeling from the double blow of embezzlement and the loss of horse racing. The fairgrounds are also in tough shape; in 2023 the fair had to perform emergency repairs to make its grandstands safe enough for people to sit in them.
“I’ve loved this fair since I was a little kid,” said Titus, a local dairy farmer who said he grew up showing animals at the fair and now helps his children do the same. “I pray we can keep this alive.”
The fairgrounds sprawl across a flat coastal plain near the Victorian-era town of Ferndale. A few miles away, the cliffs of California’s Lost Coast rise up and white-capped waves pound into miles of empty beach. In a county with more trees than people, many residents say their yearly visits to the fair help them gather as a community in a part of California known for its isolation.
Nina Tafarella stole more than $430,000 from the Humboldt County Fair, according to a federal criminal complaint, and has pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges.
(Humboldt County Sheriff )
But the beloved fair has not been well-run for some time, according to federal district court records in San Francisco. At the beginning of 2021, it was in “total chaos,” as one manager would describe to an FBI agent.
The organization was 15 years behind on auditing its books, and the state was threatening to cut off its funding. The fair also lacked a bookkeeper, a secretary and other assistance. Even the office itself was in disarray, with “approximately a year worth of backlogged mail and files on the floor,” an interim manager would later tell the FBI, according to an agent’s report of his interview with her filed in federal court.
The manager turned to Craigslist for a bookkeeper who could help make sense of the disorder, and found Nina Tafarella.
At this point in her life, Tafarella was recovering from an addiction to prescription painkillers, was drinking heavily and was in a state of stress and occasional seeming mania, according to a sentencing memo her attorney filed in federal court. She was also deep in the grips of a compulsive gambling problem, which got so bad that she started lying to her friends about how much time she was spending at casinos.
But she was cheerful and helpful and she was charging only about $35 to $40 an hour for her time, far less than a certified public accountant might have cost the fair. She was hired.
It all came crashing down at a nearby dance studio. Tafarella had also worked there and had stolen a little more than $20,000. But unlike the fair, the owner of the studio noticed and filed a police report.
After learning of that on Nov. 8, 2022, the fair called in an outside financial expert, who took a quick look at the books and discovered the ghost payroll scheme. Fair officials shut down Tafarella’s access to their bank accounts and by Nov. 15, when Tafarella was next due at work, an FBI agent was at the fair offices.
She was arrested and later pleaded guilty to five counts of wire fraud.
“Everybody was shocked,” Titus said. “She was always very friendly when you saw her.”
In filings to the judge overseeing her sentencing, Tafarella said she has now stopped drinking and gambling and that it “makes me sick” to think about what she has done. Still, in asking for a reduced sentence, her lawyer also argued that if the fair had been better run, it might have been able to protect itself from Tafarella’s schemes.
“Remarkably, the fair association’s own witnesses admitted that the Board was not financially savvy and had little to no idea about the state of the fair’s finances,” Tafarella’s lawyer wrote. Instead, “they solely entrusted Ms. Tafarella, who was suffering from visibly anxious, drinking too much, acting erratically, and reliably to be found at the casino, with the fair association’s finances.”
Titus, whose job at the fair is volunteer, said he has been working almost around the clock ever since to try to save the operation, which saw smaller crowds this year, partly because the lack of horse racing.
“It’s sad,” said Robin Eckerfield, a 72-year-old educator from Fortuna, who said she goes to the fair every year to sample the food, look at the crafts and catch up with old friends. She couldn’t help but notice the reduced offerings this year, a result of the fair’s dire circumstances.
The crowds were small enough that even on the day of the famous chili cook-off, celebrity chef Fieri could walk through the fair mostly unmobbed.
Fieri, who said he got his start as a chef with a pretzel cart at the fairgrounds as a kid, said he returns whenever he can to support it.
While handing out the trophies, Fieri delivered an impassioned speech to the paltry but enthusiastic crowd about the importance of supporting the annual event.
“We all love the fair,” he told the small crowd. “This is our fair. We have to keep it going. We have to keep it alive.”
For Bass and LAFD, there’s no watering down how bad 2025 has been
The year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass, with multiple stumbles before and after the epic January blaze that obliterated Pacific Palisades, so it was hard to imagine that things could get worse in the closing days of 2025.
But they have.
A blistering Times investigation found that the Fire Department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps.
In other words, there was a blatant attempt to mislead the public.
And Bass representatives said they requested that her comments in the final minutes of a video interview — in which she admitted that “both sides botched it” in the Eaton and Palisades fires — be edited out because she thought the interview had ended.
Please.
Together, these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history. We’re a long way from knowing whether she can survive and win a second term, but Austin Beutner and any other legitimate contenders are being handed gifts that will keep on giving.
In the case of the altered report, kudos to Times reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle, who have been trying all year to keep the LAFD honest, which is no easy task.
In the latest bombshell dropped by the two reporters, they dug up seven drafts of the department’s self-analysis, or after-action report, and found that it had been altered multiple times to soften damning conclusions.
Language saying LAFD did not fully pre-deploy all crews and engines, despite the forecast of extreme conditions, was removed.
Language saying some crews waited more than an hour for their assignments during the fire was removed.
A section on “failures” became a section on “primary challenges.”
A reference to a violation of national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter injury and death was removed.
The central role of the earlier Lachman fire, allegedly started by an arsonist, was also sanitized. A reference to that unchecked brushfire, which later sparked the inferno, was deleted from one draft, then restored in the final version. But only in a brief reference.
Even before the smoke cleared on Jan. 7, I had one former LAFD official telling me he was certain the earlier fire had not been properly extinguished. Crews should have been sitting on it, but as The Times has reported, that didn’t happen.
