The Balico Connection
— by Jeffrey Wisniewski — 23 October 2009 — 2 comments below »
Several readers have wondered whether or not there is a connection to Councilmember Ed Balico in the affordable housing “scandal.” (I use scandal in quotes because at this point we still don’t know what it is exactly. The insistence of City officials to remain stubbornly quiet in the face of press reports is only to their own detriment on the matter.) Well, there actually is a connection.
First, as Tom Lochner reported last March, Balico’s son John had “gone to work for the company that runs the city’s affordable housing program,” that is, NEO Consulting and Affordable Housing Solutions Group (AHSG). Add that family connection to the growing tree.
Second, the transaction that really set off the investigation — the $350k bailout of NEO/AHSG employee Rachael Redford’s condo in 2008 — has a Balico link, too. Redford originally purchased the condo for $345k in May 2006 with the benefit of a $50k first-time homebuyers loan (FTHB) from the City of Hercules. Ed Balico brokered the deal for the buyer and the seller. The FTHB application was administered by the affordable housing agency (run by NEO/AHSG) and in essence approved by the Redevelopment Agency (which is the City Council).
Councilmember Ed Balico brokered a real estate deal that included City funds from which he profited (the standard commission would be 6 percent, or more than $20k). This is a documented real estate transaction.
A city council member directly profiting from a city transaction HAS to be a illegal, doesn’t it?
When an elected official votes on a matter that he or she has a financial interest in, that can be a violation of state conflict of interest provisions.
The FPPC investigates conflict of interest complaints and there are a range of penalties, depending on the violation.
If you feel that there has been a violation of state law or common law ethics requirements, you should contact the FPPC:
http://www.fppc.ca.gov/index.html?id=498
For more information, see:
http://ag.ca.gov/publications/coi.pdf
http://ag.ca.gov/publications/checklist.pdf