Frank Lopez: Resign or Recall and Consequences or Recriminations
The official biography on the Vista City Council website describes Councilman Lopez as:
"Council Member Tem Frank Lopez, Jr. was born in nearby Bonsall, California and raised in the City of Vista. Mr. Lopez has been a local business owner in downtown Vista since 1970.
Elected to the Vista City Council in 2004, Frank Lopez is the first Latino elected to Vista city government. Prior to his council appointment, he served on the Vista Planning Commission from 2001 to his appointment to the City Council. Frank’s political interests go back to his upbringing and his belief that to positively impact a community, one needs to become involved at the local level.
Frank Lopez is involved in many local community activities and organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Vista Village Business Association, the Lions Club and the Kiwanis Club. His priority list includes his top priority of Public Service and, in addition, Vista’s Downtown Redevelopment Project, programs benefiting Vista’s senior and youth populations and enhancing Vista’s quality of life.
Due to their community involvement and activities, Frank and his wife Mary, received the Citizen of the Year award. They have been married 42 years and have a son and daughter and three grandchildren."
How does a part of nearly every civic organization and a Citizen of the Year become the center of such a controversy? Is his accusation that the rest of the council and the mayor have made just as serious breaches of ethics and, possibly, law a valid reason that either he should be left alone or they all should be removed?
When are problems with the governance of personal business, a reason that an elected official needs to resign or be recalled? This is the central question that has arisen around Vista City Councilman Frank Lopez. Councilman Lopez clearly feels that he is the victim of unfair persecution and is out to bring down those he feels are after him.
The community is becoming more and more polarized and adamant whether or not Councilman Lopez should be left alone, resign or be recalled. Councilman Lopez feels that unless he is convicted of an infraction that legally requires he step down, he doesn’t have to.
If he does have to step down without such a conviction, he asks, why doesn’t the rest of the city council have to step down as well. Councilman Lopez maintains that they have known about and deliberately hidden knowledge that Councilman Bob Campbell’s lost of his residency in Vista and is, therefore, illegally remaining on the city council.
These Records are taken from a journal that has been kept during the Vista Tea Party Patriots research into Councilman Lopez.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010: Councilman Lopez: You have no right to judge me, because you are not legally part of the city council.
Tonight the city council of Vista, California, in its brand new and beautiful city center had one of its saddest moments. The situation is one, where many who are upset with the federal government and demand that it clean up its act, are suddenly confronted with a situation where the elected official is someone they know, and in many cases grew up with.
At the end of the city council meeting the members of the city council took up a resolution to reassign various city council members to jobs representing the city in regional organizations. The end result was that no new assignments were made, but Councilman Frank Lopez was removed from all his appointments by a vote of 4-0, Councilman Lopez did not vote. Each of his fellow Council members and the Mayor have called for his resignation.
Councilman Lopez maintains that he is being removed for political reasons. The Mayor and City Council maintain it’s a matter of ethics. In return, Councilman Lopez responds that the only thing he is convicted of is a misdemeanor that does not require him to step down and that the city council are themselves guilty of infractions, at least, if not more serious than his.
After Councilman Lopez was stripped of his representative positions, an open discussion period was held for Vista citizens to address the council. The Vista Tea Party Patriots, Mr. Gene Ford, Ms. Villasenior-Telles and a realtor, who was involved in one of the questioned transactions, spoke in favor of resignation or recall. A number of friends of Councilman Lopez spoke and delivered two messages to the council: they have known Councilman Lopez for a very long time and trust him, and the council should judge not unless you they be judged themselves.
At the end, Jesus Magellan gave the council a body of documents and informed the council that a criminal complaint had been filed with the District Attorney’s Office against Councilman Bob Campbell, the Mayor and the city council. The complaint accused Councilman Campbell of having ceased to be a legal resident of Vista and illegally continued as a member of the City Council. Mr. Magellan said the complaint also accused the entire city council and mayor of having known that Councilman Campbell was illegally continuing as city council member and having deliberately hid it from public knowledge.
Councilman Campbell relied that he had moved because his wife is fatally ill and could not remain in their house in Vista. That ,because of his wife’s illness, he sold his house in Vista, bought a house in San Marcos where his wife is able to live more easily and he then leased his former house in Vista and lives there to maintain his residency.
