Curt Pringle. president of Curt Pringle & Associates, with Councilwoman Natalie Meeks at OCV!be Unveiled on September 25, 2024.
By DUANE J. ROBERTS Editor & Publisher
The Anaheim Investigator has evidence which suggests that Councilwoman Natalie Meeks might have deliberately withheld information from her public calendar to conceal the fact she met with a registered lobbyist hired by a company that seeks future contracts with the city potentially worth millions of dollars.
The lobbyist in question, Curt Pringle, president of Curt Pringle & Associates, not only has known Meeks since 2007 when she served under him as director of public works while he was mayor, but campaign finance paperwork filed with the city clerk shows both he and his wife contributed several thousand dollars to her city council campaign in 2022.
The omission was discovered by a confidential source who tipped off The Investigatora few days after noticing glaring discrepancies between two December 2024 entries in public calendars posted online by Meeks and Deputy City Manager Ted White, who was also with the councilwoman when she met Pringle.
Meeks’ December 3rd entry about the Glydways meeting.
White’s entry, however, was more detailed. Not only did he state the topic of the meeting but recorded the names and titles of everybody present. According to him there were nine people, including himself, Meeks, and Rudy Emami, the current director of public works. And who was the lobbyist? “Curt Pringle, Curt Pringle & Associates,” he typed.
White’s December 3rd entry about the Glydways meeting.
This is not the first time Meeks has failed to disclose her interactions with Pringle. Several photographs The Investigator obtained of OCV!be Unveiled, a ceremony which took place on September 25, 2024, not only reveal the councilwoman was present, but she can be seen mingling with both Pringle and Matthew Hicks, another registered lobbyist.
One image shows Meeks standing next to Don Wagner, an Orange County supervisor who serves the third district. Pringle can be seen on her right, along with Hicks and Paul Simonds, who was then senior vice president of Curt Pringle & Associates. Directly behind them is a photo collage composed of Anaheim Ducks hockey players.
The Investigator has no evidence that city business was discussed during this encounter. And a thorough review of Meeks public calendar for the month of September shows that she didn’t even bother to report that she attended this ceremony. However, to be completely fair, neither did Mayor Ashleigh Aitken, who was there as well.
Simonds, Hicks, Pringle, Meeks, and Wagner.
Meeks close relationship with Pringle spans across two decades. During her tenure as public works director, which began in 2007, she championed many of the same projects he backed as mayor, including building ARTIC near the Angel Stadium. She, like him, also favored a streetcar system connecting the Anaheim Resort with the Platinum Triangle.
Her loyalty to Pringle was handsomely rewarded in 2022 when he not only endorsed her for city council but, along with his wife Alexis, pumped $4,400 into her campaign. About a month after Meeks emerged victorious in that race, photos The Investigator has in its possession show her hanging out at Curt Pringle & Associates annual holiday bash.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic, plus revelations Sidhu was under investigation by the FBI for corruption, put discussions about these matters on hold. The ball was later picked up by the Anaheim Transportation Network, the quasi-public company that operates a fleet of electric buses which shuttle tourists and workers around the Anaheim Resort.
An email obtained by The Investigator in 2020.
Glydways, the firm that hired Pringle as a lobbyist, is a high-tech company headquartered in San Francisco. Though not a streetcar manufacturer, it is developing small driverless vehicles, one option city officials are now considering in preparation for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which is expected to draw millions of visitors.
On its website, Glydways claims cities will spend less on infrastructure if they adopt their system. Maybe so. However, it still might be a tough sell if it eventually comes before the city council. Such transit projects require millions of dollars in federal grants. And with Donald Trump in power, its not a sure thing Anaheim will get them.
From Glydways website.
For the record, The Investigator reached out to Meeks for comment. For example, we asked her everything from why she didn’t include Pringle’s name on her December 3rd entry to inquiring if her office initiated the Glydways meeting. We questioned her about what dealings she had with Pringle and Hicks at the OCV!be Unveiled ceremony.
The councilwoman issued the following statement:
The OCVibe event was a celebration for the initial phase of construction. No business was discussed and, under the guidelines in place at the time, it was not a meeting listed on my public calendar.
The December 3 meetings in Northern California were coordinated through city staff at the request of those transportation vendors. They were both educational meetings to learn about the transportation technologies each company is pursuing.
Several questions were emailed to Mike Lyster, chief communications officer for the city, which were also copied to other city officials, including the city ethics officer. Because we were aware of Meeks close ties to Pringle, our primary concern was whether or not she, or her senior policy aide, set up the meeting on his behalf.