What we now know with absolute clarity is that the LAFD cannot be trusted to honestly and thoroughly investigate itself. And yet after having fired one chief, Bass asked the current chief to do an investigation.
Sue Pascoe, who lost her home in the fire and is among the thousands who don’t yet know whether they can afford to rebuild because their insurance — if they had any — doesn’t cover the cost of new construction. Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, had this reaction to the latest expose:
“To kill 12 people, let almost 7,000 homes/businesses burn, and to destroy belongings, memorabilia and memories stored in the homes — someone needs to be held accountable.”
But who will that be?
Although the altered after-action report seems designed to have minimized blame for the LAFD, if not the mayor, the Bass administration said it wasn’t involved.
“We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report,” a spokesperson told the Times. “We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”
Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times she noticed only small differences between the final report and an earlier report she had seen.
“I was completely OK with it,” she said, adding that the final report “did not in any way obfuscate anything.”
Well I’m not OK with it, and I suspect a lot of people who lost everything in the fire feel the same way. As I’ve said before, the conditions were horrific, and there’s little doubt that firefighters did their best. But the evidence is mounting that the department’s brass blew it, or, to borrow a phrase from Bass, “botched it.”
As The Times’ David Zahniser reported, Bass said her “botched” comment came in a casual context after the podcast had ended. She also said she has made similar comments about the emergency response on numerous occasions.
She has made some critical comments, and as I mentioned, she replaced the fire chief. But the preparation and response were indeed botched. So why did her office want that portion of the interview deleted?
Let’s not forget, while we’re on the subject of botching things, that Bass left the country in the days before the fire despite warnings of catastrophic conditions. And while there’s been some progress in the recovery, her claim that things are moving at “lightning speed” overlooks the fact that thousands of burned out properties haven’t seen a hammer or a hardhat.
On her watch, we’ve seen multiple misses.
On the blunderous hiring and quick departure of a rebuilding czar. On the bungled hiring of a management team whose role was not entirely clear. On a failed tax relief plan for fire victims. On the still-undelievered promise of some building fee waivers.
In one of the latest twists on the after-action report, Tchekmedyian and Pringle report that the LAFD author was upset about revisions made without his involvement.
What a mess, and the story is likely to smolder into the new year.
If only the Lachman fire had been as watered down as the after-action report.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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School districts keep public in the dark about big sex abuse payouts
The Visalia Unified School District’s public board meeting in March was a festive and upbeat affair with a performance by a student chamber music group and a commendation for a high school cheer squad.
When the seven-member board went into closed session, the agenda was decidedly grimmer: Six former students were suing the district over sexual abuse they said they suffered decades earlier at the hands of a kindergarten teacher.
Out of public view, the board unanimously approved a $3-million settlement with provisions intended to keep the community in the dark forever.
Under the terms of the agreement, the women, their lawyers and families were prohibited from disclosing any aspect of the deal, including the amount they were paid.
“The Parties agree that they will respond to any inquiries they may receive from any third parties regarding the lawsuit by stating only that ‘the matter has been resolved’ without any further elaboration, discussion or disclosure,” the settlement instructed.
It was Visalia’s fifth secret settlement in the last three years, one of a flurry that districts are quietly approving statewide.
A Times investigation found that California’s public schools, faced with a historic surge of sex abuse lawsuits, are increasingly using nondisclosure agreements and other tactics that celebrities and big corporations rely upon to protect their reputation.
At least 25 districts have resolved suits or other claims in ways that hinder taxpayers from learning about the allegations, the cost of settling them or both, The Times found. These hidden settlements total more than $53 million. Legal experts say that these settlements may be in violation of state law, and that some should be investigated by the state attorney general.
While shielding the names and identifying details of sex abuse victims is widely accepted, courts have repeatedly said the public has a right to know allegations leveled against government employees and the money spent to compensate accusers.
Lawmakers in California have also largely banned the use of confidentiality provisions for settlements involving sexual assault and harassment, on the belief that transparency helps victims heal and leads to public accountability.
“There’s very significant problems with government agencies acting like private companies and requesting or insisting on these kinds of nondisclosure or non-disparagement clauses in settlement agreements,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, based in San Rafael. “Because at the end of the day, the government works for the people and the people have a very compelling interest in knowing about claims and allegations of misconduct.”
California’s school districts are now grappling with a deluge of sex abuse cases resulting from a 2019 law that changed the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse and created a new window — from 2020 to 2022 — in which anyone could file a lawsuit for past alleged abuse.
The Times identified more than 1,000 lawsuits against school districts filed since 2020, with more than 750 filed due to the new law. Some lawsuits allege abuse as far back as the 1950s. Most cases are still making their way through the courts, but more than 330 have settled for roughly $700 million, with $435 million paid out for claims related to the new law. The state projects that local education agencies will ultimately pay out between $2 billion and $3 billion once cases work through the court system. Much of this is taking place outside the public eye.
Sex abuse cases against California school districts
The Times reached out to more than 930 school districts in California and submitted public records requests seeking information about all sexual misconduct suits and claims filed against districts and copies of settlement agreements for all sexual misconduct suits since Jan. 1, 2020. Click on the expand icon to see details for settled cases including court documents and settlement agreements.
Case information is up to date as of March 1, 2025, although some cases may have since settled and are not reflected. Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District refused to turn over any records. Los Angeles Unified only provided a list of AB218 cases as of June 2024, and settlements executed through January 2025.
See something missing or incorrect? Contact matt.hamilton@latimes.com.
Gabrielle LaMarr LeMeeLOS ANGELES TIMES
In Visalia, confidentiality clauses negotiated by district lawyers acknowledged the public’s right to obtain the information — and then attempted to make sure they never would. Four agreements specifically barred former students receiving secret payouts from “directly or indirectly” encouraging others to file a request under the state Public Records Act — the method The Times used to review copies of agreements referenced in this story.
