Palm Springs releases documents taken by FBI during raid at city hall
Palm Springs city leaders, are making good on their promise to become more transparent after an FBI raid at city hall last September.
The city has published 4521 documents seized by the FBI on the city’s website.
Even though, it still isn’t clear exactly what investigators are looking for, the documents provide some insight into what they were looking at.
“It was very important to our city staff and the city council that we be as transparent as possible. All these documents are public and we just wanted to make sure that everyone had access to them so they could see everything that we see,” said David Ready, Palm Springs City Manager.
The documents include agreements with the Palm Springs Film Festival, emails from city staff involving several ongoing developments, and even records of phone calls and messages to City Hall.
There are also documents that involve developer Richard Meaney, the owner Union Abbey. Meaney’s company paid former Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet consulting fees until the public learned Union Abbey’s business license was suspended in 2009 for failing to pay nearly $50,000 in taxes.
“I think what we are going to find and what our city will see, and our community will see more importantly, is that the things that happened in Palm Springs with respect to the FBI raid were really about some decisions on the part of our former mayor,” said council member J.R. Roberts.
There are also several documents related to grant money given to Miggy’s Cantina, the group formed by developer Meaney that was behind the now closed Hacienda Cantina and Beach Club. In those documents were cancelled checks that the city required before granting a $250,000 grant for development. Since the business closed, the city has started to change the way grants are awarded.
“Up until now someone would put a letter in, if they wanted an advocate and they either got it or they didn’t. But it is not budgeted and no one had to file a grant application, so now we are requiring that so everyone has a fair chance to get funding,” said Geoff Kors, Palm Springs City Council Member.
The Palm Springs City Council will hold the first meeting of the new Ethics, Transparency and Government Reform Task Force on Tuesday. The task force will be looking into improving transparency, election reform, and campaign finance reform.
If you would like to take a look at all the documents the FBI seized for yourself here is the link.
Keep in mind it is a large file so it might take a few minutes to load. We of course will also be looking into these documents further, and will bring you any updates that we might find.
