The City of Fresno is on track to be more transparent with the public than ever before regarding the dozens of contracts worth $100,000 or less that officials hand out each year.<\/p>\n
Additionally, city leaders officially closed a \u201cloophole\u201d in city contracting laws<\/a> when the Fresno City Council unanimously approved a set of reforms<\/a> brought forward by Councilmember Miguel Arias at the Jan. 29 city council meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both actions took place less than a month after a Jan. 7<\/a> Fresnoland investigation<\/a> revealed that city leaders, for years, have handed out millions in contracts worth $100,000 or less with no oversight<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since those contracts aren\u2019t subject to city council approval, the public doesn\u2019t know how many city officials have handed out over the years \u2014 one of the many findings in Fresnoland\u2019s investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think this action today closes the loophole that some people chose to create that was outside of the intent of this governing body,\u201d said Arias, who has credited Fresnoland\u2019s investigation for spurring him and other city leaders to act<\/a>. \u201cIt provides clear direction on what the intent is for all departments in the city, not just the city council.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, the Fresno City Clerk\u2019s Office has until Feb. 28 to come up with a plan to create an online transparency portal listing most no-bid contracts that city leaders hand out to contractors and consultants \u2014 including those exempt from city council approval and, effectively, public disclosure.<\/p>\n Additionally, Arias\u2019 proposal closes what he has referred to as a \u201cloophole\u201d in city policy<\/a> \u2014 the same one that allowed former Fresno Councilmember Luis Chavez to use $26,000 in taxpayer money on Facebook ads in 2023, and another $31,000 on more Facebook ads in the months leading up to the November 2024 election<\/a>. At the time back then, Chavez was running for a county supervisor seat<\/a> \u2014 a campaign he ended up winning.<\/p>\n Councilmember Brandon Vang co-sponsored Arias\u2019 item, and said with more transparency, the city could lighten the number of public records requests that the Fresno City Attorney\u2019s Office is showered with every day \u2014 especially if the city is making contracts available in a user-friendly webpage.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis discussion came about because it took Fresnoland eight months to go through the City Attorney\u2019s Office to get some records,\u201d Vang said, adding that it shouldn\u2019t take that long to obtain city records.<\/p>\n Why some city leaders objected to some of the reforms<\/p>\n Although the Fresno City Council unanimously approved Arias\u2019 proposal for reforms, it didn\u2019t happen without a few tweaks and arguments along the way, with some city leaders resisting the idea of limiting their private spending power.\u00a0<\/p>\n During a noisy debate at the last city council meeting in January, Fresno City Manager Georgeanne White said she supports increasing transparency. She noted the \u201creally, really good\u201d example at the City of San Diego and its online lists of consultant contracts<\/a> going back more than a decade \u2014 an example prominently featured in Fresnoland\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n Earlier at the meeting, White also acknowledged the City of Fresno\u2019s online contracts database is not \u201cuser-friendly.\u201d However, she said her office wouldn\u2019t be able to make a new transparency portal for the City of Fresno in 30 days \u2014 which Arias had initially proposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some councilmembers noted that the city administration was getting ready for mid-year budget review, and that a one-month timeline would be hard to work with.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhile I do believe this resolution should be a priority, to me it is not currently the highest priority next to other projects that have kind of come before,\u201d said Councilmember Nelson Esparza. \u201cSo, I support this, but to me, it\u2019d be ideal if we did remove those timelines.\u201d<\/p>\n Arias amended his proposal to instead require the Fresno City Clerk to take on creating a new transparency portal, instead of the City Manager\u2019s Office. He also agreed to let the City Clerk provide a plan for a transparency portal within a month, instead of requiring it be up and running during that time.<\/p>\n Fresno City Council President Mike Karbassi also appeared to have reservations about the reforms. He complained that Arias\u2019 proposal came in response to what he described as \u201cmedia\u201d pressure.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not responding to public pressure, it\u2019s media,\u201d Karbassi said from the dais. \u201cJust want to be clear about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Karbassi, for years, has co-hosted a podcast<\/a> with local real estate developer Darius Assemi, who owns local media site GV Wire.<\/p>\n At another point during the conversation at last week\u2019s city council meeting, Karbassi asked Arias whether he would be open to excluding the city\u2019s administration from the increased transparency, and just limiting it to the Fresno City Council.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCan we limit this provision to council offices and consultant contracts?\u201d Karbassi asked Arias. \u201cThat\u2019s the root of the issue \u2014 where the media scrutiny came from.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, councilmember,\u201d Arias said, interrupting Karbassi. \u201cWhen we create rules, we create rules for all departments.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo one was questioning \u2014 see, this is why I wanted a committee to review this,\u201d Karbassi countered, referring to his proposal for a private committee to come up with policy revisions behind closed doors.\u00a0<\/p>\n A few minutes later, Arias called for the item to be voted on, which the council passed unanimously.<\/p>\n However, the version of the proposal that the council approved wasn\u2019t exactly what Arias promised it would be<\/a>. On Jan. 23, he told Fresnoland that it would bar the city\u2019s administration from entering into more than one contract worth $100,000 or less with the same consultant<\/a>, regardless of scope of work.