A spokesperson for Visalia Unified declined an interview request, and the school district did not answer written questions.
Anaheim Union High School District paid three men, who said they had been abused by a junior high teacher, $3.3 million in 2023.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Several districts attempted to prevent allegations from becoming public by paying off accusers before they filed lawsuits that would have detailed the claims of sex abuse for anyone to see.
Anaheim Union High School District paid a trio of men who said they had been abused by a junior high teacher $3.3 million in 2023 after their attorney sent the district a draft of a lawsuit he said he was prepared to file in Superior Court.
The terms of the payout two years ago required that the men and their lawyers “not seek publicity relating to the facts and circumstances giving rise” to their claims, and indeed, the settlements have not been previously reported.
John Bautista, a spokesperson for Anaheim Union, said in a statement that the district and its insurer settled the draft lawsuits after going through discovery in a related case and “did not want to incur additional expenses of filing a lawsuit.”
“Nothing in the agreement would prevent the claimant/plaintiff from speaking with the press concerning the facts of the case if the press contacted [them],” Bautista said.
At least one district paid an accuser before anything was put in writing, records show. Victor Elementary School District in the High Desert negotiated a $350,000 settlement with one former student after his lawyer relayed abuse allegations in a phone call. Asked by The Times for a document describing the claimed misconduct, a district official said no such records existed.
Some districts suggest the confidentiality restrictions are needed to avoid a “snowball effect” of further litigation.
San Diego Unified, hit by more than a dozen lawsuits over alleged sex abuse since 2020, has settled four for a total of $2.44 million, each with a confidentiality clause that, at a minimum, prevents the accuser or her lawyer from disclosing the settlement amount. One of the settlements blocks the accuser from discussing the matter with anyone except her lawyer or financial advisor or in response to a subpoena.
San Diego officials acknowledged that confidentiality is ultimately limited — the documents can be disclosed via public records requests — but the district proceeded with pursuing restrictions on the accusers and their representatives.
“The purpose is to keep plaintiffs’ lawyers from using these settlements as marketing tools,” said James Canning, a spokesman for San Diego Unified.
Former state Sen. Connie Leyva, seen here while in the Legislature in 2019, said she was taken aback by school districts using confidentiality provisions. “That sounds illegal,” Leyva said.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Efforts to curb the use of secret settlements gained momentum in the 1980s, with growing public awareness of how confidentiality agreements had kept the public in the dark about environmental or health hazards, such as asbestos.
In 2016, California prohibited settlement agreements that block the disclosure of factual information about sexual abuse or any sex offense that could be prosecuted as a felony.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, lawmakers in 2018 passed the STAND Act, which prohibits nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment, discrimination and other sexual assault cases that don’t rise to felony prosecution. Three years later, the Silenced No More Act widened the prohibition on nondisclosure agreements to include any harassment case. The law still gives victims the option to protect their identity.
The lead sponsor of both bills, former state Sen. Connie Leyva, said she was taken aback by school districts using confidentiality provisions.
“That sounds illegal,” said Leyva, now the executive director of public radio and TV station KVCR. “We did not speak specifically about children or about schools, but it shouldn’t be happening.” She added, “Our bill was meant to apply to everyone everywhere.”
Several settlement agreements obtained by The Times included caveats by stating they were “confidential to the extent allowed by law,” or contained similar carve-outs. Experts said such provisos still have the effect of muzzling a victim’s speech and hindering public accountability.
“While it’s possible that these work-arounds don’t violate the letter of the STAND Act, they certainly violate its spirit,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School, who co-authored a study on the effect of the STAND Act in L.A. courts.
Southern Kern Unified School District agreed to pay $600,000 to a former student who alleged sex abuse and included an acknowledgment of the STAND Act in the agreement. Still, the settlement bars the former student, Corey Neufer, from “actively” publicizing the deal.
Reached by phone, Neufer said that although he deliberately chose to sue under his own name, rather than as John Doe, he was told that the confidentiality provision was standard and necessary for the final settlement.
“That was one of the stipulations — that I don’t speak about it or give any details,” said Neufer, who indicated the confidentiality was far broader than the text of his settlement suggests. “My lawyer instructed me to not talk about the case.”
The STAND Act allows for plaintiffs or claimants to put language in a settlement agreement that shields their identity and disclosure of any facts that could lead to their identity. However, if a public official or government agency — such as a school district — is part of the settlement, that language cannot be included.
Of the dozens of settlements reviewed by The Times, two specifically noted that the accuser wanted confidentiality to shield their identity.
Several had restrictions that appeared to exceed the STAND Act, such as a 2024 settlement for $787,500 paid by Ceres Unified to a custodian who said she was sexually harassed by a colleague. The signed agreement states that the settlement, its terms and any belief that the district or its employees engaged in unlawful behavior were all confidential. If asked, the custodian could only say, “The matter has been resolved.”
David Viss, an assistant superintendent at Ceres Unified, said in an email that the agreement complied with the law: “We believe the settlement agreement is consistent with the STAND Act.”
The overwhelming majority of sex abuse cases filed against school districts reach a settlement. For districts, a settlement can be more cost-effective than mounting a legal defense through a jury trial, and unlike a panel of jurors, a settlement provides a level of fiscal certainty. At times, the decision to settle is driven less by school board members than an insurance company or liability coverage provider.
John Manly, whose law firm specializes in childhood sex abuse, said school districts and their insurance providers frequently ask for confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses when negotiating a payout.
Lawyer John Manly, seen at his law offices in Irvine in 2023, has represented sex abuse survivors for more than 20 years. He says that confidentiality agreements “benefit one person, which is the perpetrator, and those who enable them.”
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“We get these requests all the time, and we decline,” Manly said. “Confidentiality agreements benefit one person, which is the perpetrator, and those who enable them.”
