Front Page  »  

‘Cleaning up’ San Luis Obispo County agency’s missing money woes

January 14, 2019

Charles Tenborg

By Cal Coast Times staff

The county’s waste management board voted last week to begin “clean up” of fiscal issues which have generated ongoing criminal investigations by law enforcement into alleged misappropriation of public funds by former employees. [Cal Coast Times]

Among those issues discussed by members of the San Luis Obispo County’s Integrated Waste Management Authority (IWMA) board of directors are unauthorized “gifting” of trucks to favored outside entities, and failures to execute required contracts and approve bylaws.

In one 2014 example, a one-time favored contractor with the IWMA, Charles K. Tenborg, ordered a $63,405 Isuzu truck from a dealer in San Jose, and then sent the invoice to the IWMA. Former IWMA administrator Bill Worrell paid the invoice, and then provided the truck to Tenborg under a purported lease agreement — a document no one has been able to produce, according to an IWMA staff report.

Worrell took early retirement last year following disclosure of his questionable fiscal practices during his 20-year career at IWMA. Worrell approved the truck’s purchase without board approval, then gave the keys to Tenborg. Worrell’s daughter Emily Worrell was a key employee of Tenborg’s company.

Beginning in 2008, the IWMA began passing ordinances that required local retailers who sell items such as batteries, needles, florescent lights and paint to take them back from the public for free. The IWMA required the retailers to pay for Tenborg to pick up the items, then applied for state grant monies which it used to purchase the truck for Tenborg’s use.

In 2012, Tenborg sued CalCoastNews and two reporters over an article about the IWMA and its relationship with contractors, including Tenborg. Tenborg testified that he sold his contract with the IWMA to Stericycle in about 2014, and that he was no longer transporting waste for the IWMA.

In the recently approved lease agreement for the Isuzu truck Tenborg ordered, the IWMA and Stericycle agree to affirm the terms and existence of a lease agreement to “avoid confusion.”

However, IWMA staff claims to have no knowledge of when Tenborg handed the truck over to Stericycle.

In addition to cleaning up issues with the truck lease, the IWMA board also discussed fixing failures to operate its hazardous waste facilities under legal contracts. The IWMA’s contracts to operate the household hazardous waste drop off facilities at six locations including Heritage Ranch, the Cold Canyon Landfill and the Chicago Grade Landfill expired in 2012.

The board voted to create new contracts with the owners of the six locations and to approve a conflict waiver for legal counsel Jeffrey Minnery with Adamski Moroski Madden Cumberland & Green, which has also provided legal counsel for Heritage Ranch, a conflict local attorney Stew Jenkins questioned.

“These interlocking conflicts of interest in your legal counsel representation is no longer collaboration, but corruption,” Jenkins said during public comment.

As a final cleanup measure, the board voted to approve bylaws for the IWMA’s executive committee. For more than 20 years, the three person committee has promoted operational procedures, or a lack thereof, to the full board even though the committee’s existence and bylaws had never been approved by the full board.


Loading...
Related:


13 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

The only way to truly clean up this city involves means that have nothing to do with using the court system


4

Funny thing, if you go to the minutes of the executive board meetings, Adam Hill and Jeff Lee are the only ones who show up. Who is the third member of the illegally formed and operated executive committee?


10

That’s what you get with any board,committee or panel that picked and not elected then the voters have no say so you do as they say not what they do. Look at Los Osos and the sewer mandated by the water board. The problem was C MC and farmers.


5

“The county’s waste management board voted last week to begin “clean up” of fiscal issues..,”


So, it seems, “fiscal issues” in this case are not normally monitored and dealt with on an ongoing basis like a private business organization typically would. Why am I not surprised?


11

After reading the last two stories, it appears I need to by a big generator that runs on natural gas for electricity and some 55 gallon drums to burn my trash.


5

If the words “san luis obispo county” are the location of corruption you can rest assured nobody will be convicted or held responsible for jacksheet. Think hard now, every one of these bastards are a member of which organization of good ole boys?? Think hard now and it aint the Knights of Columbus either.


14

This is just the low hanging fruit that’s been picked by the interim manager. They haven’t even gotten to the results of the upcoming (or ongoing?) forensic audit yet. If the audit is halfway competent, they should be able to recover or re-create most of the missing financial documentation from various sources. That should tell a very interesting story.


I wouldn’t rely on the DA to dig where he needs to on this. We need to bring the State Attorney General’s Office in as soon as possible to make sure nothing that is found in the audit mysteriously disappears or is suppressed.


30

It’s time for this County to initiate a Grand Jury that actually has some power that can look into all of the criminal activities that are occurring within the County. The good old boy way of doing things still exists and until that is cleaned up it will be, as they say, business as usual.


30

This is quite important. Don’t forget, though, a Grand Jury with that kind of power is still at the mercy of the district attorney — who, in this case, is useless Dan Dow, whose best friends are some of SLO County’s most corrupt individuals.


23

More and more that does appear to be a problem. A Grand Jury would be a good start though.


17

Even the “cleanup” isn’t clean. While it is a start, it is woefully inadequate and disappointing that a board consisting of experienced board members, some even with law degrees, continues to rubber stamp what they are handed. And even sadder, is that the Grover Beach City Council reappointed Jeff Lee to represent them on the IWMA board without so much as ONE question about why he took home a truckload of years of credit card files that the CEO then “couldn’t find” and why, after 6 years on the board, and 3 years as chair, Lee did NOTHING about the graft.


27

Seems that the least of Tenborg’s worries would have been a CalCoastNews article. I mean, how do you expect to keep all of this corruption under wraps in the long term anyway? Bringing the lawsuit simply invited greater scrutiny. Good move, knucklehead. Great for SLO County though.


27
1 2