Visit Anaheim has halted its financial relationship with the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce and will respond in the coming weeks to the city’s demand to return $1.5 million, leaders with the tourism marketing nonprofit told the city.
City Attorney Robert Fabela on Tuesday night gave the City Council an update on the demand for Visit Anaheim to return the money, following the allegations that the agency may have surreptitiously diverted $1.5 million in coronavirus pandemic relief funds to an Anaheim Chamber of Commerce nonprofit in 2020.
Fabela said Visit Anaheim’s attorney conveyed that they will respond to the city’s demand in the next two to four weeks after the completion of their own internal audit. They also have stopped sending money to the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce and plan to end an annual agreement to share revenue with them.
In 2020, the city gave $6.5 million to the tourism agency during the early months of the pandemic to promote tourism recovery. Investigators from the JL Group alleged that $1.5 million of that may have gone to the chamber nonprofit, but they couldn’t determine how it was used.
Visit Anaheim likely violated its agreement with the city to not subcontract for services without the city manager’s approval, which they didn’t get, city staffers said in a report to the council.
“From what I’m hearing now, (Visit Anaheim’s) board is more engaged in how Visit Anaheim is operating,” Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava said. “I think the CEO had a significant amount of leeway on how funds were being dispersed.”
Visit Anaheim markets the city and books the convention center. They are a 501-c-6 nonprofit funded by a 2% assessment on hotel room rates in the Anaheim Resort and the Platinum Triangle.
Tom Morton, executive director of convention, sports and entertainment for the city, told councilmembers that it’d “be a heavy lift” to quickly replace Visit Anaheim with another organization or create an internal…
Read the full article here