At Los Angeles Unified School District, scores of people accused former San Fernando High School wrestling coach Terry Gillard of abuse. In 2022, LAUSD agreed to pay 23 accusers a total of $52 million to settle molestation and abuse claims — a settlement negotiated by Manly’s law firm.
A year later, LAUSD agreed to pay three other women who alleged abuse by Gillard a total of $7.5 million.
Although those represented by Manly’s team did not have a confidentiality or non-disparagement agreement in their settlement, LAUSD sought an extensive confidentiality agreement for the payout to the three other women, curtailing discussion of the settlement and underlying abuse claims.
That settlement barred their lawyer from making any sort of statement — or encouraging others to make a statement — about the compensation deal, and barred comments that could “defame, disparage or in any way criticize” LAUSD, its employees and leaders.
Only the women, their lawyer, “immediate family” and “tax professional” could know about the settlement, according to the agreement.
“If asked about the status of this dispute, plaintiffs counsel may only state, ‘they have voluntarily and fully resolved their claims against the Los Angeles Unified School District,’ or words to that effect,” declares the settlement agreement.
The lawyer for the women, Anthony DeMarco, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Manly said the State Bar of California should investigate lawyers on both sides who agree to language that they know conflicts with state law. And he called on Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate school districts that continue to lock victims into such restrictive agreements.
“It’s wrong. It’s bad for the community and it’s bad for the victim. The lawyers that do it — defense and plaintiff — should be ashamed of themselves.”
L.A. Unified, which has added confidentiality provisions in at least seven settlements since 2020, defended its practices as a way to amicably resolve litigation, according to a statement from a spokesperson.
“These settlement agreements keep the settlement details, such as the amount, confidential. They do not prohibit the disclosure of the facts behind the claims,” the LAUSD spokesperson said.
Some legal experts want Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate school districts that continue to lock victims into restrictive nondisclosure agreements.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
While several districts use secrecy provisions in settlement agreements to hide the details of sex abuse cases, others, like Visalia Unified, also are able to keep payouts quiet by approving them in closed session at regular school board meetings.
In 2021, the president of the board of Wasco Union High School District received a letter from a lawyer based in Iowa who represented a former Wasco student. The lawyer said his client had been sexually abused nearly a decade earlier by her former coach and teacher, and accused her then-principal, Kevin Tallon, among others, of not taking appropriate steps when confronted with evidence of abuse.
Tallon, now Wasco’s superintendent, was named as a defendant in the draft lawsuit, and the lawyer included a copy. He gave the district 14 business days to respond.
“If I do not hear back from you, I will proceed with the lawsuit,” wrote the lawyer, Thomas Burke.
The letter touched off a negotiation that culminated at the Wasco school board’s final meeting of 2021. The meeting’s agenda for the closed session was circumspect: “Conference with Legal Counsel — Settlement Agreement.” But behind closed doors, the board voted 5 to 0 to approve a settlement, according to meeting minutes, ensuring that there would probably never be a public airing of the allegations against the teacher or superintendent. The meeting minutes reflect only that a settlement was approved — not the amount or nature of the abuse accusations. The district paid $475,000 in the settlement, a sum that The Times obtained via records request.
Tallon, the superintendent who was named in the draft lawsuit, declined an interview but provided written responses to questions. He said the district and its staff “fulfilled its duties diligently and with integrity,” and said the settlement was approved in a way that adhered to the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law.
“The settlement was not intended to conceal allegations; it was meant to responsibly limit risk and bring closure to a sensitive situation,” Tallon said in the statement.
Legal experts agreed that Wasco’s school board complied with the Brown Act — thereby exposing that law’s limits and potential loopholes. Since the threat of litigation did not result in a filed case or formal claim, the board could treat it as “anticipated litigation” and discuss it in closed session, away from the public. And since settlement offers — like any contract negotiation — are not final until agreed upon, they too can be approved in closed session, away from the public.
Loy, the legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the Brown Act could be amended to proactively require public agencies to ultimately disclose the details and amounts of settlements. School districts, he added, could also opt to be more open, without being compelled to by state lawmakers.
“Agencies owe a duty to the public to be more proactive and more transparent, even than the bare minimum letter of the law might allow them to get away with,” Loy said.
The lack of transparency also coincides with a crisis in local news, which has resulted in far less coverage of city halls, courthouses and school boards from the Imperial Valley to the shores of Eureka.
At one time, newspapers big and small had reporters at school board meetings who probably would have noticed settlements on the agenda and submitted records requests to reveal them.
With local media absent, agencies have quietly approved settlements in closed session, with no watchdog to suss out the underlying facts.
“Diligent people or reporters know to do that: Please give me copies of every settlement approved this week or this month,” said Loy, the First Amendment Coalition’s legal director. “But that requires an extra step.”
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A Times investigation finds fraud, theft at California’s county fairs
FERNDALE, Calif. — Like many of California’s fairs, the one in Humboldt County is a cherished local institution, beloved for its junk food, adorable baby animals and exhibits of local arts and crafts. Rock star chef Guy Fieri, who grew up in town, even turns up to host the chili cook-off.
But along with its Ferris wheels and funnel cakes, the Humboldt County event shares something darker in common with a number of California’s 77 local fairs: It has been racked with fraud and mismanagement.
The fair’s former bookkeeper is due in federal court early next year after pleading guilty to stealing $430,000 from the fair, according to documents filed in federal court. Police had arrested her after catching up with her at a local casino.