\u00a0<\/p>\n His proposal did not have that in writing. It also didn\u2019t include what Arias referred to as a blackout provision<\/a> \u2014 barring city electeds from using taxpayer money for print or digital advertisements six months before an election they\u2019re participating in.\u00a0<\/p>\n Additionally, Arias initially told Fresnoland<\/a> his proposal would apply to all no-bid contracts, but his proposal limits it to contracts worth less than $100,000. That wouldn\u2019t include agreements like the $100,000 contracts that Chavez awarded to a company run by political consultant Alex Tavlian<\/a> for Facebook ads during an election year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI do believe this is a first step to the goal of every single contract in the city being available in a searchable feature,\u201d Arias told Fresnoland in a brief interview last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n Additionally, Arias said he plans to bring more revisions to city policy moving forward. Right now, he said, things are headed in the right direction.<\/p>\n \u201cI just didn\u2019t want to further delay approval of this policy, especially because we\u2019re in the budget development process now,\u201d Arias said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to let a whole budget cycle to go by without very clear indication to the administration \u2026 on what we expect for contracts that don\u2019t go out for bid.\u201d<\/p>\n Community members object to private city council policy review committee<\/p>\n Before the Fresno City Council approved Arias\u2019 proposal for reforms, it also approved Karbassi\u2019s private, ad-hoc committee tasked with revising city policies<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Karbassi will be on the committee, along with councilmembers Brandon Vang and Nick Richardson. He previously told Fresnoland that it wouldn\u2019t \u201cbe productive\u201d for the committee to meet in public<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n At times, Karbassi has said his proposal would create a standing committee \u2014 different from a temporary, ad-hoc committee \u2014 for the purpose of revising city policies. He did so just two days before the Jan. 29 city council meeting on the GV Wire podcast<\/a>. All standing committees created by local governments have to be held in public, and are subject to California\u2019s Brown Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the city council meeting last week, City Attorney Andrew Janz noted general concern he had about the committee\u2019s role and the policy work it\u2019d be tasked with completing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy initial recommendation would be to make sure that if you\u2019re having those conversations, they be in a public setting,\u201d Janz said at last week\u2019s council meeting. \u201cI\u2019m really concerned about Brown Act issues around this process. So just, just as long as those take place in public meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n The City of Fresno is currently getting sued<\/a> for allegedly violating California\u2019s Brown Act for at least five years. The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU of Northern California and the First Amendment Coalition, was sparked by a separate 2023 Fresnoland investigation<\/a> into the City of Fresno\u2019s budget process.\u00a0<\/p>\n During public comment, three Fresno residents also shared concern about the committee meeting in private, and not including any community members. One person said she wanted to know how Karbassi was going to include communities across California\u2019s fifth largest city in making policy revisions that affect Fresnans.<\/p>\n Additionally, she questioned whether it makes sense for a committee to do policy work behind the scenes that the public would only get a glimpse of the same day the Fresno City Council considers it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t want to come in at the last minute and you have it on the agenda and you tell us, \u2018Oh, this is what we passed. This is what we did,\u2019\u201d the community member said during public comment. \u201cWe can\u2019t be involved if we\u2019re not involved from the beginning. So we want to know how you\u2019re going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Kristina Holmes-McIntyre, another Fresno resident who spoke during public comment, also criticized the ad-hoc committee and shared how frustrated she has become with major city policies being passed without any public discussion because they\u2019re listed on the city council meeting\u2019s consent agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n The consent agenda at city council meetings regularly include more than two dozen items on it, which regularly get approved with a single vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI have serious concerns that Mike Karbassi has the ability to lead such a committee, and I really urge this board to look at that,\u201d Holmes-McIntyre said. \u201cI\u2019m completely frustrated that these types of policies are being passed on consent agenda with no discussion from the community. That is not transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s at stake: About 22 days after Fresnoland exposed transparency and accountability issues in the City of Fresno\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113,8020,9260],"class_list":{"0":"post-162225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news","11":"tag-miguel-arias","12":"tag-mike-karbassi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_0118.jpg\")
Councilmember Brandon Vang listens to public comment at a Jan. 29 city council meeting. He co-sponsored Councilmember Miguel Arias\u2019 proposal to reform the City of Fresno\u2019s transparency with contracts. Omar Rashad | Fresnoland<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_0170.jpg\")
Councilmember Miguel Arias came forward with a proposal to reform the City of Fresno\u2019s transparency with city contracts. Omar Rashad | Fresnoland<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_0131.jpg\")
Fresno City Council President Mike Karbassi questioned why Councilmember Miguel Arias was bringing forward reforms, and whether it was because of \u201cpressure\u201d from the media. He also led the creation of a private committee charged with revising city policies and bringing forward recommendations to the Fresno City Council. Omar Rashad | Fresnoland<\/p>\n