Councilman Lopez then turned to Councilman Campbell and said that he, Councilman Lopez, had personally been watching Councilman Campbell’s house and that Councilman Campbell was lying. That Campbell was always at the San Marcos house and, in fact, was not living in the leased house in Vista, that he was not a resident of Vista and that any and all actions by the city council were invalid because of that.
The issue now becomes a general question of what indeed are the limits of behavior before a city council member, a mayor or any elected official needs to step down. If the accusations made against the council and mayor are also true, do they also deserve to be recalled?
Is the action of Councilman Lopez simply a means to gain retribution or a reasonable statement of, “Hey, is my behavior any worse than yours.” After all, if the accusation by Councilman Lopez is true, he probably also knew about Councilman Campbell’s hiding his lack of residency as well as the rest of the council and the mayor. What does the law say and what should we as citizens make of it. More next week…
Tuesday, September 28, 2010: Vista Tea Party Patriots City Council Meeting Statement
At the city council meeting Kenneth Happel spoke on behalf of the resignation or recall of Councilman Frank Lopez. The remarks are simple (This is what I remember of what I said):
“Mayor and Council, I represent Vista Tea Party Patriots. I have been approached by very many of our members about the resignation and recall of Councilman Lopez. We have sent a review of the disclosures about his situation to our members and called this weekend asking for their advice about my comments tonight. The results of the calls were 40 to 3 - Recall to “I don’t know”. In the months of talks at our meetings, there has been exactly one response in that disagreed with the following comments. I believe I represent at least three hundred Vista citizens in these remarks.
We have made our own study of the problems around Councilman Lopez's situation. We believe that Councilman Lopez was indeed singled out by Hispanic activists that are his political advisories. These advisories have publicly described the Vista City Council’s actions as creating a “new Apartheid in Vista.” We also believe that he has generally tried to do his best for Vista as part of the council. We find it strange, as a conservative group, having to ask a man to resign who has been a power in resisting divisive culture and race based politics.
Having said that, the accusations of his enemies would not have gained ground if there had not also been a serious problem with the Councilman’s demonstrated lack of ethical governance in his business, a serious question as to a conflict of interest and a conviction by guilty plea about keeping his legal and moral obligations to his employees. This leads us to ask Councilman Lopez to resign or, I believe, he will be recalled.“
The following formal statement was distributed to the city council after the above remarks were made.
To the Community of Vista,
The Vista Tea Party Patriots are part of a tea party movement that:
(1) Stands for political accountability,
(2) Openly and nationally supports the replacement of elected officials who will not provide the necessary transparency for a constitutional republic of citizens to hold them accountable, and
(3) Champions limited constitutional government with an emphasis on the support and concentration of power in local jurisdictions, where citizens can have the most effective direct influence on the powers that control so many aspects of their lives.
At our meetings, we have consistently supported Councilman Lopez’s right to be considered innocent until proven guilty, stated that he deserves our benefit of the doubt and have expressed disgust at the posters depicting him as a criminal behind bars.
We have also known that many of those driving the effort to find a way to remove Councilman Lopez were and are clearly motivated by their desire to remove his conservative leadership in the Hispanic community and his unifying voice on the city council. Why? So these same people can press forward their own racially and culturally divisive political agendas and increase their individual status in the Vista community.
However, none of those efforts to unseat Councilman Lopez would have gained much ground if there was not, at the same time, abundant evidence that Councilman Lopez has demonstrated an unexplained lack of fiduciary responsibility with respect to his obligations as a business owner and employer and, to some degree, as an elected official.
Mr. Lopez’s financial problems clearly started a long time ago and he has not resolved them over a ten year period. He has clearly had an extraordinarily difficult interaction with the various state and federal tax institutions.
However, it is exactly the fact, that the same pattern has continued for a decade that makes it very hard to believe, after more than 650 checks bounce, that Councilman Lopez never had knowledge that a check being written was fraudulent at the time of its writing.
While the Councilman or his spokesperson is quoted as saying the Councilman has always freely met these obligations when he became aware of them, the record indicates that not all were paid when presented and some were apparently only paid under court order and not voluntarily.