Humboldt is hardly an outlier. A Los Angeles Times investigation has found that one-third of the state’s 77 fairs — hallowed celebrations of the state’s agrarian tradition — have been plagued by an array of problems. Workers from at least four fairs have been prosecuted in the last few years for theft, bribery or embezzlement, with more than $1 million stolen, according to a Times review of criminal court filings. State auditors have accused officials at dozens of other fairs of misspending millions more, according to a Times review. Ventura suffered a cash heist, Santa Clara a kickback scheme, and across much of California, public funds have been spent in violation of state rules, including on prime rib steaks and fancy wines while once-proud fairgrounds crumble into disrepair.
A great horned owl performs for visitors during the raptor show at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Drawing on thousands of pages of court filings, audits and public records from more than three dozen counties, along with scores of interviews, The Times identified at least 25 fairs where prosecutors, state auditors or government officials have accused employees in the last decade of misusing taxpayer money, pressuring businesses for bribes or treating public resources as their own. At still more fairs, officials have been called out in government reports or lawsuits for glaring failures of good governance.
Collectively, the fairs bring in more than $400 million a year in revenue, and many fairgoers see them as priceless cultural events honoring California‘s agricultural heritage and their local communities.
But despite their crucial role, The Times found that the state and county leaders overseeing these fairs have often failed to step in — even when problems are glaring or have been denounced by auditors or judges. The state department of Food and Agriculture oversees 52 of the local fairs through district agricultural associations. An additional 22, plus the state fair and two citrus fairs, are in the state’s “network of fairs,” meaning they receive some state funding but are overseen by local governments and nonprofits.
“There needs to be more accountability,” said John Moot, a San Diego lawyer who represented a carnival company that has sued both the San Diego and Orange County fairs — both of which are overseen by the state.
Last year that carnival company, Talley Amusements, was paid $500,000 by the San Diego County Fair to settle a lawsuit that alleged fair officials had engaged in bid-rigging when they went to hand out a multimillion-dollar contract to run rides and games on the midway. A San Diego County judge wrote that the evidence he reviewed “supports an inference of ‘favoritism,’ fraud’ and ‘corruption’ as to the award of public contracts, although no such definitive findings are made herein.”
Local newspapers called on the state to do something. When asked about the case, California officials said only that they continue “to review the circumstances of this case to determine whether further guidance or compliance measures are warranted.”
State officials also took a tolerant stance toward problems that the California state auditor uncovered. In 2019, an audit found that top officials at the Kern County Fair and in the state had allowed “gross mismanagement to continue unchecked for years.” The audit revealed as well that the Kern district agricultural association’s board of directors, appointed by the governor, had feasted on lobster dinners and fine wines paid by fair funds but failed to provide effective oversight. Kern fair officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
County leaders and local nonprofits have not always been better stewards. Some have failed to notice or take action as fair officials stole money or allowed fairgrounds to fall into debt or disrepair — even when grand juries warned there were problems.
“Not surprised,” said David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University who is well-versed in local fairs. “There are generations of farmers and generations of networks of neighbors, friends and family members [who run these fairs]. They help each other. How business is done is insular. It’s not open or transparent.” At the same time, he said, “fairs are big money.” Put all those things together, he said, and the conditions are ripe for mismanagement and corruption.
Although many county fairs operate without incident, scandals sometimes erupt from the most mundane of matters.
Last year, Shasta County agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a 9-year-old girl and her family after sheriff’s deputies seized her goat. The girl had raised the goat, a floppy eared brown and white guy known as Cedar, as part of the fair’s agricultural program, then changed her mind about watching a beloved animal turn into meat. But fair officials refused to allow her to back out; instead the county dispatched deputies across Northern California in pursuit of the animal, which was eventually butchered.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom said “the state recognizes the challenges facing some of California’s fairgrounds and takes concerns about governance and accountability very seriously.”
In a separate statement, the California Department of Food and Agriculture said that “the difficulties uncovered at some fairs” should not overshadow their larger contributions. “These institutions serve as vital community hubs that play a key role in emergency response, as they support local economies.”
Fairgrounds are becoming increasingly important in the state’s disaster planning. During many of California’s recent wildfires, local fairgrounds have served as staging areas for firefighters and other emergency responders. Displaced animals find refuge there. They’ve also served as crucial evacuation centers — about 600 people, for example, lived at the Butte County fairgrounds in Chico for months after the 2018 Camp fire. Fairgrounds have become so essential to disaster response that the state has recently awarded tens of millions of dollars to upgrade facilities such as showers and kitchens that could be used for evacuees.
Yet in many counties, fairgrounds are in a state of disrepair. The Times identified more than a dozen that are plagued by leaky roofs, corroded and unsafe electrical systems, faulty plumbing, dangerously dilapidated grandstands and other unsafe conditions. This is partly because of mismanagement, but also because state funding for fairs has declined in recent years. Fair finances have also been hard hit by the declining popularity of horse racing.
“I think back to how full the fair used to be,” said Jeannie Fulton, gesturing to Humboldt’s half-empty fairgrounds during the August celebration.
“County fairs are still really valuable, but they are mismanaged in a lot of ways. We all see the grounds just deteriorating,” added Fulton, who runs the Humboldt County Farm Bureau. “They need to be run better.”
Mindy Romero, director of USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy, said fair management may not be the most pressing issue facing state leaders but “there should be some accountability … these people are in charge of large amounts of money, and public trust and public resources.”
A judge, left, tries to decide which Boer goat has the best qualities and features during the Boer goat competition with 4-H club members, right, at the Humboldt County Fair.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
County fairs are “supposed to be a place where everybody can come together, family and friends and you bring the kids … it’s these rituals and communities that we really need to take care of. If a community hears that their local fair is stealing it can make [people] even more distrustful of government,” she said.
‘Capricious abuse of power’
California’s first fair was held in 1854, in what is now downtown San Francisco. It was so popular that the idea quickly spread, to Humboldt County in 1861, to San Diego in 1880 and to Orange County in 1890. (Los Angeles didn’t get in on the tradition until 1922.)
