Calaveras County Government Corruption, Collusion, Malfeasance and Cronyism

September 24, 2024 - Part 1 - Christopher Buttner’s Statement to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors. Subject: General Public Comments on Endemic Negligence of Calaveras County Government's Fiscal Responsibility. 

"My name is Christopher Buttner. My website is Calaveras2024Election.com.

I’ll be appearing at this podium several times today to address significant concerns pertaining to items on today’s Consent Agenda and Regular Agenda.

These concerns primarily relate to Calaveras County’s current and future fiscal health and well-being, the County’s short-and long-term financial priorities, and the persistent inadequacy and lack of vision demonstrated by the elected leadership of this County’s government.

It troubles me greatly that four of the five Calaveras County District Supervisors are currently under scrutiny by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for their respective violations of the Political Reform Act, each having failed to file legally required FPPC forms and causing harm to the community and to the political process by their lack of transparency.

Supervisor Garamendi deserves praise as the only one of the five County Supervisors that made a consistently credible effort to get his legally required FPPC filing responsibilities met.

That fact pattern has been well established here, by my previous appearances before the Board of Supervisors.

That fact pattern is also well documented on Calaveras2024Election.com and @Calaveras2024Election social media channels, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

This Board of Supervisors, with four of its five members under FPPC scrutiny with open complaints, and two of its five members with those complaints against them having been escalated to open and pending cases by the FPPC, lacks the moral authority to commit large sums of funding, yet as we’ll experience later this morning, the Board of Supervisors will proceed to do exactly that.

My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com."

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September 24, 2024 - Part 2 - Christopher Buttner’s Statement to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors in opposition of ITEM 4. Approve a Resolution adopting the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024-25 County Budget for the County of Calaveras, excluding the distribution of Transient Occupancy Taxes to Calaveras Chamber of Commerce and Calaveras Visitors Bureau. 

"My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com.

Since I launched Calaveras2024Election.com in the Spring of 2023, I have published THIRTY blog posts on the subject of Calaveras County government’s institutionalized negligence of fiscal responsibility. 

On April 9, 2024, and again on August 27, 2024, I addressed critical county budget issues specific to how funds allocated to the new District Attorney’s office can be reallocated to the design and completion of a long overdue and desperately needed animal shelter.

As you’re aware, five million dollars has been approved for the proposed new district attorney’s office, which is expected to cost six million dollars. 

On September 20, 2024, I published to Calaveras2024Election.com the eighty-second blog post, which is an easily Googled detailed report, titled “County Supervisors and DA Barbara Yook Ignore Evidence of Calaveras Visitors Bureau Corruption.” 

Mounting evidence reveals the District Attorney's office is blatantly and transparently ignoring formal complaints and accusations of corruption previously submitted, and made in her very presence - and on the record - in this room as she appears to prioritize the assurance of the design, construction and completion of her new office complex over formal written requests to investigate endemic government corruption and fiscal malfeasance within the local legislative and administrative body that holds the purse strings for her new office complex.  

The Calaveras District Attorney is undeserving of a new facility due to dereliction of duty and selective enforcement of laws designed to hold public officials accountable. 

The six million dollars in new DA office funding should be reallocated, thereby ensuring ten million dollars-plus in funding for a new animal shelter. 

The how and why, which I have explained to this board, can be easily ascertained by Googling the titles of these two blog posts: 

Negligence of Fiscal, Public and Animal Safety in Calaveras County, published April 10, 2024.

Calaveras Supervisors Remain Committed to Animal Cruelty, published August 27, 2024. 

My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com."

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September 24, 2024 - Part 3 - Christopher Buttner’s Statement to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors in opposition of ITEM 8. Approve a Resolution adopting the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024-25 County Budget for the distribution of Transient Occupancy Taxes to the Calaveras Chamber of Commerce. 

"My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com. 

On March 14, 2023, I addressed this Board in opposition of an Agenda Item appearing to be a pretext for a $50,000 gift from TOT funds to the Chamber of Commerce.

I voiced my staunch opposition to the outlandish proposal, because the evidence led to a deceptively worded agenda item and credible allegations of backroom dealings between the Board of Supervisors and Chamber leadership.

On June 30, 2023, I published to Calaveras2024Election.com, highly detailed forensic financial analysis reports after examining the Chamber's IRS tax filings back to 2004, revealing a Chamber that reported annual operating deficits, with expenses exceeding revenue, losing between $4,300 to $65,000 per year for ten out of 18 years. 