During this same period Councilman Lopez endangered the safety of his employees by not meeting his legal obligation to pay workman’s compensation insurance fees, so that his employees were not covered for the cost of injuries that could have happened on the job in his restaurant. The fact, that there was no employee catastrophe, is a matter of luck rather than governance and, therein, lies the problem.
Councilman Lopez has his seat on the city council because we entrust him for the governance of our city and its $118 million dollar budget that we pay for: Whatever the liquidity problems of Councilman Lopez’s business, there was enough liquidity to gamble away $56,000 while saying that there was no money available to cover the obligations he was making with the checkbook,
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Councilman Lopez’s decade long problems meeting fiduciary responsibilities to his employees is, in my opinion, demonstration of an inexcusable lack of judgment and ethical governance, and
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The failure to meet the legal obligations to report income as an elected official, the provision of four checks as proof that a pattern of six hundred and fifty is invalid and the unwillingness to provide clear transparency into his financial relationships, lead many in the community to realize that the issue of transparency and the issue of community trust in the Councilman’s character will not go away.
It is with real sadness that it seems that the best way for Councilman Lopez to continue to contribute his many talents and rich love of people is to resign and leave his people with a legacy of his greatness rather than a legacy of his forced removal from office.
Kenneth Happel
Vista Tea Party Patriots “
Sunday, September 26, 2010: A last request to Councilman Lopez for clarification and an offer to help restore his name if there was mitigating evidence.
After emailing our members, I sent a copy to Frank Lopez.
“From: Kenneth Happel [mailto:kmhappel@cox.net]
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2010 7:57 PM
To: 'flopez@cityofvista.com'
Subject: ALERT: Asking for response about Councilman Lopez
Dear Frank,
I said at the Village Café that I would tell you if I came to a decision about all this. As I said, at the time, this won’t go away unless you go completely transparent. In the last week, the number of people from my tea party I that have spoken to and who have expressed their support for your resignation has become overwhelming. I am very sorry.
I think you have tried to do your best as a councilman and you are probably a great man. I tried to find the background behind what has happened and indeed it is clear that the initial effort was led by a cadre of progressive activists. In time, however, those initial leaders were replaced by a much broader piece of our community. Unless there is some really illuminating specific answer to all this with hard evidence, I think resignation may be the most honorable way to leave office.
Here is an email that I sent to my tea party members tonight that lists what seems to be known. I am offering you a chance to respond before Tuesday. If we can refute this with facts, if there is a counterbalancing truth, I will help you spread it. If there isn’t, I am afraid most of my members and I will help in an eventual recall.
Ken Happel
Vista Tea Party Patriots”
All the records that follow to the end of this post including my comments were sent with his email as support material.
Sunday. September 26, 2010: The Email to the Members of the Vista Tea Party Patriots. On the Sunday before the council meeting, the Vista Tea Party Patriots sent a review of the various disclosures about Councilman Lopez, the proposed public statement that was distributed and a general question to its members about actions to take at the council meeting. The email goes into six months of revelations by County Sheriff and District Attorney Staff that were published in the San Diego Union Tribune and the North County Times. Here is the text of that email: From: Kenneth Happel [mailto:kmhappel@cox.net] Dear Patriots, It is with a great deal of remorse that I find myself at a point where I believe that a man:
· Who has clearly spent years serving our community and championing the development of youth programs and the healing of cultural divisions within our community, · Who has been a leader in resisting efforts to divide Vista politics along both political and cultural lines, and · Who has been a long time friend and business colleague to so many here in Vista and within our tea party, has damaged the public trust in his character to a point where he needs to resign or be recalled. Unless there is some body of evidence that comes forward and changes the broad and rapidly growing desire for Councilman Lopez to resign, Vista Tea Party Patriots and those of its members, according to their own conscience, who agree will participate in the creation of a city-wide petition campaign for the Councilman’s recall. At this moment the vast majority of tea party opinion, a number I believe to be in the hundreds, is in favor of the Councilman’s resignation. My request is that you write me and present specific evidence if you believe there is any factual error in the following material. All of the material presented is based upon published articles that quote specific Sheriff’s sources. Those articles are included at the end in the “Detailed Background” section. I have heard from a great many of you, and wish to hear from each and every one of you before Tuesday if I can. Lynne and I will be calling and emailing tomorrow and Tuesday. I will also send this email to Councilman Lopez and intend to read the letter below at the city council meeting this Tuesday. Ken All the records that follow to the end of this post including my comments were sent with the above email to the members as support material. Tuesday, September 21, 2010 KMHAPPEL/GENE FORD: Mr. Ford, with a number of our members, approached me during the Monday 9/20 meeting of the tea party. He presented me with the information he had gathered. He asked us for our support in a recall effort. I tentatively agreed with the following conditions. I would write you, our members this letter with everything that is known, and that unless there substantial grounds for ceasing action or a slowing of the meteoric rise in the number of teas party members expressing a desire for resignation, I would participate in a call for the Councilman’s resignation and would commit our resources to participating in a recall campaign should he decline to do so.