In response, Lyster wrote:
The meeting was not initiated by Mayor Pro Tem Meeks or her office. Meeks did not bring the company to our attention.
Anaheim Public Works had been talking with Glydways since early 2023. Extending out of that conversation was an invitation to visit the company’s test track.
Other Council members were also invited for the visit. As an engineer by training, Meeks opted to join the city delegation, which also included city staff.
Glydways is one of several types of transportation technology we look at on an ongoing basis. Others include Swyft Cities,Waymo and Tesla’s autonomous vehicles.
We look at transportation technologies, including Glydways, with an eye toward moving people between the Anaheim Resort and the Platinum Triangle, not necessarily for the 2028 Olympics but with potential benefits for the event.
All of this remains in the exploratory stage with no technology or course of action set at this point.
Michael Penn and his wife Mayor Ashleigh Aitken celebrating his appointment as chair of Chapman University’s Board of Governors in February 2023.
By DUANE J. ROBERTS Editor & Publisher
Last September, Noah Biesada and Spencer Custodio, two reporters for the Voice of OC, came very close, albeit indirectly, to exposing the Aitken family’s curious relationship with Carrie Nocella, the director of External Affairs for the Disneyland Resort. In an article entitled, “Will Mickey Mouse Continue to Cast a Big Shadow Over Anaheim’s Election Campaigns?,” they wrote about the controversial Disney executive at length.
But in their story, they included what on the surface looks like a seemingly mundane fact about Nocella: “She currently teaches a class at Chapman University titled ‘Legislative Advocacy & Lobbying,’ according to her LinkedIn page.” Perhaps they felt Nocella’s latest teaching gig was inconsequential, so they never followed up on it. However, that tidbit of information contained a valuable lead: Chapman University.
Between 1997 and 1998, Nocellawas an intern with the Campaign to Re-Elect Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, where she did “campaign strategy, labor outreach and strategy, fundraising, and event planning.” Besides the fact Sanchez was Chapman University alumna, her biggest benefactor was Wylie Aitken, a wealthy tort lawyer, who nurtured her rise to power with money, legal assistance, and political support.
Wylie Aitken and Sanchez in 2010.
After completing her studies at Chapman University, Nocella packed up her bags and headed to Northern California to attend the McGeorge School of Law, which is located on the Sacramento campus of the University of the Pacific. She earned a juris doctor degree from them in 2002 and, upon passing the state bar exam, became an attorney, working at a wide variety of different positions in both the public and private sector.
In 2007, Nocella returned to Orange County and took up a government relations job with the Disneyland Resort. She later worked alongside Matthew Hicks, the son-in-law of Democratic State Assemblyman Tom Daly and his former district director. Hicks would eventually jump ship and be hired by Henry Samueli, a Newport Beach billionaire who owns the Anaheim Ducks. He is currently vice-president of Public Affairs for ocV!BE.
For a two-year period, Nocella was also an adjunct professor at the Chapman University School of Law, teaching a course in legislative advocacy. “The class was amazing,” said Kyndell Gaglio, a former student of hers who is now an attorney. “We had a slew of guest speakers–heavy hitters from the community such as State Senator Lou Correa, Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle and Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell.”
Nocella and Sanchez in 2015.
No story about this matter is complete without addressing the influence that Wylie Aitken and his wife, Bette, wielded over Chapman University. For more than two decades, not only was this couple among their biggest donors, showering them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, but they were a catalyst in bringing about major changes to its law school, helping transform it into a world-class institution.
In a Facebook message that Aitken Aitken & Cohn, his law firm, posted in 2020, they reported he was “a key figure in supporting the founding of Chapman University Fowler School of Law and the Wylie Aitken Trial Courtroom, which is a state-of-the-art national courtroom.” They also added both he and his wife helped establish the Bette and Wylie Aitken Family Protection Clinic and Center for Lawyering and Advocacy Skills.
But Aitken’s involvement with the university wasn’t just limited to philanthropy. In 2004, he became a member of their Board of Trustees; twelve years later, he was made chair. Now at the zenith of his power, the lawyer was now in a position to make critical decisions about things other than management of the school’s finances–such as recommend or approve who gets appointed to other boards and committees.
Michael Penn, who married Ashleigh Aitken in 2002 and began working at her father’s law firm soon thereafter, was already executive vice-chair of the Board of Governors when Nocella joined. Penn, who was appointed to it in 2014, graduated from the Chapman University School of Law with a juris doctor degree in 2004. After serving eight years (of which four were with Nocella), Penn finally became chair in February 2023.
