Why was the City Auditor asked to investigate the Martin Luther King Celebration? Maybe because Laura Richardson tried to use General Fund money to pay for it

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

Why was the City Auditor’s office asked to look into the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration—the city’s annual salute to the civil rights pioneer, and the Sixth District’s signature event?

Perhaps because last year, when city officials were discussing how to pay for the 19th annual MLK Celebration, the person who helped plan it—then-Sixth District Councilwoman Laura Richardson—asked for $35,000 out of the city’s general fund to help pay for the celebration’s musical headliner, Kool & the Gang. That’s illegal, according to city regulations.

But e-mails obtained by The District show that Richardson’s suggestion was given considerable airing at City Hall.

On Sept. 25, 2006, the head of the Special Events Department, David Ashman, e-mailed Phil Hester, the head of Parks, Recreation & Marine, to tell him about it:

“At the end of last year, the council office did not spend all of the allocated funds for MLK festivities,” Ashman wrote. “The office requested the unspent $35,000 of MLK funding be ‘transferred’ to [MLK Celebration banker] Partners of Parks (as they have done the previous year).

“According to [Richardson aide] Daysha [Austin], this transfer was not completed and the council office ‘gave back’ $35,000 to the general fund. It is my understanding that the council office is requesting the city return the $35,000 of unspent funding from last year so she can use it to pay for the headliner at this year’s concert.”

Some quick background: Partners of Parks is a nonprofit foundation established in the 1980s by retired Long Beach residents to help out with park events. Part of this “help” has always been fundraising, and so for years Partners has taken private donations for the city’s myriad neighborhood events—from Midnight Basketball to Trees on the Bay—and banked them all around town on behalf of these groups, then paid the bills as they came in.

There was just one problem with Laura Richardson’s request: City rules prohibit taking money out of the general fund without City Council approval.

“We certainly flagged it in our office, and said ‘Taxpayer dollars going into Partners of Parks—that’s not appropriate,’” says Becki Ames, chief of staff for Mayor Bob Foster. “That’s the rule citywide [for councilmembers]—if you don’t spend your money by the end of the fiscal year, it goes back into the general fund.”

Neither Richardson nor Hester responded to repeated interview requests from The District.

So the question last year—as Laura Richardson ran for election to the 55th state Assembly District, won the election, and prepared to leave Long Beach—was still how the Sixth District council office would pay for Kool & the Gang.

In a Sept. 29, 2006, e-mail to then-City Manager Jerry Miller, Richardson herself made a suggestion. The city’s fiscal year ended at midnight the following day, Sept. 30, 2006, and Richardson proposed an end-of-the-year transfer of money from her Sixth District account to the Parks department—and possibly to Partners of Parks.

“Over the past five years, until last year, we would utilize funds saved to benefit City sponsored community projects in the District that the City budget was unable to cover completely,” Richardson wrote, referring to the $59,103 balance in her account. “These funds normally went to entities such as Partners of Parks and the Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine that helped support these community projects.

A little later came the dollar amount; Richardson wanted to “direct $59,103 to the Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine,” including “$25,000 for the balance due to the musical group that will be the Headliner at the Martin Luther King Unity Celebration.” Which of course meant Kool & the Gang.

City officials apparently got past the fact that Partners of Parks is not a city department—but as Miller pointed out to Hester in an Oct. 11, 2006, e-mail, they found Kool & the Gang outrageously expensive:

“I just learned that the band Laura wants for MLK celebration, Cool and Co. [sic] or whatever wants to charge us $80,000 plus travel, lodging and other incidentals?? That’s crazy,” Miller wrote. “Clearly this has to go to CC [city council] and there is no money for something of this ilk. . . . Unbelievable.”

Hester agreed, in an e-mail response back to Jerry Miller, just minutes later.

“I agree. In our meeting with her a few weeks ago, she gave me the contract which was the first time we ever heard about this,” Hester wrote. “I saw she wanted to transfer some end of year money from her budget which was still not enough. We are glad the City Attorney has finally gotten involved on this.”

“It’s going to get ugly,” Miller e-mailed back to Hester later that afternoon.

But something happened: Sources say Laura Richardson wound up paying for Kool & the Gang through good old-fashioned fundraising—not by raiding the city’s general fund.

“That didn’t happen,” says J.C. Squires, the Parks, Recreation & Marine business operations manager. “I think it died in the conversation with [then-City Manager Jerry] Miller.”
And before leaving for the state Assembly—and before running for Congress and being elected in August to serve out the late Juanita Millender-McDonald’s unexpired Congress-ional term—Richardson raised enough money to pay almost all the bills from her last MLK Celebration.

That’s another reason the auditor’s office could investigate the MLK Celebration: As recently as Thanksgiving, the Sixth District council office—now helmed by Councilman Dee Andrews—still owed $4,995.65 in bills incurred by Laura Richardson and paid by Partners of Parks. (Andrews’ office has said it will pay the entire amount, over time.

But according to Alex Cherin, the assistant city auditor who went to work last Friday for the Port of Long Beach, the auditor is considering investigating the whole MLK Celebration—all 20 years of it.

Tags: INVESTIGATIONS, laura richardson, MLK CELEBRATION, sixth district