Noting Larry Agran's Secret Irvine Shopping Spree, Again

• Although I'm no fan of Dan Chmielewski's propaganda ministry (or Red County), his girth is not relevant. Let's stick to the issue, namely Agran's corruption and how it's poisoned representative government in Irvine. The day Agran is marched off to jail, Dan will disappear and that will be that.

• Chmielewski is having himself a pastrami sandwich, with a side of slaw....Wipe your face Dan...

• Here we sit years later.Still no park,just a big fat balloon.I wanted an airport,Look how congested JWA is.Everyone forgot that for years fighter jets screamed thru OC.Now people are making money off this.Show us were the money is.I guess we will never see the Great Park in our lifetime.

• Waiting for Dan Chmielewski to defend the indefensible...

• Why did Larry Agran turn to the Dark Side? That's a question asked by a lot of good people who worked alongside him for many years. He was defeated for re-election as mayor in 1990 in a dirty campaign waged by his opponents. Then he ran for President, naively assuming he'd be given the same platform as more credible candidates, and when the Democratic Party started excluding him from events he tried to crash candidate debates. Agran was almost arrested in New Hampshire, then got busted in New York. A few years later, he tried to organize cities into an urban presidential primary, but Clinton's people leaned on cities to drop out. Agran rode the El Toro Airport battle as a white knight to return to office, but something snapped in him and he started taking the low road. He was unanimously censured by the Irvine City Council in 2000 for leaking to the press a bogus study which said that the Great Park could be built for $200 million. Once he regained the Council majority after the 2000 election, he began consolidating power. Through cronies, he started setting up campaign slush funds to launder money from Irvine developers. The Irvine Company held a huge fundraiser to help retire Agran's campaign debts. Among the donors were six lawyers with the Nossaman law firm, which later got the contract to represent the Great Park. OC Weekly, the L.A. Times and the Register started writing stories about Agran's ethical lapses, which only drove him darker. In 2004, Councilman and longtime ally Chris Mears publicly renounced him after he exposed that an Agran crony was arranging a secret deal with a company to build a city electrical utility, with the crony getting a huge business. Agran gave a huge contract to Forde & Mollrich, as mentioned above, which was running Agran's campaign off the books. The million-dollar contract at City Hall was the payoff. It's illegal, of course, but the D.A. did nothing. In 2006, Agran falsely accused Councilwoman Christina Shea of lobbying developers and others with business before the City Council. The truth is that it was Agran who was lobbying those people for campaign contributions through his cronies. Agran started handing out more and more no-bid contracts to companies willing to make major contributions to his campaign slush funds. All papers wrote about it, but again the D.A. did nothing. The most recent scandal was an audit which showed millions of dollars in unexplained payments to no-bid contractors that donated to Agran's slush funds during the 2008 election. Agran and his two Council allies, Beth Krom and Sukhee Kang, voted to shut down any further audit. Shea and Steven Choi voted to continue the audit. So far, the D.A. has done nothing. It should be noted that Forde & Mollrich helped run the D.A.'s first election campaign, which may explain why the D.A. does nothing.

• I remember when Agran ran for President- considered voting for him. He seemed like an honest and empathetic candidate. Was he a better actor then or stuck with a worse PR team now?

• Scott, your remarks about being on top of the Forde & Moolrich story several years ago are absolutely correct. Even when it was brought up during the most recent campaign along with quid pro quo contributions from Maguire Properties, the voters turned a deaf ear and continue to be oblivious to what was going on in their own City. Unfortunately, the Orange County District Attorney and U.S. Attorney also choose to ignore the allegations of political corruption in Irvine, allowing Agran, Krom and Kang to flourish. Seems to me a good story for you guys to hit on might be; why the Justice System condones political corruption in Irvine. I for one would like to hear what the law enforcement people have to say about that.

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