For matter of record, The Investigator did email questions about Nocella tothree key people named in this article: Loretta Sanchez, Wylie Aitken, and Michael Penn. Both Sanchez and Aitken replied within hours of us sending it. But Penn never responded. We got an automatic message which stated he would be out of the office until early January. However, it said he would check messages over the holidays. That was two weeks ago.
When The Investigator asked Sanchez about the internship Nocella did for her campaign in the late 1990s–an experience that the Disney executive boasts about on her page on LinkedIn–and if she had any knowledge of Wylie ever meeting her, the former congresswoman told us that she didn’t remember. “I have no recollection of Carrie as an intern nor do I know how she met Wylie,” she told us.
With respect to Nocella’s appointment to the university’s Board of Governors in 2018, Sanchez stated she wasn’t involved in the nominating process and didn’t know how it worked: “The Governors are a different set of people than the Trustees. I’m not on the Nominating Committee for the Trustees so I really don’t even work on nominating Trustees let alone Governors. I do not know how Governors are selected.”
As to the extent of her relationship with Nocella, Sanchez told us most dealings were through her work as a congresswoman. “I would see Carrie at many community events as she or her staff were pretty active in the community,” she said. “Once in a while I would sit down to a meeting with her. One example was during the Unite HERE strike which I was attempting to help settle. I have not spoken to Carrie for four or five years.”
Nocella’s internship with Sanchez is listed on her LinkedIn page.
The Investigatoralso posed some of the exact same questions to Aitken, pretty much asking him point blank if he had ever met Nocella while she was performing her duties as an intern for the congresswoman’s political campaign. “I do not recall her working in the Sanchez campaign,” he told us. “We had a lot of good campaign volunteers and I may have met her but have no recollection.”
Not only did Aitken deny that he did anything to help get her installed on the Board of Governors, but he downplayed how much power he exercised as chair of the Board of Trustees: “I did not have any involvement in her appointment to the Board of Governors and until that happened I was not aware she was a Chapman grad. The role of the Trustees is mainly ministerial.”
When queried about the extent of his relationship with Nocella,he said as follows:
My relationship is at best distant since my understanding is as being allegedly involved in the ‘cabal’ she was not supportive of my daughter’s candidacy though I was aware of her title and role with Disney. In light of her relationship with Sidhu and Murray etc and other council members I would assume she was not excited that I was selected to be the chief negotiator with the Angels at the request of Tom Tait. As you know I was removed by Sidhu after his election and he named himself as chief negotiator. How did that go?
But whether or not Nocella backed his daughter’s candidacy apparently wasn’t that important to certain members of Aitken’s clan. For example, Penn, his son-in-law, has been longtime “friends” with Nocella on LinkedIn. Almost four years after Harry Sidhu beat his wife in the mayoral race, he “liked” an article written about the Disney executive she herself shared on that social media website in March 2022.
From Penn’s LinkedIn page.
Given that evidence suggests Penn has closer ties to Nocella than Ashleigh, The Investigator is not surprised he didn’t reply to the question we sent him via email. In our third article about this matter, to be published at a later date, we will explore another angle to this story which reveals, among other things, that his dealings with the Disney executive appear to predate her 2018 appointment to the university’s Board of Governors.
Derek Smith, political director for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324. a union whose headquarters are based in Buena Park.
By DUANE J. ROBERTS Editor & Publisher
An email currently in the possession of The Anaheim Investigator offers compelling evidence suggesting that Mayor Ashleigh Aitken might have deliberately misled journalists from a mainstream media outlet about the intended recipient of two city-owned tickets worth $350 to a Ducks vs. Bruins game which took place at the Honda Center on January 8th.
According to Biesiada and Elatar, records show Smith ran a committee “that spent over $138,000 promoting Aitken’s candidacy.” When asked why he got tickets, the mayor replied she “wanted to support a group that ‘represents Anaheim working families.'” But the reporters said they were “unable to confirm who actually used the tickets after she gave them to Smith.“
Form 802 filed by Aitken.
Though it’s not entirely clear as to what Biesiada and Elatar meant when they stated they were “unable to confirm who actually used the tickets,” The Investigator believes–and we admit this is speculative–that Aitken misled them by insisting she gave those tickets to the political director so that he could then pass them on to someone else at UFCW Local 324.
In an email dated January 5th with the subject header, “Ducks tickets for Sunday,” Lauren Torres, a city council services coordinator, received the following message from the mayor: “Hi Lauren,” wrote Aitken. “Can you please assign Sundays tickets suite to Derek Smith.” She included his email address and phone number, blacked out by the city clerk due to privacy laws.
Email proves tickets went to Smith.