She said the city's racial and geographic divisions resemble apartheid in South Africa, and that things must change. In Vista, the new estimates for 2010 show 43,325 Latinos and 42,960 whites or 98,000 residents, 44 percent Latino, 44 percent white, 4 percent Asian, 4 percent black and 4 percent other. Spurred by a rapid influx of immigrants, Escondido and Vista both passed legislation in 2006 that critics characterized as anti-immigrant and possibly anti-Latino. That means that Frank Lopez voted for this legislation that Fredi Avalos calls anti-Latino. This is, I believe, the reason that the effort to find a way to remove Councilman Lopez was started. To insure that they could call for the adoption of measures that they could not sell as long a Councilman Lopez was there.] "... Any other allegations, including intent to write bad checks, this was thoroughly investigated and no wrongdoing was substantiated," he said. "There is no one who has stepped forward, nor has the investigation shown that anyone was not paid." He provided copies of four paychecks made out to a former employee, Patricia Johnson Lopez, who had alleged in a North County Times interview that her paychecks from Casa Linda routinely bounced in the late 1980s and employees often had to wait to get their money. Johnson Lopez is no relation to the councilman or his wife. Frank Lopez said Friday that the four checks showed that Johnson Lopez was "paid promptly and none of the checks bounced."
San Diego Superior Court Commissioner Lee Witham sentenced the couple [Councilman Lopez and his wife Mary] to one day in jail, which will be satisfied by a "book and release" at the San Diego County Central Jail on Nov. 14. The couple must also pay a $12,000 fine and each perform 120 hours of community service. San Diego County sheriff's investigators were looking into allegations that [Councilman Lopez] and his wife had [actually] issued more than 650 bad checks [instead of the 200 bad checks known about in June] to employees at the restaurant between 2004 and 2009. While issuing the bad checks, the couple lost more than $56,000 [in] at least one area casino, and were regulars at several others. Lopez also has a string of federal and state tax liens that amount, with interest and penalties, to at least more than $150,000. This on-line Union Tribune article is by Aaron Burgin whom I had talked with earlier.