Google:
Calaveras County Chamber of Commerce Revenue/Expense Analysis-Part 1 

or 

Calaveras County Chamber of Commerce Revenue/Expense Analysis-Part 2

My investigation, which lead to Grand Jury, California Attorney General, and Calaveras DA complaints, revealed a well-corroborated fact pattern; the standard operating procedure of Calaveras government is one of institutionalized endemic corruption borne of duplicity, backroom dealings and influence peddling by, and between, the Supervisors and the conflicted leadership of multiple business bureaus.

On December 12, 2023, the Calaveras government entered into an agreement with the Chamber, under, I allege, a ruse the $50,000 TOT allocation would be used, to promote tourism in the west end of the County… through to June 30, 2026, which is the responsibility of the CVB. 

The facts allege the $50,000 TOT allocation is really an effort to prop up a Chamber, plagued for decades by gross mismanagement and financial ineptitude from a revolving door of unqualified executive leaders, which, according to my research, is now on its fifth CEO in five years. 

On March 14, 2023, I asked you, What is the Chamber’s justification for holding out a tin cup for taxpayer funded welfare? Today I gave you the facts, putting it on the record again.

A Chamber of Commerce is supposed to be staffed by the best and most experienced business leaders in the business community. If a Chamber has repeatedly exemplified that it cannot make and manage money for itself, for 20-years, when will it make and manage money for its membership? 

Again, as I said on March 14, 2023, if the Chamber needs money, let it propose a business plan demonstrating how they’ll deliver an acceptable ROI on a low interest, $50,000 SBA loan.

My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com."

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September 24, 2024 - Part 4 - Christopher Buttner’s Statement to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors in opposition to ITEM 9. Approve a Resolution adopting the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024-25 County Budget for the distribution of Transient Occupancy Taxes to the Calaveras Visitors Bureau.

"My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com. 

As stated to this Board previously, the leadership of the Calaveras Visitors Bureau, in league with willfully negligent and deceptive County Supervisors, allegedly continues to engage in ongoing efforts of fraudulent misrepresentation that continues to jeopardize the County’s financial integrity.

As the record shows, the CVB misrepresented its nonprofit corporation type as a public benefit nonprofit corporation in the four-year, million dollar-plus Tourism Promotion Agreement with the County, finalized, under false pretense, in August 2023.

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

I have cited credible allegations of negligent or fraudulent misrepresentation by the leadership of the CVB, of which D3 Supervisor Huberty is the Executive Director, and who is subject to an open and pending FPPC investigation, to this Board from this podium, as well as the Angels Camp City Council, regarding the conversion of corporation type and other matters of CVB malfeasance and mismanagement a total of 18 times since my first appearance before this Board on February 14, 2023. 

On September 13, 2024, I submitted a Public Records Act request for the “CVB's “ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION & BYLAWS AND POLICIES AND PROCEDURES” // Revision 5 – July 2024.”

The responsive document I anticipated receiving was expected to clearly indicate the date upon which the CVB's Revision 5, July 2024 bylaws were received and recorded by a named employee of the Calaveras government.

The CVB's Revision 5, July 2024 bylaws, posted to GoCalaveras.com sometime in July 2024, appears to be a poorly edited and prematurely-approved draft still displaying glaring errors and omissions, misrepresenting – in at least one instance – the CVB's nonprofit corporation type, and it appears to have not been received and recorded by a named employee of the Calaveras government. 

Therefore, the so-called updated Revision 5, July 2024 CVB Bylaws reveals the bureau is still operating, illegally, without valid bylaws, as an outlaw business bureau, which is how I described it on June 1, and, I reiterate, the CVB's ongoing fraudulent misrepresentation continues to jeopardize the County’s financial integrity. 

A thorough forensic financial audit of the two-point-four million dollars in TOT revenue the CVB has received since Huberty’s mid-2019 hire is demanded for Calaveras taxpayers.  

My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com."

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September 24, 2024 - Part 5 - Christopher Buttner’s Statement to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors in opposition of ITEM 22. Authorize the Interim Director of Public Works to execute Contract Change Order #60-02 to contract 1200-2103 with Sukut Construction, LLC in the amount of $1,249,500. 

"My name is Christopher Buttner, Publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com. 

Supervisor Tofanelli, you recently voiced your frustration concerning the latest change order request for the Wagon Trail Project.

You questioned why both the project manager and the construction manager were caught unaware of the project’s cost overruns pushing its price tag to $53 million.

You were quoted last week in the Calaveras Enterprise as having stated, Do we not have people out there on foot watching what’s going on and not seeing it? 