The Ducks tickets that Aitken asked Torres to “assign” to Smith are not in paper form. They are only available electronically via smartphone through an app. The only way Smith could access them is through the email address he gave the mayor. Because tickets are “non-transferable,” nobody else could have used them unless Smith gave them control of his email account.
Perhaps it also should be mentioned that if Aitken did indeed inform these reporters the tickets she gave to Smith were originally meant for somebody else, that could open her up to criminal prosecution. For example, Penal Code 115 does make it a felony under state law to knowingly file a Form 802 with the city clerk that contains false and inaccurate information.
Last week, The Investigator sought further clarification regarding this matter and reached out to Biesiadaand Elatar to ask them about what Aitken specifically told them about the tickets she gave to Smith. So far, neither of them have responded to our inquiry. Aitken was also contacted by us to learn more. Unsurprisingly, the mayor completely ignored our email.
Ashleigh Aitken speaking at the headquarters of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 in November 2018.
By DUANE ROBERTS Editor & Publisher
In early January, Ashleigh Aitken, the newly-elected mayor of Anaheim, did what many public officials before her had done. She took full advantage of her unfettered access to the city’s vast pool of free tickets to luxury suites at the Honda Center and Angel Stadium and gave a few of them away to supporters who helped put her in office. Several emails show the mayor rattled off names of those she felt deserved them.
Besides the fact a Form 401 filed with the city clerk’s office reports that Smith was treasurer of an independent expenditure committee which spent $138,155 to help Aitken become mayor in 2022, The Anaheim Investigator has discovered his union has a “secret.” Though not criminal in nature, it’s deeply embarrassing. In fact, some people with intimate knowledge of it are apprehensive to talk about it openly with journalists.
It took The Investigator more than a year to find it, and that was only after painstaking research. However, all the effort put in was well worth it. We have uncovered a story that is not only remarkable, but lends credence to the old adage “politics makes strange bedfellows.” It involves an alliance of people with nothing in common, who were brought together by a shared interest. And it implicates Democrats and Republicans.
Todd Ament, Jeff Flint, and Harry Sidhu.
Reliable sources have told The Investigator that sometime in late 2019 or early 2020, Todd Ament, president and CEO of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, Jeff Flint, president of Core Strategic Group, and Mayor Harry Sidhu approached UFCW Local 324 and cut a deal: that in return for a labor peace agreement in any ordinance they introduced to legalize cannabis businesses, the union was to pressure the council to vote “yes.”
Ament, Flint, and Sidhu–sometimes euphemistically referred to as “the cabal”–already had three votes locked up, including Councilman Jordan Brandman’s, who reportedly was one of their point men. But they needed a total of four to get it passed. That’s where UFCW Local 324 came in. They would mobilize members of their union to aggressively lobby any possible holdouts. And indeed, there is evidence this did in fact occur.
Anaheim wasn’t the only city UFCW Local 324 was committed to getting a labor peace agreement. For example, minutes of one Stanton City Council meeting reveal: “Mr. Derek Smith, Political Director, UFCW 324, submitted an e-comment requesting that the City consider the inclusion of ‘Labor Peace’ language that would provide clarity to the cannabis industry and future workers regarding the quality of jobs that are expected from the City.”
For reasons that aren’t clear, Ament, Flint, and Sidhu abandoned the idea of getting a cannabis ordinance passed by council. The November 2020 election led to Avelino Valencia III and Jose Diaz winning seats. Though backed by Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, they weren’t trusted. And Gloria Ma’ae–who opposed the original ordinance–later replaced Brandman. But in late 2021, a new strategy emerged, thanks to UFCW Local 324.
The Silva petition.
On Friday, October 15, 2021, the Anaheim City Clerk received a letter from Stacy Silva declaring that it was her “intention to circulate a petition” to gather signatures to put an initiative on the ballot entitled “The Anaheim Cannabis Regulation and Land Use Measure.” She filed all the required paperwork and paid a $200 filing fee. Silva instructed the city clerk that all correspondence be sent to her lawyer at his Woodland Hills office.
Silva’s lawyer was Bradley Hertz, an election law attorney who had done work for Ament. A Form 410 filed with the city clerk’s office on September 26, 2018 reveals he was treasurer of an independent expenditure committee called “No on L, a Project of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce,” which spent $932,053 in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat a measure which raised the wages of workers of hotels that received tax subsidies.
The text of the initiative Silva submitted was mostly a copy of the cannabis ordinance championed by Ament, Flint, and Sidhu in 2020. However, there were exceptions. First, the number of permitted cannabis retailers allowed to operate in the city was increased from from 20 to 30; one single entity could control up to five of them, instead of three. Second, the requirement workers be full-time to qualify for a labor peace agreement was scrapped.