"This is an oversight," he said. "As Mr. Lopez has done throughout his life, if he owes people money, they get paid." Clay added that the payment comes, though not as quickly as some might hope. Court records show Frank Lopez has been sued at least nine times in small claims court during the past decade for allegedly failing to pay debts. In each of those cases, the debt was eventually paid ---- some only after the court ordered it. Records show Lopez also has several state and federal tax liens against his property. [Councilman Lopez’s attorney, ] "There's no relevance between being underinsured for purposes of workers' compensation versus his ability to adequately serve his constituents," he said. "He's being unfairly treated by those in the Vista community who would like to see him resign." [This is nonsense. Labor Code Section 3700 requires "every employer except the state" to "secure the payment of compensation." Arguments of a good intention or good faith failure (there is no such thing though) to get the insurance will probably fail. There is no authority for excusing an employer for failure to carry the necessary coverage. (Hicks v. Ocean Shore R.R. (1941) 18 Cal. 2d 773, 778, 6 Cal. Comp. Cases 275.). So that is abundantly clear, Councilman Lopez was not underinsured as his lawyer states. He failed to pay California’s legally required workman’s compensation insurance withholding fees. Each year you get a W-2 from each of your employers. The missing payments must have been filed as paid on the employee W-2s or there were no W-2’s, withholding or wages reported. You cannot opt out of “workman’s comp” as an employee. You have to file W-2s with workman’s comp. False statements or missing on W-2s are a felony in the IRS code. If a worker had been injured, they would have been left completely without help and would have had to sue Councilman Lopez for the compensation of medical costs and lost wages that would have come from the insurance he didn’t pay for. Seeing the Lopez financial situation, Councilman Lopez’s workers were/are very lucky they were never injured. Any serious injury would have been a life altering and devastatingly negative experience. There are only a few things morally and ethically that employers may not mess with and workman’s compensation and unemployment insurance withholdings are at the top of that list.] Reported August 12, 2010. In 2005 Councilman Lopez receives a $25,000 loan from a developer and fails to report it to the FPPC. In 2006 Councilman Lopez casts the determining vote, against staff advice, on a sewage board resolution about the developer’s project, In 2010 he amends all his FPPC filing to reflect the loan. In 2005 Councilman Lopez failed to report a $25,000 loan was made to Councilman Lopez in 2005 according to Joe Jaoudi of the Vista LLC, Cameron Glen Estates who made the loan. He failed to report the loan to the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) as required by law (When a politician receives $500 or more including loans from any non-governmental source, they are required to report it. This is to make the potential for conflict of interests between the politician and the source of the money visible. Usually politicians, when faced with decisions involving a personal source of money to them, disqualify themselves and refuse to vote on such an issue to rule out there being a conflict of interest). The next year in an April 2006 council meeting, city staffers recommended denying a proposal by Jaoudi to hook up a 55 house parcel of land to the city’s sewage system so that it could be developed. In a later 2006 council meeting, Councilman Lopez made a deciding vote (3-2) in favor of the proposal made by Jaoudi and against the previous city staff recommendation (BTW, current city council candidate Ritter also voted in favor of that motion). The loan was collateralized or secured against Councilman Lopez’s property on February 22, 2007 by Cameron Glen Estates and Jaoudi says it remains unpaid and he is not pressing for repayment at this time. On August 12, 2010 Councilman Lopez filed amended FPPC documents reflecting the loan for the first time. On August 12, 2010 he filled amendments to his FPPC statements to include it. http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_144366a4-374b-5279-9ede-d41aa5de5e8b.html - the updated filings are in the file: “Amended 700 2007, 2008, 2009.” Open the FPPC Amended Income Statements File
Sgt. Mark Varnau, with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department financial crimes unit, said the couple lost an estimated $56,000 at the casino between 2004 and 2009. Evidence suggests that the councilman and his wife were players at another casino, and therefore could have been net winners or lost more money, but the other casino did not cooperate with investigators. Sgt. Varnau said records obtained from the cooperating casino show that the couple logged about $740,000 in play between 2004 and 2009. That number doesn't represent the amount of money the Lopezes brought to the casino, but rather "coin-in" totals that included money from payouts and incentives used to keep playing. [a $1 dollar bet made a thousand times is logged as $1000 in play. The $56,000 is however a real number lost. It may represent the total money logged many times to create the $740,000 or it may represent a small part of a larger amount. Sgt. Varnau said the casino records suggest that Mary Lopez was the more active gambler: Her "coin-in" totals at the one casino were $541,913 between January 2004 and August 2009, while her "coin out" totals were $504,817 ---- a loss of about $37,096. Frank Lopez logged $197,880 in "coin in" totals during the same period and $178,967 "coin out" ---- a loss of about $18,913. The gambling records were uncovered as part of an investigation into the couple's finances that began in 2009 after employees at the Lopezes' Casa Linda Mexican restaurant on South Santa Fe Avenue in Vista complained about bad payroll checks, Sgt. Varnau said. Between 2004 and 2009, the Lopezes bounced more than 650 checks totaling more than $185,000, authorities said. The checks were eventually paid off. As one of five members of the City Council, Frank Lopez oversees Vista's $118 million operating budget. Each of the councilman's colleagues has called for him to resign; he has refused. Varnau said sheriff's detectives investigated the couple's business and personal bank records and found more than 45 businesses that had received bad checks, including two North County