In 1887, the state Legislature, anxious to harness and regulate the explosion of fairs, created district agricultural associations, mini state agencies that manage the fairgrounds in each county and are run by boards appointed by the governor.
California is a dramatically different place than it was in 1887, but the governance structure of fairs largely remains. The 52 district agricultural associations each put on a fair, guided by boards appointed by the governor.
The 25 other fairs in the state’s network of fairs follow a similar program. The goal is for fairs to pay for themselves through admission prices, contracts with vendors and other sources of revenue, but they also receive state funding. District agricultural associations get about $2.6 million a year from the state’s general fund; an additional $5 million from sales tax revenue at the fairs is handed out each year to all 77 fairs in the network.
Each of the fairs strives to reflect its particular community. In Nevada County, the rides and food vendors set up beneath towering pine trees, and a central attraction this year was a model-train exhibit showcasing the historic derailment of circus cars. The Los Angeles County Fair, one of the state’s biggest, is known for its preposterous combination of junk food: deep-fried Oreos and pickles; corn wrapped in Cheetos; chicken sandwiches with funnel cake buns. The Calaveras County Fair features a frog-jumping contest, a nod to Mark Twain’s famous short story.
In small rural counties, said Jeff Griffiths, an Inyo County supervisor who is president of the California State Assn. of Counties, the fairgrounds serve as a “social and cultural hub” for the community all year.
“They are our event space,” he said. “We don’t have SoFi Stadium. Concerts, car shows, dances, on and on, they all happen at the fairgrounds.”
Lavish expenditures have for decades been part of the mix. A 1986 state audit blasted the entire fair system, detailing state funds spent on parties, meals and expensive custom belt buckles, along with other misuses of state funds. These include improper contracting — a problem that continues to plague many fairs.
Five years ago, Ventura Flores was pleased when the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds hired his firm — 4 Diamond Security — to provide security as public health officials ramped up a massive COVID-19 testing and eventually vaccination operation at the fairgrounds. It was the middle of the pandemic, and 4 Diamond had little other work.
A performer with Animal Cracker Conspiracy high-fives Ryder Lang, 7, next to his friend Abigail Fielding, 6, both from San José, after entering the Santa Clara County Fair in San José.
(Nhat V. Meyer / Bay Area News Group)
When he got the job, however, the fair’s event’s director, Obdulia Banuelos-Esparza, informed Flores that he would have to slip her cash in secret if he wanted to keep his contract, according to a statement of probable cause produced by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office.
After he refused, Flores said, Banuelos-Esparza began to complain about the work his guards were doing, accusing them of shirking their duties and sleeping on the job. Flores said he doubted the accusations but also feared he would lose the job if he didn’t pay, according to the statement of probable cause.
Flores, who did not respond to emails and calls from The Times, told investigators that he began giving Banuelos-Esparza between $2,500 and $4,000 a month, continuing for more than a year until sometime in the fall of 2021, when he said he stopped paying her. Then fair officials, who had told him they would be renewing 4 Diamond’s contract for another six months, instead terminated it, according to the statement of probable cause.
The Santa Clara County district attorney began investigating the scheme in 2023, following a whistleblower complaint. In 2024, after reviewing Banuelos’ bank records, the district attorney charged her with extortion and bribery, issuing a statement that the fairgrounds should be “where our community goes for fairs, festivals, and fun. Not felonies.”
Banuelos pleaded no contest to commercial bribery this summer, according to a news release from the Santa Clara County district attorney, and will pay restitution and serve felony probation, but avoided jail time. Reached by phone, she declined to comment.
There had long been warning signs: A 2019 Santa Clara County grand jury report uncovered “financial reports lacking in accuracy and transparency, violations of local bingo regulations, questionable tax reporting practices” and other problems. The grand jury also called out “a relaxed level of scrutiny and oversight” by the county.
After Banuelos’ conviction, the district attorney released another statement, declaring the midway now “free of corruption.”
“Ride the Ferris wheel, see the farm animals, eat the food and have fun knowing our fair is safe,” he said.
Santa Clara’s fair is not the only one that has strayed from accepted contracting rules. State audits in recent years have called out more than a dozen fairs, including those in Santa Barbara and Turlock, for violating state policies by handing out money without signed agreements or competitive bidding.
In Fresno, officials required some vendors doing business with the Big Fresno Fair to also make donations to a foundation associated with the fair, according to a 2022 state audit. The foundation then purchased more than $21,000 in gift cards that it gifted to fair employees, along with more than $68,000, according to the audit.
In a statement, fair officials said that the fair and its board of directors “took the findings of the audit very seriously” and made corrective actions that satisfied the state. The statement added that the fair plays a vital role in the community: in addition to the fair itself, the fairgrounds host 250 events each year and are used during fires and other emergencies.
In San Diego, after Talley Amusements filed its 2022 lawsuit alleging bid-rigging, several fair officials testified in sworn depositions that Talley had actually won the bid, but that a top fair official had pressured them to change the scores to award the contract to a different company. One fair official also testified that she had shredded the original scoring documents.
Fair officials, however, admitted no wrongdoing, with a spokesperson in 2023 calling the allegations of bid-rigging “hogwash.” In a counterclaim filed in San Diego Superior Court, the fair accused Talley of submitting “a sham bid” that might have compromised public safety. In a statement, fair officials said that they agreed to settle the suit only because it was cheaper to do so than litigating it in court.
An ‘inside job’ safe heist
Every year, local fairs in California handle millions of dollars in cash — sometimes without the most basic of safeguards.
In the summer of 2022, a man working at the Ventura County Fair gave some accomplices a hot tip: A safe in the fair’s office was packed with more than half a million dollars in cash.
