Weeks into his new job as Anaheim’s city manager, Jim Vanderpool attended a days-long retreat at Lake Havasu with a coterie of influential power brokers, including a former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce leader whose organization paid for accommodations during the getaway.
TimesOC obtained emails, financial records and the guest list for the September 2020 Havasu trip, which took place in between scheduled mock council meetings over the now-defunct Angel Stadium deal.
Invitees included then-Mayor Harry Sidhu and lobbyists for Anaheim’s most powerful corporations. Todd Ament, the chamber’s former chief executive, now facing sentencing for white-collar crimes, planned a birthday celebration during the retreat.
Financial records show the chamber covered rental payments for multiple lakefront properties, including a mobile home where Vanderpool and his husband were assigned to stay with other invitees.
The organization cut two checks in August to cover a $350 security deposit and $1,900 for rent. The memo for the rent check referenced the same unit assigned to Vanderpool in a retreat guest list.
But when Vanderpool filed an annual statement of economic interests for 2020, he did not report having received any gifts.
Vanderpool did not respond to TimesOC questions about the retreat.
Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster called the unreported accommodations a “non-issue.”
“No city business was discussed,” Lyster said. “As a social gathering, there was no indication of any implied cost or gift and was thus non-reportable. Even if there were something to report, Vanderpool’s expenses in contributed food and beverages would have far offset [it].”
Sean McMorris, a program manager for the nonpatisan government accountability nonprofit Common Cause, said whether city business was discussed or not during a retreat doesn’t negate a duty to report paid-for accommodations.
“Any gift received [in 2020] over $500 is a violation under the Political Reform Act. Anything under that still has to be reported,” McMorris said. “The gifts prohibition is pretty clear and this includes city managers.”
The Fair Political Practices Commission’s statute of limitations to investigate potential violations is five years since the date a gift is received, a timeframe that expired more than three months ago in relation to the Havasu retreat.
“Whether legal or not, perception always matters,” McMorris said. “The chamber has a history of engaging in politics, funding campaigns, power brokering and holding a lot of influence at City Hall.”
He added that unreported gifts also potentially bring conflict of interest laws into play.
Vanderpool did acknowledge the Havasu trip in an email sent to Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and the rest of the City Council last month, amid concerns that news reports would soon surface about it.
“It was a social gathering, not a ‘retreat’ as may be incorrectly characterized,” Vanderpool wrote on Dec. 23. “I did not engage with any subsequent social or business travel with Todd Ament.”
A Sept. 23, 2020, email from former chamber vice president Laura Cunningham to Vanderpool referred to the weekend getaway during the pandemic as a “retreat.”
The chamber’s guest list included former Anaheim City Councilmember and consultant Kris Murray, Disney lobbyist Carrie Nocella, former Visit Anaheim chief executive Jay Burress and Sidhu.
Former Angels consultant Jeff Flint, Cunningham and her husband, Anaheim blogger Matt Cunningham, were assigned to share a unit with Vanderpool and his husband.
“Sounds like Aments are stocked for liquor but I know you mentioned you’ll bring vodka and beer,” Laura Cunningham told Vanderpool in the email.
“Saturday we’re celebrating Todd’s birthday and we’re all required to dress in Hawaiian garb,” she added.
Flint, Ament and the Cunninghams did not respond to TimesOC requests for comment.
Vanderpool did not disclose a retreat paid for by the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce just weeks after his hiring.
(James Carbone)
In his recent email to Aitken and the City Council, Vanderpool claimed that neither Sidhu nor Flint attended the event. Nocella, TimesOC has confirmed, did not attend.
It’s unclear whether the Havasu gathering had a political agenda, like the secretive retreat attended by many of the same power brokers at the J.W. Marriott in Anaheim after the 2020 election. FBI agents intercepted calls between Flint and Ament regarding the planning of the retreat.
Attendance would be limited to trusted “family members only,” according to court documents.
An independent corruption report later interviewed attendees, including Vanderpool, who detailed discussions about a plan for the chamber to secure $10 million in contracts from an expected $100-million flood of new tax revenue once Disney expansion bonds were paid off.
Unlike the hotel gathering, the Havasu retreat has gone previously unreported.
Rental agreements for the trip were signed on July 30, 2020, two days after a council majority appointed Vanderpool as city manager following confidential closed session deliberations.
An opening for the position was created when then-City Manager Chris Zapata, who’d questioned a plan favored by Ament to give pandemic relief funds to Burress’ tourism program, agreed to resign if the City Council approved a payout to him of $475,000.
Before his death, former Councilmember Jordan Brandman told the Los Angeles Times Flint called him in April 2020 and said a vote supporting Zapata’s departure would determine who was on “the team.”
Many of the retreat’s invited guests and attendees were aware of or involved in the push for Vanderpool’s hiring months before the Havasu trip.
On July 2, 2020, Flint emailed Sidhu and copied Ament and Nocella with Vanderpool’s resume and release letter from when he unsuccessfully applied for Anaheim city manager in 2015.
“Let us know if you want to talk next steps today,” he wrote.
Flint penned scripts revised by Annie Mezzacappa, the mayor’s chief of staff, for Sidhu to print out, practice and deliver in support of Vanderpool’s hiring in closed session meetings that month.
A script prepared the day before the Anaheim City Council met on July 14 was noted as “personal and confidential” by Flint.
“I asked our H.R. Director, Linda Andal, for the files of past candidates who were considered for City Manager,” Sidhu’s script read. “I read through these, and one potential candidate stood out — that of James Vanderpool, who is currently the City Manager in Buena Park.”
The scripted remarks positioned Vanderpool as a “close second” in 2015, when councilmembers elected to hire Sean Emery that year.
Flint also prepared remarks for Sidhu to deliver during a second closed meeting on July 28, 2020, where a 6-1 council vote appointed Vanderpool city manager, with former Councilmember Denise Barnes dissenting.
Sidhu read almost word-for-word from another script in delivering public remarks at the end of the July 28 meeting.
“Vanderpool is a natural for the position for several reasons,” Sidhu said, according to script. “He’s been [a] long time city manager in a neighboring city with some similarity to Anaheim…on a smaller scale. We can see his work product. And he has been very successful there.”
Lyster defended the integrity of the hiring process.
“Jim’s experience, fit and performance speak for themselves,” Lyster wrote in a Dec. 22 email. “His 2020 hiring was based on his prior strong candidacy for the position. We don’t hire based on individual comments. We reject any mischaracterization and misrepresentation.”
On Aug. 11, 2020, Flint drafted remarks for Sidhu that instructed him to pull a City Council consent calendar item on Vanderpool’s contract before councilmembers voted 5-2 to approve it.
“Vanderpool has already been vetted by the…Anaheim city manager search process,” Sidhu said, again adhering to the script. “He scored well in that process. There were no red flags.”