casinos, where a combined half-dozen checks had bounced. Casino officials declined to comment. "When you look at money being spent at a casino and find out large amounts of money are being gambled at a casino, it tends to show, at least to us, they certainly had the money to go gambling ---- why not have the money to pay and make sure their employees who rely on them to be paid are getting an income?" Sgt. Varnau said. http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_bdfc72eb-88ae-57c3-8481-ed10b94ddb8c.html The civil suits add detail to the financial troubles of the councilman, which stretch back years and on Monday led three of his fellow council members to call for his resignation. Lopez's troubles appear to be associated with Casa Linda, the restaurant on South Santa Fe Avenue in Vista that he and his wife, Mary, have owned for 40 years. In at least four small claims cases since 2001, restaurateur Lopez failed to show up at the court hearing to defend himself. And in each of those cases, the legal battle ended with a judgment against Lopez. In 2004, in a case filed just a few months before he was elected to the Vista City Council, a judge issued an order to allow law enforcement officials to seize money from the restaurant cash register to pay off a debt, said the attorney for one vendor who sued. It was not clear Monday how the other five cases were resolved. http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_62b8e7c9-d075-5591-8c19-0168dd27909c.html
The group says Lopez's financial troubles make him unfit to make decisions regarding taxpayers' money. Fredi Avalos, a member of the citizens group, said at a protest rally against Lopez on Tuesday that the district attorney's office is wrong not to prosecute the case. "There's an overabundance of evidence, but no political will," she said. The protest rally was attended by about six people with the citizens group who were overshadowed by about 25 of Lopez's friends, family members and supporters who turned out to defend the councilman. Many of his supporters spoke at Tuesday's council meeting, praising him for what they called his community service and patriotism. The supporter had posted a number of comments on Facebook that she was concerned about. It turned out the comments were actually addressed to me and were a request to meet and clear the issue up, but I had already talked to Councilman Lopez and I suggested that we talk it out at our next tea party meeting.] [That public conversation between supporters, Silva and our members happened at the next Vista Tea Party Patriots meeting where both the Councilman’s supporters and Silva Peters and husband were present. This meeting was another time where I clearly stated that the Councilman has the right to be given the benefit of the doubt and be considered innocent until proven guilty or until someone came up with hard evidence or a long term pattern of behavior indicating he is unfit to serve. I also reiterated that the felony charges matter was serious enough that we, as Vista citizens, needed to see if we could find out what the truth was.] Councilman Lopez recounted to me that his bad check problems stemmed from real estate transactions he made in the late 1990s and that got caught in the last real estate crash in San Diego. He said that a result of those real estate problems were fines and interest assessed by the IRS. He said that for a long time he ignored the problem and, that over time, those fines and assessments grew to significant amounts. He said that in recent times, he had tried to make a deal with the IRS but was unable to make the payments agreed to. He said thereafter the IRS repeatedly put leans or levies on his bank accounts and removed all the money from them. He said, it was because of those leans removing the money from his accounts, that he did not know the checks he wrote were bad. He was very clear that if it had not been for the lack of money caused by the levies and the horrible economic situation since 2008, the bad checks would not have happened.] [We also asked him about the paying illegal workers with bad checks allegation and he responded with an explanation that “he did not know the worker was illegal” because he had hired him after the worker’s had worked for Oscars, a previous employer. I say “the worker” because he clearly referred to a specific illegal worker that he had as an employee, who had received a bad check and who he did not realize was illegal. He mentioned nothing else. I told him that if that was the whole story he should go public with the evidence. That he is a public person and that by showing that these checks were written after these seizures of funds, his name would be completely cleared. I reported all this to my tea party group in the first meeting thereafter.] This was shortly after Silva Peters originally told our tea party group about the issue and we started our own fact finding effort because the bad check charge is a felony, causes jail time, fines, restitution and mandatory expulsion from the city council if proven. The reporter informed me that his sources were from inside the inside the investigation and that there was a very large amount of evidence, but that the District Attorney might not prosecute the charges because criminal intent means proving Councilman Lopez set out to defraud his employees. His defense could be that he is the victim of events beyond his control or that he is an incompetent business man or both. Silvia Peters (who has attended our tea party meetings with her husband and who is a vocal conservative opponent of the Vista Teachers Association (VTA) and hated by VTA bloggers) who assisted the Vista Citizens for Responsible Government in an effort to find witnesses to the contention that Councilman Lopez made a significant number of bad payments to illegal immigrants. To my knowledge, this widely spread story has never been substantiated. The financial crimes unit obtained two search warrants to obtain the financial records of his restaurant from his banks, the California Community Bank and Pacific Western Bank, that revealed between July 1, 2004 and Dec. 1, 2008 92 bad checks for a total of $18,200. In obtaining the warrants sworn affidavits (perjury charges if false) were obtained that stated paychecks to his restaurant’s employees were routinely refused by his restaurants banks because of insufficient funds. Some of these refused checks were later repaid months late, some were not (also confirmed in the next source by Sheriff's Sgt. Mark Varnau).