Herein lies the “smoking gun” of UFCW Local 324’s alliance with the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce to legalize cannabis businesses. They first tried to pass an ordinance through the council, but failed. Now there was evidence they were collaborating on a ballot initiative. However, there is a catch. Ament had resigned before Silva filed her paperwork with the city clerk. That begs the question: who took his place?
Regardless of what the case might be, Silva withdrew her initiative on October 28th claiming it needed “minor edits.” Then she submitted a new version on November 22nd, which reinstated the requirement workers be full-time to qualify for a labor peace agreement. But after December 7th, everything stopped. When The Investigator asked City Clerk Theresa Bass what happened, she said Silva didn’t continue the filing process.
The Dalati petition.
Three months later, a new face appeared. Belal Dalati, a local real estate agent, walked into the city clerk’s office on Monday, March 21, 2022 with a letter notifying them it was his “intention to circulate a petition” to gather signatures to put a cannabis initiative on the ballot. Most of the paperwork he filed was identical to Silva’s. He used the same title, preamble, and law firm as a contact. But the text of the initiative was different.
Unlike Silva’s initiatives, Dalati’s came from Adam Spiker, of Spiker Rendon Consulting, Inc., a cannabis industry lobbyist located in downtown Los Angeles. The initiative he touted was very “pro-labor.” Not only did it drop the requirement workers be full-time to qualify for a labor peace agreement, but a points system was set up to give preferences to applicants of city licenses who had good employee and community benefits plans.
By May 16th, Dalati changed his mind. At the urging of Bill Taormina and Paul Kott, two local businessman who were opposed to legalizing cannabis businesses, he withdrew his initiative. In a text message Taormina sent to Councilman Trevor O’Neil, he alleged that “Bill Dahlati [sic] was forced into filing the petition by Jeff Flint and other ‘dope dealer’ promoters. He was actually threatened by them not to withdraw the petition ….”
In the days and weeks that followed, the public would learn–thanks to FBI affidavits released in court filings–this scandal wasn’t just about Sidhu and the stadium deal. At the very heart of it was Melahat Rafiei, a political consultant and Democratic Party operative, who is alleged to have committed various crimes in connection with the Anaheim Chamber Of Commerce’s attempt to legalize cannabis businesses.
However, in writing this article, The Investigator made a decision to mostly stay away from Rafiei. Why did we do this? First, her name didn’t pop up in anything having to do this story. Second, the FBI affidavits that have been released so far offer an incomplete and distorted view of what transpired. Third, the testimony offered in those affidavits are solely focused on proving violations of federal criminal laws. It doesn’t talk about what was legal.
Besides Rafiei, it’s erroneous to presume that everybody who worked along with Ament, Flint, and Sidhu to legalize cannabis businesses broke the law. Nothing can be further from the truth. The reality is, an overwhelming majority of people that ended up being dragged into this affair–including pretty much everybody we mentioned in this article–are innocent of any crimes. They are what we would call “victims of circumstance.”
The Investigatorknows despite our good faith efforts to gather accurate information for this article, what we have written isn’t the full story. And it’s possible a few corrections will need to be made as we learn more. But what’s important is we have exposed the biggest “secret” of this scandal: UFCW Local 324‘s alliance with the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce to legalize cannabis businesses. And it implicates Democrats and Republicans.
The political ramifications of this “secret” are political dynamite. For example, during last year’s election, in order to win the endorsement of the Orange County Register, then-candidate Aitken told the editors “the former mayor and his tightly knit ‘cabal’ were allowed to run roughshod at City Hall, and created a culture of intimidation for staff, management, concerned residents, and the smaller business community.”
What Aitken neglected to mention is UFCW Local 324, a major union of whom she has had close ties to since 2018, was involved in a “pot deal” with the same “former mayor and his tightly knit ‘cabal.'” Though there is no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing, it does vastly complicate things. Maybe she didn’t know about it, but giving $350 worth of city-owned tickets to Smith, their political director, won’t help her in any pleas of innocence.
For matter of record, The Investigator asked for interviews or sent questions outto Belal Dalati, Harry Sidhu, Derek Smith, Stacy Silva, Adam Spiker and others we believed had knowledge about this matter. Most didn’t answer our emails or reply to voice messages. One person declined to speak citing ongoing “local and federal investigations.” Ashleigh Aitken ignored our request for comment on the Anaheim Ducks tickets she gave to Smith.
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