Jerry Roberts
[Disclaimer as of 2/28/22: At the request of LA Magazine, their articles have been retracted and any associated links have been removed. For further information read our latest update here. The original article is available in its entirety below.]
By Jerry Roberts of Newsmakers
The legendary press baron Joseph Pulitzer, when asked to define “news,” famously said it was, “that which is to apt to be talked about.”
By that measure, a new 4,000-word investigative article in Los Angeles Magazine that digs into how the city of Santa Barbara’s retail recreational marijuana licenses were awarded, represents about a month’s worth of news for denizens of City Hall.
It also ruined our weekend; we never complain.
“It’s about the angels and demons of cannabis,” Kriegman told Newsmakers in a Sunday interview. “It’s a bundle of questions to which I attempted to get the answers as best as I could.”
Titled “In Sleepy Santa Barbara, a City Hall Insider Raises Eyebrows” (womp, womp for the double cliche headline), the piece delves into the main events and key characters involved in crafting the city’s 2018 retail license law, adding a new chapter to the saga of how Santa Barbara County has been transformed into a cannabis capital of California following the 2016 passage of Proposition 64, which legalized pot in the state.
Depending on one’s political perspective — and proximity to the opaque process by which the disputed licenses were handed out – the story either chronicles a major city scandal or is a hit piece, reflecting personal grievances and hidden agendas from unhappy business owners, former and current city executives, and police union types targeting City Administrator Paul Casey, former Police Chief Lori Luhnow and her top aide, Anthony Wagner.
Amid multiple story lines, inferential allegations of corruption and innuendo (at one point Wagner is compared to “a lesser character in one of The Godfather movies” — sheesh), the through line of the piece is Wagner, who came to Santa Barbara from San Diego in 2017 to serve as a police department spokesman and top aide to former Chief Luhnow, and subsequently led the team of city bureaucrats that crafted the pot ordinance and awarded three retail licenses after a lengthy, complicated and secretive process.
Wagner declined to comment on the article to Newsmakers; he described it to friends as a “salacious hit job” that misstates and misrepresents his background, actions and relationship to two individuals involved in the licensing affair, telling them that he has a trove of documentary evidence to uphold his integrity.
Hours after the article appeared online, mayoral candidates James Joyce (“I am calling for a referral to the Santa Barbara County Grand Jury” he said in a press release) and Deborah Schwartz (she told us “an independent, out-of-town investigation” was necessary) called for official, follow-up examination of its main assertions. Others inside City Hall, however, took issue over matters of accuracy with a host of claimed factual contentions in the piece, as well as its suggestion that the licensing process was improper.
“Our city attorney did review the procedures related to granting the recreational cannabis licenses and found them to be fair,” Mayor Cathy Murillo told Newsmakers.
“However, we are looking at a range of options to improve the licensing process up to and including an independent review of allegations in the article,” she added. “Serious allegations were raised in the article and we are taking them seriously.”
City Administrator Paul Casey told us that he would confer with interim Police Chief Barney Melekian before commenting further.
“I’ll be speaking with Chief Melekian on Monday,” Casey said via email, “and we will have a formal statement after that.”
Watch our interview with Mitchel Kriegman via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here.
Here are seven takeaway questions about the Los Angeles Magazine piece.
Who is Mitchell Kriegman? Kriegman is a 68-year old television writer, novelist, director and producer with a long list of credits that includes a stint on “Saturday Night Live” and ’90s and ‘oughts TV hits including “Clarissa Explains It All,” “Bear in the Big Blue House” and “The Book of Pooh.” In a more recent foray into journalism, he wrote stories for the Independent and the Montecito Journal, where he began working on the just-published story last year, before moving to Portugal in July, where he finished the piece and shopped it to the magazine.
So why isn’t it in the Montecito Journal? MoJo editor-in-chief Gwyn Lurie worked closely with Kriegman during the start of his reporting and on several early drafts of a story, she told us, but wanted to assign a second reporter, based here, to work with him after he left for Europe; the two disagreed about the arrangement, she added, leaving him free to place the story elsewhere: “I didn’t want to publish that kind of bombshell without having control over the reporting,” Gwyn said.
Where’s the other side? Of the three key current or former city officials on whom the piece focuses — Casey, Luhnow and Wagner — none are quoted in response to the most specific and substantive claims and assertions; Kriegman said they did not respond to “multiple” efforts seeking comment. However, Casey told us that he “made myself available to (Kriegman) on a number of occasions last spring or summer…when he was working for the Montecito Journal, including a very long phone interview (over one hour), response to extensive email questions, and a very extensive public records request that he submitted covering five years of communications”; Luhnow referred Kriegman’s email inquiries to City Attorney Ariel Calonne, whom Mitchell said did not respond; Wagner said he never got a call.
