Mayor White and the ESRI/ WRCOG/ Interwest Consulting Conflict of Interest

Mayor White works for ESRI Corporation located in Redlands California. They are software map Maker Company that does quite a bit of government contract work. In the spring of 2015I challenged Mr. White at a council meeting, to come clean and either resign from the city council or explain your connection with the WRCOG contract with ERSI that was part of a large presentation that your company put on in San Diego in the year 2014. I even received a phone call from him a week earlier before I knew nothing about the WRCOG connection. He told me that he doesn’t do the contracts for the company and I that he doesn’t have anything to do with WRCOG. That call was very strange to me as I have never discussed this matter with him. I decided to do some investigation on my own, I found out that he failed to list ESRI as a source of income on his 700 disclosure form as required, since ESRI did business in the city of Beaumont and that he worked out of a home office here in Beaumont which would have required him to list his financial disclosure on his 700 form for any income over 2,000.00 dollars for the past 2 years. I gave Mr. White ample time to correct the problem. When I noticed that he didn’t list ESRI as a source of income on his Annual Statement for 2016, I filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission which contacted him and told him to amend his 700 form for financial disclosure. Mr. White failed to head to their advice and the advice given to another Council Member from Redlands California in 2003 when the commission issued an advisory letter. That letter highlighted the requirements for disclosure and when you must recuse yourself from voting on matters where the public official (Council Member) has an economic interest of $2,000.00 or more. (Section 87103 of the Code) the code further states that this interest can be direct or indirect. Here are the problems with Mayor White.

WRCOG has a large contract with ERSI Corporation for Arc GSI Software; in fact they were a featured presentation at the ERSI conference 2014. The highlights of this conference were reported in the ESRI newsletter which all employees receive including Mr. White. Mr. White knew that WRCOG had a large contract with ERSI, I even told him that fact back at the council meeting in the spring of 2015, yet he continued to vote on matters related to the WRCOG lawsuit and attended meetings as the city representative and negotiator. He even wrote a brief for newspaper after the settled the lawsuit. Lloyd White should not have voted on this matter, he should have not participated in the decision and he should have recued himself for any discussion on this matter, he chose not to do that. You may ask what would happen if WRCOG did not settle or win the lawsuit. I can give you the answer they would have folded as an entity as they have no income source other that what cities and other government decided to give them. They have legal authority over the cities and they cannot tax. That’s the problem with no money to operate that would have to eliminate services which would include the contract with ESRI Corporation whom Lloyd White works for. A clear 1096 violation of the act.

There are two other violations of the Act which Lloyd White committed. On June 7, 2016 he voted on a contract for Interwest Consulting Group to provide GIS services for the city of Beaumont. In the contract was a line item for $15,000 for licenses from ESRI Corporation. Lloyd White voted for the contract and participated in the discussion. On May 16^th of this year, Lloyd White as Mayor opened up the discussion on this item which was on the consent calendar, which was pulled for separate action. Immediately he declared he did not have a conflict of interest in the matter, however he did not leave the room or the council table until he was reminded by the Planning Director that the contract included licensing agreements and fees to ERSI Corporation his employer. Apparently he did not read the agenda. He finally decided that he had a conflict and left the room. However it was too late for him as he already discussed the matter. The city has another contract with Interwest for engineering consulting services which Lloyd White voted on. If you look up this company on the internet you will see that they partner with ESRI Corporation. http://partners.esri.com/PartnerSearchResults?kw=Interwest

Why Mr. White didn’t recuse himself from voting on these matters. I for one believe it is the city council responsibility to notify the FPPC of the violation so appropriate action can be taken. In addition I believe that actions that included Mr. Whites vote need to be resended and re-voted upon including these two contracts and the WRCOG Lawsuit matter.

Mr. White needs to step down from the city council as he violated the public trust by putting his own financial gain ahead of the city. Listed below are links to the specific documents that I mentioned in the article.

https://beaumont.civicweb.net/filepro/documents/3932 Council Agenda May 16, 2016

http://www.ci.beaumont.ca.us/DocumentCenter/View/27660 Original Contract for GIS Services with Interwest

http://www.fppc.ca.gov/transparency/form-700-filed-by-public-officials/advice-letter-search.html?SearchTerm=Redlands&tag1=%2Fetc%2Ftags%2Ffppc%2Fyear%2F2003&tagCount=1 Advice letter city of Redlands. Sept 11, 2003. Fair Political Practices Commission.