It appears that you were operating under the reasonable expectation – but a falsity – that there were competent, proactive, fiscally responsible people in place – people out there “on foot” – in your words – watching – to serve as good stewards of the people’s trust and tax dollars.

Well, I want to share an observation with you.

At the last Board of Supervisors meeting – that exchange of glances between you and Supervisor Stopper at the conclusion of my public comment – was most revealing.

Supervisor Stopper realized that I’d revealed him to the State for his serial campaign finance violations of the Political Reform Act, and he also realized that I’d leveraged his prior formal warning of financial penalties by the California FPPC for any future infractions.

He also knows that I served him notice his career as a district supervisor was concluding, that he’s no longer electable, and this is his final term.

Supervisor Tofanelli, your Wagon Trail question, asking, Do we not have people out there on foot watching what’s going on and not seeing it? - is also appropriate as it now pertains to the calamity unfolding within this Board of Supervisors concerning the harsh reality that four-fifths of the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors is now under State scrutiny for their respective FPPC campaign finance filings, and two members of this Board have already been elevated to open and pending case status with State investigations in process.

My question to all of you is this… Does this Board even have the moral authority anymore to approve expenditure(s) of more funds for the Wagon Trail Realignment Project without an independent forensic audit first occurring?

Unfortunately for the entire Board of Supervisors, except for Jack Garamendi who demonstrates that he actually personifies FPPC legal filing responsibilities, I, me, was out “on the ground” monitoring all of your FPPC filings and doing my duty as a conscientious citizen to report four of you to the State – just as you deserved.

Yes, I’ve watched what’s going on and it is shameful.

And, lastly, what labor union and local are the workers represented by?

My name is Christopher Buttner, Publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com." 

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September 24, 2024 - Part 6 - Christopher Buttner’s Statement to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors in opposition of ITEM 23. Authorize the Board Chair to execute Amendment 14 to Agreement 1200-1806 with Dewberry Engineers Inc. increasing the maximum amount payable by $578,262.81 for a total amount not to exceed $3,379,288 and extending the term through December 31, 2025. 

"My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com.  

I object to the chair authorizing the execution of Amendment 14 to Agreement 1200-1806 with Dewberry Engineers Inc., increasing the maximum amount payable by $578,262.81 for a total amount not to exceed $3,379,288 and extending the term through December 31, 2025.

I have every expectation that the chair will ignore my objection to authorizing the execution of Amendment 14 to Agreement 1200-1806 with Dewberry Engineers Inc.

That said, it takes a lot of nerve or lack of self-awareness – or perhaps both – for this Board of Supervisors consisting of four serial campaign finance filing violators –  four elected officials who cannot even meet the basic minimum requirement for timeliness, accuracy or honesty in their legal responsibility to the State – to be spending hundreds of thousands, and now millions of dollars, on a project that is now nearing a one-hundred-and-twenty-percent cost overrun – spending money like drunken sailors - and we’re not even out of Phase One of this project.

That’s right… This $24 million project is approaching $53 million dollars.

Where will this end, and how high will it go?

This boondoggle exemplifies the John Hurt quote from the 1997 movie CONTACT, based upon the book by the same name authored by famed astronomer and educator Carl Sagan… “First rule in government spending: why build ONE when you can have TWO at TWICE the price?”

How dare this Board of Supervisors potentially drive this County toward bankruptcy – echoing real concerns vocalized by retiring District 2 Supervisor Garamendi as a real and growing threat to the financial solvency of Calaveras County.

Before any amendments, to any agreements, are authorized there must be a forensic audit conducted to determine how and why a project manager and a construction manager were unable to effectively manage the project, construction and these cost overruns.

My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com."

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September 24, 2024 - Part 7 - Christopher Buttner’s Statement to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors in opposition to ITEM 26. Receive an Update from the Calaveras County Chamber of Commerce. 

"My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com.

Here's the only thing I wanted to hear from the Chamber of Commerce in their update, because the Chamber is hosting a Calaveras Candidate Debate forum tomorrow morning, September 25, 2024 at 8:30 am.

Now that the Chamber is in receipt of another $50,000 tranche of taxpayer money, I wanted to know if the Chamber debate moderator will ask the four candidates, of which one is an incumbent currently under scrutiny by the State of California Fair Political Practices Commission for alleged violations of the Political Reform Act, about campaign integrity issues, specific to the timely and accurate filing of FPPC Campaign Finance forms. 