Alexander Piceno, who worked at the Ventura County Fair, was arrested and charged and pleaded guilty — along with three burglars — to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
(Ventura County District Attorney’s office)
On the night of Aug. 10, Alexander Piceno, 30, who worked for a company processing cash for the fair, left the front door to the state’s 31st District Agricultural Assn. unlocked. He also left instructions on how to open the office safe, according to prosecutors. Two burglars walked in, loaded up $572,000 in paper bills (which weighed upward of 50 pounds), and jumped in a car headed back to Los Angeles.
Police quickly realized they were dealing with an inside job, and four conspirators including Piceno were later arrested and charged, and pleaded guilty to felonies, according to the district attorney. Most of the money, however, was never recovered; prosecutors said they seized $6,100 and a used pickup truck purchased with proceeds from the crime.
The Times, reviewing state audits, grand jury reports, lawsuits and criminal filings, found allegations of theft or inappropriate use of public resources at more than a dozen fairs, including those in San Joaquin, Monterey, Yolo, Inyo, Fresno and Tulare counties.
In Orange County, according to a 2018 state audit, officials at the 32nd District Agricultural Assn. caught an employee embezzling more than $9,000 in ticket sales but failed to report the crime to the state as required. The audit also noted that fair officials had spent more than $220,000 on catering without explaining a clear business purpose. In a statement, fair officials said that “issues cited” in the audit “have been addressed” and “new policies are in place regarding meals.” The statement added that all audits since have been “free of any issues.”
September 2022 photo of fairgoers on the opening day of the Tulare County Fair.
(Ari Plachta / Sacramento Bee)
In several cases, including in Stanislaus County, public money went for fancy meals for the board members who are supposed to be watching over the fair’s operations. State audits sometime read like restaurant menus, with references to prime rib, salmon, ribeye steak and fine wine. It is one of many perks board members enjoy, which also often include free tickets for themselves and friends to concerts, dinners and the fair itself.
State auditors also found plenty of gifts to staff, including bowling nights and credit card charges (with and without required receipts) for flowers, gift cards and even clothes.
One employee at the Stanislaus fair spent thousands of dollars on clothes, which he told state auditors he bought for himself and members of the maintenance staff to wear during fair events. But the audit also found that other members of the maintenance staff members “do not recall receiving these items.”
‘The fair got off scot-free’
September 2017 photo of turkeys competing in a race during the annual Kern County Fair in Bakersfield.
(Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images)
In Kern County, the state’s 15th Agricultural Assn. has put on a fair every year since 1916, except for two years during the Great Depression and in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Held in Bakersfield, in the heart of California’s farm belt, the fair has an operating budget of about $10 million and welcomes around 350,000 people each year, according to officials.
To pull it off, the fair has a permanent staff of about 20, and hires about 500 temporary employees during the season. But investigators from the state auditor’s office found that some of these workers appeared far from wholly committed to their fair duties.
In a 2019 audit, investigators found that several employees maintained second jobs — which they performed not in their spare time, but while clocked into their posts at the fair. “Several witnesses told us that Employee A and the other employees left work for almost the entire day nearly every day for weeks or even months at a time,” the audit said.
The fair’s board of directors and chief executive had their own issues, auditors found, among them a taste for expensive dinners and bottles of fine Cabernet, paid for with fair credit cards despite rules against it. In addition, auditors found that at least one of the dinners, which included six board members gabbing together across a table, may have violated the state’s open meeting law that forbids a quorum of a governing body without public notice. Over a three-year period, the audit found, the Kern County fair “spent $132,584 on credit card purchases for which [it] had no supporting receipts.”
Auditors reserved some of their harshest criticisms for the lack of oversight by state officials that they said had allowed all of these “improper governmental activities.”
The audit reported that the department’s Fairs and Expositions branch did not conduct a single compliance audit of the more than 50 fairs under its purview from 2011 to 2017.
The audit generated a series of outraged headlines in newspapers around the state, many of them focused on the fine food and wine that board members and the CEO, Michael Olcott, had feasted upon. Olcott did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The audit’s release did not bring about many substantive changes in the leadership at the Kern County Fair. Six years later, the CEO remains in his post, as do most of the board members who oversaw the fair back then. In a statement, state officials said they “worked with the fair’s leadership to implement corrective measures, including stronger financial controls, enhanced segregation of duties, and updated board and staff training on state contracting and accounting policies.” Officials also said they continue to “monitor the fair’s progress through periodic reviews and ongoing technical assistance.”
After the audit, the Kern County district attorney opened a case against the fair’s maintenance supervisor, accusing him of recycling scrap metal from the fair and pocketing the proceeds. The case is set to go to trial next year. The maintenance supervisor, Joe Hebert, maintains his innocence. He said that he is being scapegoated.
“Recycling scrap metal was part of my job and I had permission to do it,” Hebert said. “I could walk away and plead to a misdemeanor and I’m not going to do it,” he said.
Mark Salvaggio, a former Bakersfield City Council member who served on the Kern County fair board for several years ending in 2014, said he was outraged at the outcome of the audit. “The fair got off scot-free,” he said.
After the state auditor released its Kern County report, the California Department of Food and Agriculture threw its own auditing team into high gear. The division has released more than 15 audits since 2020 — after years of doing few or none.
A series of blistering reports have been issued, followed in some cases by radical changes in personnel.
In a statement, officials said they are “committed to ensuring transparency and accountability at California’s fairs.” Officials noted that audits check for compliance with state policies, and that the oversight program has been reestablished after being “drastically reduced” because of funding cuts during the Great Recession.
But some local officials say the audits, although they may be exposing examples of misspending, sometimes unfairly tarnish fair officials who often struggle to run vital community events with little training in government accounting and contracting rules.
