Desmond Meagley
Are all Peralta officials disclosing conflicts of interests? We don’t know — Peralta’s public records office couldn’t find all of the documents we asked for.
Each year, elected officials and public employees who make decisions that impact public finances are required by California law to disclose potential conflicts of interest through a form called the Form 700, or Statement of Economic Interest.
Conflicts of interest could include gifts, investments, loans, business positions, or properties that could be affected by any decision the employee makes in public office.
By disclosing these financial interests, public officials are reminded to step away from decisions that could pose a conflict of interest, according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), the state agency that administers the form.
The form also provides information to the public that’s necessary for ensuring accountability, the FPPC states online.
“The main reason is to ensure that you’re not using your public position to in any way benefit family, friends, and those who at one time you had an economic interest,” said John Pelissero, the Director for Government Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics in Santa Clara University.
However, the Peralta Community College District (PCCD) hasn’t been keeping a consistent record of these forms, an investigation by The Citizen found.
According to district policy, employees that are required to file the Form 700 — called “designated employees” — include trustees, chancellors, college presidents, vice chancellors, vice presidents, deans, and more.
The Citizen requested Form 700s for many designated employees who have served the district within the past six years. California law requires that these forms are accessible to the public upon request.
PCCD turned over heaps of documents. Although we originally requested disclosures covering 2019 to 2023, we also received forms for 2018.
However, about half of the records we asked for were missing.
While most officials had at least one Form 700 on record, a small number of officials, including two former Vice Chancellors of General Services, had no record of disclosing their conflicts of interest in the past five years.
What was missing
The results of our public records request revealed gaps in the district’s collection and keeping of the Form 700s each year.
Under California law and district policy, “designated” employees are required to declare their conflicts of interest annually, upon assuming office, and upon leaving office.
Half of the Form 700s we requested were missing from the documents PCCD provided. That’s a total of 58 missing forms, out of the 113 we requested for current and former district employees.
That “raises some ethical questions about transparency,” according to Pelissero, the government ethics expert.
“The fact that they either don’t have the Form 700s on file or they can’t locate them suggests to somebody looking at this that these forms aren’t taken all that seriously by the community college district,” Pelissero said.
The “very foundation” of the forms, he said, is to allow the public to view this information.
It is unclear why PCCD could not locate all of the conflict of interest disclosures that we requested.
According to PCCD’s Executive Director for Marketing, Communication, and Public Relations, Mark Johnson, the district is “in the process of” improving the policies procedures around the form, and plans to introduce new training.
“While compliance with the Form 700 requirements is the responsibility of the individuals in designated positions, the District wants to create a strong culture of compliance, and we will be striving for 100 percent compliance going forward,” Johnson stated via email.
Spotty recordkeeping for most employees
For many employees holding “designated” positions, the district provided us with a Form 700 from at least one, but not all of the years the individual held that office.
For example, former PCCD Interim Chancellor Jannett Jackson served in her role from April 16, 2021 to December 2023. However, The Citizen only received a Form 700 filed by Jackson covering the year 2022. We didn’t receive a form filed by her upon assuming office in 2021 or leaving office in 2023.
Jackson did not respond to requests for comment.
We received Form 700s filed by Trustee Cindi Napoli-Abella Reiss when she assumed office in December 2018, and for 2019 and 2020. We didn’t receive her forms for 2021, 2022, or 2023.
In an email to The Citizen, Reiss confirmed that she “missed” 2021 and 2022 and stated that she had “contacted FPPC, recently, to file those years.”
Former Berkeley City College President, Angélica Garcia, served from May 1, 2020 to June 30, 2023, but we only received a Form 700 covering the year 2022. Asked why the district had no other Form 700s on record for her, Garcia stated via email that she completed her Form 700 “when the District calls for that information to meet the filing deadlines.”
The records we received also indicated that the district may not be consistently collecting Form 700s for employees assuming or leaving a designated position.
For example, former PCCD Trustee Linda Handy consistently filed Form 700s covering 2018 to 2021. However, we didn’t receive record of a Form 700 filed by Handy when she left office in December 2022.
Handy stated in an email to The Citizen, “ALL required documents, filings and closings were completed and submitted to the appropriate agencies,” but did not provide a copy of the form.
According to Johnson, the district does not currently ask designated employees for their Form 700 upon leaving office.
“It is possible that many do not know about the requirement,” he stated.
Moving forward, the district will start asking designated employees who leave the district to file a Form 700, Johnson stated.
For some high-ranking employees, no records at all
A few employees had no Form 700s on file for any year that we requested.