My allegations of campaign finance violations presented to the FPPC against two of five Calaveras Supervisors – Huberty and Folendorf – have both been upgraded to commission-initiated complaints triggering State cases – currently open – investigating their suspicious campaign finance filings.  

Supervisor Tofanelli is subject of an FPPC complaint for allegedly falsifying the claim of a late filing being an amendment to a non-existent prior report, additionally, alleging he committed perjury by falsely claiming his late filing to be an amendment to a non-existent prior report.  

Supervisor Stopper is the subject to an FPPC complaint for alleged violations of the FPPC's campaign disclosure provisions of the Political Reform Act for allegedly not filing termination forms for his 2018 campaign committee, nor filing Form 470 Officeholder and Candidate Campaign Statement Short Form for 2023, and failure to file Form 497s for two labor union campaign contributions to his 2018 campaign.

Now, imagine if the FPPC should convert the remaining two complaints against Supervisors Tofanelli and Stopper into active State cases for campaign finance violations, making the majority - four of five - Calaveras supervisors concurrent subjects of active State cases for campaign finance violations, thereby potentially rendering the Calaveras County government invalid or illegitimate. 

So here’s the question… Will Supervisors Tofanelli, Stopper, Huberty and Folendorf be asked to resign from office if the FPPC determines they are serial violators of the Political Reform Act?

My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com."

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September 24, 2024 - Part 8 - Full Calaveras County Board of Supervisors hearing segment on Wagon Trail Realignment Project additional funding requests.

• ITEM 22. Authorize the Interim Director of Public Works to execute Contract Change Order #60-02 to contract 1200-2103 with Sukut Construction, LLC in the amount of $1,249,500. 
• ITEM 23. Authorize the Board Chair to execute Amendment 14 to Agreement 1200-1806 with Dewberry Engineers Inc. increasing the maximum amount payable by $578,262.81 for a total amount not to exceed $3,379,288 and extending the term through December 31, 2025.  

This is 59-minutes in duration, but it is well worth your time if you want to know how your tax dollars are being wasted.

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October 22, 2024 - Christopher Buttner's General Public Comments on the subject of systemic, endemic and institutionalized Calaveras County Government Corruption. A recitation of a detailed list of complaints filed with County, State and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.  

"My name is Christopher Buttner. This is my 34th statement to the Board of Supervisors since February 14, 2023. 

The failure of this government to enforce and abide by the ethical standards set forth in the Codified General Ordinances of the County of Calaveras, in part, has led to the creation of Calaveras2024Election.com, launched in May 2023. 

Thus far, I have published 121 reports and hundreds of social media posts detailing repeated breaches of ethical protocols and oath of office, dereliction of duty, and the abdication of fiduciary responsibilities by a concerning number of elected and appointed Calaveras government officials, revealing a compelling argument this government’s modus operandi is based on systemic and endemic government corruption. 

My interactions with County, State and Federal law enforcement agencies include; 

• Seven Fair Political Practices Commission complaints resulting in two open and pending investigations, so far.  
• Four Grand Jury Complaints and Five Calaveras District Attorney complaints - all non-responsive.
• Three California Department of Justice complaints. 
• Four California State Bar complaints. 
• One California Commission on Judicial Performance Complaint.
• One California Civil Rights Department Complaint. 
• One Federal Trade Commission complaint.
• Six Cease and Desist demand letters addressed to conflicted elected officials and colluded business bureau directors for Defamation of Character, Tortious Interference, Restraint of Trade, Trade Libel, False Light, and Trademark Infringement, constituting numerous Civil and Constitutional Rights violations. 
• Multiple Calaveras Sheriff harassment reports submitted against the District 3 Supervisor and business bureau directors. 
• One FBI complaint. 
• I am contributing my reporting to the strengthening of an existing Senate Bill that intends to further reduce pay-to-play and conflicts of interest corruption in local government citing the actions of Calaveras County’s elected and appointed officials as the real world, worst case examples of alleged endemic and institutionalized California county government corruption.  
• You’ve motivated me to write and seek sponsorship for my “No Safe Harbor for Child Predators” Senate Bill, which includes stiff penalties for public officials and employers prosecuted and convicted for using their respective positions of power of office or employment to provide protective cover for adjudicated pedophiles.  

On election day, November 5th, Calaveras citizens should consider voting for alternative outsider Supervisor candidates instead of colluded cronies and incumbents in order to recalibrate Calaveras government onto a course of integrity, functionality and fiscal responsibility. 

My name is Christopher Buttner, publisher of Calaveras2024Election.com."

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