“This is a very unique business that isn’t found anywhere else in state government,” said Corey Oakley, the CEO of the Napa Valley Expo. “We have live animals, corn dogs, flowers, drag queens, horse racing, tractors, destruction Derby …”
Griffiths of the California Assn. of Counties said he thinks the state should either fully fund fairs and “make them viable, or they should turn them over to local communities so we can run them.”
“They have to follow state requirements, but there is none of the benefit of state funding that comes with that,” he said. Meanwhile, he added, “the deferred maintenance on these things is outrageous. They’re falling apart.”
‘I pray we can keep this alive’
Bella Gantt uses her feet as she performs her blindfolded archery show for visitors at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale. Gantt is the only person in the world who performs a blindfolded archery show using her feet.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In Humboldt, where the fair is in the state’s network of fairs but not directly overseen by the state, Fair Board President Andy Titus said he is desperate to make sure his local fair survives. His is the oldest continuously operating festival in the state but is reeling from the double blow of embezzlement and the loss of horse racing. The fairgrounds are also in tough shape; in 2023 the fair had to perform emergency repairs to make its grandstands safe enough for people to sit in them.
“I’ve loved this fair since I was a little kid,” said Titus, a local dairy farmer who said he grew up showing animals at the fair and now helps his children do the same. “I pray we can keep this alive.”
The fairgrounds sprawl across a flat coastal plain near the Victorian-era town of Ferndale. A few miles away, the cliffs of California’s Lost Coast rise up and white-capped waves pound into miles of empty beach. In a county with more trees than people, many residents say their yearly visits to the fair help them gather as a community in a part of California known for its isolation.
Nina Tafarella stole more than $430,000 from the Humboldt County Fair, according to a federal criminal complaint, and has pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges.
(Humboldt County Sheriff )
But the beloved fair has not been well-run for some time, according to federal district court records in San Francisco. At the beginning of 2021, it was in “total chaos,” as one manager would describe to an FBI agent.
The organization was 15 years behind on auditing its books, and the state was threatening to cut off its funding. The fair also lacked a bookkeeper, a secretary and other assistance. Even the office itself was in disarray, with “approximately a year worth of backlogged mail and files on the floor,” an interim manager would later tell the FBI, according to an agent’s report of his interview with her filed in federal court.
The manager turned to Craigslist for a bookkeeper who could help make sense of the disorder, and found Nina Tafarella.
At this point in her life, Tafarella was recovering from an addiction to prescription painkillers, was drinking heavily and was in a state of stress and occasional seeming mania, according to a sentencing memo her attorney filed in federal court. She was also deep in the grips of a compulsive gambling problem, which got so bad that she started lying to her friends about how much time she was spending at casinos.
But she was cheerful and helpful and she was charging only about $35 to $40 an hour for her time, far less than a certified public accountant might have cost the fair. She was hired.
Fair officials did not check her references. If they had done a thorough background check, they might have learned that Tafarella had been accused of embezzling money from two previous businesses in Southern California where she worked as a bookkeeper. She had been fired, according to an account her own attorney filed in federal court, but the police and local district attorney had declined to file charges.
Tafarella was a friendly face in the office, bringing in coffee some days. But she also had some quirks: Her co-workers noticed that she did not reliably show up for work and she was “frequently observed at the casino” up the road from the fair office, according to an account her lawyer filed in federal court.
She was also using the fair’s financial software for her own gain. She created fake employee names — very similar to actual employees but often with the addition of the middle initial “J” — and began cutting huge checks to these fictional people, with the funds going right into accounts she controlled.
It all came crashing down at a nearby dance studio. Tafarella had also worked there and had stolen a little more than $20,000. But unlike the fair, the owner of the studio noticed and filed a police report.
After learning of that on Nov. 8, 2022, the fair called in an outside financial expert, who took a quick look at the books and discovered the ghost payroll scheme. Fair officials shut down Tafarella’s access to their bank accounts and by Nov. 15, when Tafarella was next due at work, an FBI agent was at the fair offices.
She did not show up. A short time later, a fair board member went up to the local Bear River Casino and found Tafarella at the gaming tables, according to a report from an FBI agent filed in federal court.
She was arrested and later pleaded guilty to five counts of wire fraud.
“Everybody was shocked,” Titus said. “She was always very friendly when you saw her.”
In filings to the judge overseeing her sentencing, Tafarella said she has now stopped drinking and gambling and that it “makes me sick” to think about what she has done. Still, in asking for a reduced sentence, her lawyer also argued that if the fair had been better run, it might have been able to protect itself from Tafarella’s schemes.
“Remarkably, the fair association’s own witnesses admitted that the Board was not financially savvy and had little to no idea about the state of the fair’s finances,” Tafarella’s lawyer wrote. Instead, “they solely entrusted Ms. Tafarella, who was suffering from visibly anxious, drinking too much, acting erratically, and reliably to be found at the casino, with the fair association’s finances.”
Titus, whose job at the fair is volunteer, said he has been working almost around the clock ever since to try to save the operation, which saw smaller crowds this year, partly because the lack of horse racing.
“It’s sad,” said Robin Eckerfield, a 72-year-old educator from Fortuna, who said she goes to the fair every year to sample the food, look at the crafts and catch up with old friends. She couldn’t help but notice the reduced offerings this year, a result of the fair’s dire circumstances.
The crowds were small enough that even on the day of the famous chili cook-off, celebrity chef Fieri could walk through the fair mostly unmobbed.
Fieri, who said he got his start as a chef with a pretzel cart at the fairgrounds as a kid, said he returns whenever he can to support it.
While handing out the trophies, Fieri delivered an impassioned speech to the paltry but enthusiastic crowd about the importance of supporting the annual event.
“We all love the fair,” he told the small crowd. “This is our fair. We have to keep it going. We have to keep it alive.”
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