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2010 7:18 PM
Subject: ALERT: Asking for response about Councilman Lopez
Reported September 19, 2010. Fredi Avalos, a member of Vista Citizens for Responsible Government, Professor at Cal State San Marcos and long term denigrator of Councilman Lopez and the Vista City Council’s policy, said the new data make it more crucial than ever for Vista's leaders to become more welcoming toward Latinos.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/escondido/article_b72b7760-d7da-57c3-83d7-e62efa123177.html
Reported September 17, 2010. On Friday, Lopez said the bad-check allegations were exaggerated all along.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_a2a4a0a7-e5b4-5087-9e26-a13afff28d7d.html
Reported September 15, 2010. Councilman Lopez and his wife plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of failing, between 2000 and 2008, to pay their employees workers compensation insurance at the couple's restaurant, Casa Linda.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/15/no-jail-time-frank-lopez-misdemeanor-case/
Reported September 15, 2010. Councilman Lopez’s attorney [Ward] Clay said the couple run a small business and may have been confused about the laws regarding the insurance program or who was supposed to pay it.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_40552e85-f6de-58ff-8c4a-40a78655232d.html
http://www.californiacondoguru.com/hoarticles/workmens.html
Reported August 14, 2010. Residents who attended Tuesday's City Council meeting to compel Councilman Frank Lopez to resign… [included Gene] Ford, residents Teene Miller and Velia Villasenor-Telles called for Lopez to resign.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_57e6d262-9a28-5908-874a-298381df1498.html
Reported August 7, 2010. While bouncing hundreds of checks over a five-year period to employees and local businesses, Vista City Councilman Frank Lopez and his wife, Mary, lost tens of thousands of dollars gambling at a North County casino, a sheriff's sergeant said last week.
Reported August 2, 2010. Frank Lopez, the Vista city councilman investigated by authorities for allegedly bouncing more than 650 checks from 2004 to 2009, was sued at least nine times over the last decade, apparently for failing to pay his bills, according to court records.
Reported July 31, 2010. the Vista Citizens for Responsible Government have started a campaign against the councilman, asking him to resign his seat.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_847e644e-18de-573d-b463-f92d042ebd26.html
KMHAPPEL: [I also had a phone conversation with Silva Peters, just after the Lopez conversation, in which she stated that she felt that she was being stalked by one of Councilman Lopez’s supporters and was considering harassment litigation.
KMHAPPEL: [During this time, We received a call from Councilman Lopez and my wife and I had breakfast with him at the Village Café.
KMHAPPEL: We talked to a Union Tribune reporter, Aaron Burgin who was the original reporter of the above information that was also covered in the North County Times.
Reported July 21, 2010. Councilman Lopez and his wife Mary were charged in June 2010 with misdemeanor failure to pay workers' compensation insurance for employees at their Casa Linda Mexican restaurant on South Santa Fe Avenue.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_482f703a-fecd-509c-b2bd-79536ada45ab.html
Reported May 14, 2009. The County Sheriff’s financial crimes unit conducted an investigation into Councilman Lopez’s conduct as an employer in his restaurant Casa Linda on Santa Fe Avenue after two waitress employees of Councilman Lopez complained about receiving bad payroll checks.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_7667221c-7522-5026-8e4f-c72043938be3.html
Categories: Politics
Tags: La Raza ethics council Frank recall tea city Lopez hispanic Vista party
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