Six public Fair Board members are said to be forming a private nonprofit to buy the Fairgrounds. Orange County Register columnist Frank Mickadeit says that the six board members want closed meetings to discuss the issue, a move that he says would make the public even move suspicious of the private nonprofit. -DB
The Orange County Register
Opinion
November 11, 2009
By Frank Mickadeit
There’s been a not-so-unspoken conspiracy theory that six public Fair Board members formed a private nonprofit to buy the Fairgrounds so they could make it their own plaything and somehow personally benefit through dramatically increased commercialization of the property.
This would, of course, would require that once they bought the 150 acres they got the land-use changed. And it would certainly put anyone with such ideas on the opposite side of the Costa Mesa City Council’s move to lock in the fairgrounds-only use via a citywide vote.
This would also require that the longtime civic and society leaders who have joined the nonprofit board break their trust with a whole lot of friends and political associates. None of this seems likely. Having a personal playground wouldn’t be much fun if nobody would play with you. Not to mention that turning a nonprofit into your own for-profit is illegal as hell.
But it would be good to get some folks on the record. I asked Dave Ellis, one of the Fair Board members to form the nonprofit, about the ballot measure. He’s all for it. “I think it gives the residents a comfort level,” he said. “We want everything out there now to be successful and more efficient. That’s all we ever wanted.”
When I was at the council meeting, Mary Young, also a Fair Board/Fair nonprofit member, showed up late. She was overjoyed when she heard the council had just voted to try and lock-in the land-use.
It is disturbing the nonprofit wants closed-door meetings – supposedly so it can be competitive with other private entities. This reasoning has been a canard since the days of Hiram Johnson. The truth is, Brown Act standards don’t make it impossible to be competitive; they simply make you work harder at it. The trade-off is that open meetings would greatly immunize the nonprofit from the very suspicions being cast its way.
Copyright 2009 Orange County Register Communications