The Voice of OC updates the effort to have state (Democrats) audit the City of Irvine (Republican) audit. The real story is what this reveals about Gafcon’s mens rea.
A stated goal of the Great park Audit is to recover enough from contractors to cover the cost of the audit. The Depositions have been laying the ground work for a False Claims Act lawsuit, particularly against the two obvious targets of Gafcon and Forde & Mollrich. The statute of limitations looms for much of this. Until few weeks ago, Irvine was still negotiating “tolling agreements” wit these parties. Bascially, Irvine said, “either agree to waive your statute of limitations immunity, or we’ll file every conceivable lawsuit our lawyers can think up between now and the deadline.” As seen from the letter OC Republicans have sent to Sacramento, Gafcon has finally signed.
However, that tolling agreement seems to be in conflict with pursuing the Audit of Audits.
The Irvine City Council has entered into tolling agreements with many of the firms identified in the Great Park Audit. In fact, the company behind this JLAC audit request, San Diego based Gafcon, Inc. has entered into a tolling agreement with the City of Irvine. Paragraph 7 of that tolling agreement prohibits any party, including Gafcon, from initiating any administrative action or proceedings before JLAC.
Any disputes that cannot be resolved between Gafcon, the City of Irvine, or any other party, are subject to legal rights and defenses in court. Those proceedings could be adversely affected by any determinations by the State Auditor that are inconsistent with any agreements, judicial determinations or formal resolution of any disputes by the parties.
Additionally, Rule 25(d) of the JLAC provides that JLAC shall “[r]efer the [audit] request to another agency, if another agency is the more appropriate venue.” In light of the tolling agreements, “the more appropriate venue” is to allow the City and the parties to attempt to resolve their differences and then to resort to a judicial form, if necessary, subject to the parties’ rights and defenses in that more appropriate forum.
Irvine has a lot of leverage because Gafcon lives on public contracts. A messy, high-profile lawsuit with Irvine would pretty much kill Gafcon’s future deal flow. Indeed, this may already be happening. Gafcon really needs to settle this, quickly and quietly, so they can get back to their core competency of sticking their snout in the public trough.
This highly public attack on the audit using San Diego pols known to be tied to Gafcon is hardly quiet, so Gafcon is showing their hand: they’re worried.
update: OC Weekly reports that the current attempt get the state involved has failed
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