The Factual "2023 State of Calaveras County" in a Word: Corruption

Board Chair Tofanelli is a scheduled speaker at the Chamber of Commerce State of the County event on September 22nd.

What Mr. Tofanelli will notably fail to reveal is a well-corroborated fact pattern; the State of the County is one of institutionalized endemic corruption borne of duplicity, backroom dealing and influence peddling by, and between, the Board of Supervisors and multiple business bureaus.

The leadership of the Calaveras Chamber of Commerce and the Calaveras Visitors Bureau, in league with willfully negligent and deceptive County Supervisors, allegedly engaged in multiple misrepresentations jeopardizing the County’s financial integrity.

The Board of Supervisors blatant corruption prompted the filing of three Grand Jury complaints in June.

Fifty thousand dollars in TOT revenue was egregiously awarded to the Chamber recently as the result of backroom dealing and influence peddling conducted by, and between, the leadership of the Chamber and several members of the Board of Supervisors.

This allegation is explicitly corroborated by a series of email and text exchanges between County employees and Chamber leadership, obtained by public records act responses.

In another recent instance of alleged corruption, the Visitors Bureau misrepresented its nonprofit corporation type as public benefit in the four-year, million dollar-plus Tourism Promotion Agreement with the County, finalized three weeks ago. 

This, despite the CVB having surrendered its public benefit status with the DOJ and Secretary of State in 2021, upon conversion to a mutual benefit nonprofit corporation.

Credible allegations have emerged of negligent or fraudulent misrepresentation by the leadership of the CVB, of which District 3 Supervisor Huberty is the Executive Director.

Furthermore, the CVB has allegedly been operating illegally without valid bylaws for more than two years, and allegedly induced, partially or fully, the Board of Supervisors and administration into signing the four-year funding agreement for tourism promotion under false pretense.

Public records act responses from County Counsel suggest the administration was not notified by the CVB of this change from a public benefit nonprofit corporation to a mutual benefit nonprofit corporation.

The mission of a mutual benefit nonprofit corporation is to serve its members, not the public, yet public tax funds are being diverted to the CVB despite the administration and taxpayers not having been informed of the CVB’s conversion in 2021.

The matter is under review by the Charitable Trusts Section of the Attorney General’s Office, the Legal Review Unit of the Secretary of State, and is being referred to the (Calaveras) District Attorney’s office for investigation.

The State of Calaveras County is Corrupt.

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