The media savvy organizers of Anaheim’s Little Arabia recently held a shindig to celebrate the third anniversary of the shopping and entertainment district’s official designation by the City of Anaheim.
Underwriting the event, according to the Voice of OC, were the “Ibrahim Law Firm, FamVans, Al Karmel Market, CalOptima and other groups with contributions from Anaheim City Councilmembers Carlos Leon and Norma Campos Kurtz, as well as Santa Ana City Councilwoman Jessie Lopez.” [Emphasis added]
Lopez, a Democrat, used $2,500 from her “city discretionary funds” – read: councilmember slush fund – to help fund the event. Each Santa Ana councilmember gets $10,000 annually to assist non-profits.
Question: since Little Arabia is in Anaheim, why is Lopez making Santa Ana taxpayers fund an Anaheim event?
Answer: because Lopez is running for the 68th Assembly District, much of which is comprised of Anaheim. She is also courting Arab-American activists, and writing a taxpayer-funded check bought her access to the Little Arabia event and being featured in press coverage of the Anaheim event.
Lopez has engaged in a serious abuse of Santa Ana taxpayer dollars. The discretionary funds provided to Santa Ana councilmembers are supposed to be used for the benefit of Santa Ana residents – not funding the electoral aspirations of Santa Ana councilmembers.
Here is Lopez’s spin to the Voice of OC: “Celebrating the three year formal recognition of Little Arabia uplifts not just Anaheim, but all of Orange County, including my own constituents, who are a part of the Arab American community,” she said in a Tuesday phone interview.
Lame.
By that logic, Lopez could spend her discretionary funds on any cause or organization – she just has to claim it tangentially “uplifts” some aspect of Santa Ana society. Her rationalization is yet another example Lopez’s lack of seriousness.
Lopez could have donated that $2,500 to a worthy and needy Santa Ana neighborhood organization. Instead, she used fully one-quarter of her discretionary fund to a promote a business district in a different city that doesn’t generate one single cent in sales tax for the financially-strapped Santa Ana that she plays at governing.
Lopez was one of the loudest voices for setting up a taxpayer-funded account to provide financial assistance for families whose breadwinner had been arrested by federal immigration authorities. She could have donated the $2,500 to that fund – but she didn’t.
One has to wonder what Lopez learned at the Harvard University “Senior Executives in State and Local Government” she attended this summer – at a cost of $20,000 to Santa Ana taxpayers.
Lopez is buying votes with taxpayer dollars. She’s misusing her councilmember discretionary fund as campaign walking around money. She owes the taxpayers of Santa Ana an apology – and a refund.
