In the six months since independent investigators said Anaheim needed to make reforms, councilmembers have increased oversight and required disclosures of City Hall dealings to help prevent improper behavior from happening again.
Changes include mandatory postings of who is meeting with city officials and adding an ethics officer.
The City Council hired the investigators following the 2022 revelation of FBI investigations in the city, which alleged a self-described “cabal” of business and political leaders may have exerted significant influence in Anaheim. The FBI investigations led to deals for guilty pleas from the former mayor and former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce.
The reform recommendations came from the city-hired investigators and more were proposed by councilmembers.
The investigators in their final report of their findings said city officials should create the ethics officer position to monitor political activities and the distribution of the city’s stadium tickets, revisit the city manager’s signing authority and require a super majority of the council’s approval before a top city appointed official could be fired.
In the weeks after those recommendations were out, Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava expanded on those ideas and proposed several areas they wanted to focus on for several months of council meetings. The council has now run the gamut of discussing that list and approving new laws for the city.
The council looked at many areas for reform. That included updating Anaheim’s campaign finance laws, passing stronger lobbying rules for who has to register, requiring councilmembers to post calendars of who they meet with online and hiring the ethics officer in the city attorney’s office to oversee these changes. That position should be filled in coming months, officials said.
Former Councilmember Jose Moreno said the reforms Anaheim took on were necessary, but not sufficient. The city focused on…
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