No Form 700s could be located for Atheria Smith, PCCD’s former Interim Vice Chancellor of General Services, who retired earlier this year. Smith also previously served as PCCD’s Director of Facilities Planning and Development. Both positions are listed as “designated” in the district’s conflict of interest disclosure policy.
We also did not receive a Form 700 filed by PCCD’s previous Vice Chancellor of General Services, Sadiq Ikharo, who was placed on leave in March 2019.
A spreadsheet attached to a compilation of all Form 700s received by district employees for the 2018-19 school year indicates that PCCD was aware that it did not receive a Form 700 from Smith or Ikharo.
The duties of the Vice Chancellor of General Services, a position which has since been eliminated, included developing, negotiating, and administering contracts for construction projects, among other responsibilities.
“Anytime you have somebody who’s involved in potentially executing contracts for services from outside parties, you want to make sure they don’t have a conflict of interest,” Pelissero, the government ethics expert, said.
“If they’re not even filing the forms for several years, that should be a big red flag to the chancellor and to the board,” he added.
Public records obtained by The Citizen indicate that in July 2021, the district awarded a no-bid $75,000 consultant agreement to a company owned by an individual that Smith had a business connection to in the past.
The company, Kneal Resource System, is owned by Kathy Neal, the ex-wife of former Oakland mayor Elihu Harris, who is also a previous PCCD chancellor.
A statement of information filed with the California Secretary of State on July 25, 2006 lists Smith as a “manager” or “member” alongside Neal of a Limited Liability Company called Construction Management Consortium.
The statement lists Kelle McMahon as the company’s Chief Executive Officer. McMahon is a current Construction Management Instructor at Laney College and PCCD’s former Interim Director of Capital Projects and Facilities.
The company was formally dissolved in 2008. The Certificate of Dissolution, signed by McMahon and Smith as “Principals,” states that the LLC “did not conduct any business” and that “no business activities have occurred since the company was formed in 2006.”
PCCD’s Conflict of Interest Code prohibits designated employees from making decisions on business entities in which they currently hold a management position or have an investment worth at least $2,000. The policy doesn’t place any explicit restrictions on businesses owned by someone they used to do business with.
Ikharo, Smith and Neal did not respond to The Citizen’s repeated requests for comment.
Smith is not the only person with missing Form 700s.
Diana Bajrami had no Form 700 on record, despite having served in positions such as Vice President of Instruction and Acting College President at the College of Alameda. She stepped down earlier this year to return to teaching.
“Per my knowledge and recollection, during my time as an administrator I was not notified of this form,” Bajrami told The Citizen via email.
Trustee Sheweet Yohannes, who has served on the PCCD Board of Trustees since November 2022, did not have a Form 700 on record. Yohannes did not respond to requests for comment.
Lack of forms from construction consultants
District policy states that “construction consultants” are also required to file a Form 700 and disclose their conflicts of interest.
We requested Form 700s filed by Michael Terry and Jaime Ortiz, Partner and Principal of High Performance Learning Environments (HPLE), a construction consulting firm that has received over $3 million in contracts with PCCD, but didn’t receive any.
According to Johnson, PCCD’s communications director, the district “has not informed nor asked HPLE or any of our vendors to complete a Form 700.”
“I am not aware of a standard current practice related to Form 700s for construction consultants,” Johnson stated via email. “We are going to review the administrative procedure and then develop a practice in this area.”
A peek inside what’s been disclosed
Peralta officials reported a range of investments, gifts, and business positions on their Form 700s. The Citizen uploaded all of the records we received online.
PCCD Trustee Louis Quindlen has disclosed owning between $10,001 and $100,000 of stocks in Oracle, the software company behind PeopleSoft. The district uses PeopleSoft for human resources, managing contracts, student records and more.
Quindlen often abstains from votes related to PCCD’s contracts with Oracle, including district warrant reports that name the company. Warrant reports are monthly documentations of all district payments.
In his Form 700s, PCCD Trustee Bill Withrow has reported the possession of between $10,001 and $1,000,000 worth of stock in Wells Fargo, as well as a salary between $10,001 and $100,000 as a retiree of the company.
During a Sep. 28, 2021 board meeting, Withrow voted “yea” on PCCD opening up a Wells Fargo bank account that would be used to pay insurance claims.
In an interview with The Citizen, Withrow said he had “no memory whatsoever” of the agenda item being related to Wells Fargo, but that he would have abstained had he known.
“I should not, to the best of my knowledge, vote yea or nay on anything having to do with Wells Fargo,” Withrow said. “If you have a significant amount of stock in a company […] you should abstain.”
He added that he has walked out of the boardroom three times during closed session meetings due to conflicts of interest.
!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r