Author: Roger Bloom

In matters of public policy, Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan and her City Council majority — Anthony Kuo, Tammy Kim and Mike Carroll — have a pattern of ignoring or shutting out public input, staff recommendations, and established procedures.

The OC Power Authority (OCPA) was established by Mayor Khan and Councilmembers Carroll and Kuo in 2019 with little review — even though they were committing millions of Irvine taxpayer dollars. OCPA is now the subject of three audits (City of Irvine, County of Orange, California State Auditor) and there is an ongoing FBI investigation.

An Irvine Community News & Views investigation shows that a huge influx of “dark money” — funding an unprecedented deluge of political “hit piece” mailers against Irvine City Councilmember Larry Agran — originated from the two largest developers in Irvine: The Irvine Company and FivePoint.

So far, $355,000 from the developers has been funneled to the Building Industry Association of Southern California PAC (BIA), which then transferred the money to the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. The Party then sent a large portion of the money —  $270,000 — to a PAC (Working Families United), which has close ties to disgraced Democratic campaign consultant Melahat Rafiei and Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan. (Rafiei and Khan are the subjects of an ongoing FBI investigation into corruption in Irvine.)

Hit pieces, paid for by hard-to-trace “dark money” Political Action Committees (PACs), have begun fouling Irvine voters’ mailboxes, taking aim at Councilmember Larry Agran. The mailers falsely claim Agran supported the establishment of the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA).

Crummit was also the treasurer of Khan’s 2020 mayoral campaign and is handling her re-election campaign finances this year.

During a contentious marathon meeting on September 27th, the Irvine City Council approved two controversial long-term contracts for facilities to be built in the Great Park.

The actions came despite objections from residents that the agreements and supporting information totaling more than 600 pages were made public just a week before the Council meeting and were being pushed through without public review or input by the City’s Finance Commission, Planning Commission or Transportation Commission.

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe of corruption in Anaheim burst into the news in May, the term “Anaheim Cabal” — a secretive, backroom group of business and government leaders — entered the political lexicon.

A timeline outlines what has been uncovered by Irvine Community News & Views and other news organizations. The timeline includes gaps and raises more questions than it answers, but an array of facts show that something has been going on in Irvine for years that requires further investigation.