Was the story fact checked? Kriegman told us via Zoom that the magazine fact checked his piece to make sure that everything was “scrupulously” nailed down. However, others pointed out inaccuracies that ranged from silly to substantive:
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In the opening lines, Kriegman described Santa Barbara as having a “gentile” style, rather than “genteel” (the description has since been changed in the online version of the piece);
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in recounting Mayor Murillo’s actions during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protest at police headquarters, the story says she drove there in an “armored SWAT vehicle” but she says she drove her own Honda Accord;
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In reporting on Luhnow, Kriegman points to her $392,054.83 compensation package as excessive — in fact it ranks in the bottom-third of a list of comparable size cities; the piece also critically notes that the ex-chief frequently took three day weekends and was absent during major crises, including the Thomas Fire; however, like all city employees, she was required to take every other Friday off, as a cost saving measure, and close associates sent us photographs that show her on duty at key times during the disaster;
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In reporting on Wagner, the story misstates the circumstances of his hiring and also says it was “most curious” that he was given a badge and police ID although he did not have law enforcement training; in fact many civilian employees at SBPD are provided such identification, according to City Hall sources.
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In reporting on Casey, the story takes aim at his “unilateral ability” to make decisions on a permitting issue; in fact, under Santa Barbara’s weak mayor form of government, doing so is the administrator’s responsibility and entirely within his authority.
So what’s the scandal? As a substantive matter, the most troubling event chronicled in the magazine story is the sale of one of only three city retail licenses granted by the city; the company that won the award, Golden State Greens, never opened its operation on Upper State Street but instead flipped the license, for which Kriegman reports was a profit estimated in the millions of dollars, to a Florida firm called Jushi, which did not go through the city’s original vetting process; The puzzling transaction was first reported and detailed by Josh Molina in Noozhawk last summer.
Was the ex-chief really a slacker? The story also reports critically on Luhnow making recent regular trips to San Diego and staying at her house in Coronado; according to close friends, she was renting out the place and didn’t have access to it until July 2019; at that point through 2020, most of her trips south were due to receiving cancer treatments, from which she would recover at her house.
What about the mayor’s race? As a political matter, the portrayal of City Hall presented in the article is a net negative for Mayor Murillo. and two of her opponents — Joyce and Schwartz — already have jumped on it. The fourth candidate in the race, ex-councilman Randy Rowse, was serving at City Hall during most of the time described in the article; he declined to comment.
Bottom line: More to come on this one.
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Duke, there are other videos from other angles that show cathy being disrespectful to these women. Edhat put up a video that shows the woman with the bullhorn was using it to signal the crowd and keep them calm because Cathy was not handling this moment well. Sac is right – she always painted herself as sympathetic to causes like BLM, but that day, she came off like a tone deaf white woman.
I’ll look for some other videos! Based on that video though, and her refusal to kneel for a demanding and angry crowd, it seemed like pretty damn reasonable/commendable behavior. Again, I’m hugely down on the Mayor, but I can’t criticize our first Hispanic Mayor from refusing to kneel when demanded. I have a ton to criticize her for…and truly TRULY hope she is voted out as she is not steering our city in the right direction, but this specific video that you pointed to doesn’t portray her in a bad way (in my opinion of course).
Mitchell Kriegman might want to look into his own backyard of Los Angeles before stirring it up here… Garcetti has ruined L.A. more during his tenure with corruption and blight- Similar to San Francisco, New York and Chicago…. I wonder what the common denominator is with the current leadership of what were once 4 large gems of U.S. Cities….? Oh yeah, they are run by uber liberals who have crushed them
Jerry, nice job in exposing this poorly researched out of town / country hit piece. Another thing, for the love of god please don’t use womp womp again.
Not sure if you were awake for 2020 but due to ignorance and arrogance regarding the Pandemic or just plain denial Under Republican watch, death toll was the highest in a century(100 years) … 500,000 plus dead and oh yah, unemployment through the roof, …when you don’t listen to science the economy fails …the Dems are always cleaning up the repubs mess, like 2007 remember that repubs run disaster, deregulation, wars, people loosing their life savings, everything, sounds like good times, NOT…. Now the dems have to clean up the biggest repubs mess in history due to arrogance and not taking the pandemic seriously,
Sun – what would you have done differently?
Sorry Jerry, your reframing of the article to discredit Mitchell Kriegman is weak. Just because you and Comrade Nick ( all government is good) Welsh didn’t report it, doesn’t mean Kriegman’s article is soft or off in any way. The Independent would never want to upset its big public advertisers, and report this kind of corruption. No one working for the City of Santa Barbara should be making anywhere near $394,000/year. The process used by the city to hire Wagner is corrupt. The process used to award cannabis retail licenses is corrupt. Just because other cities are incompetent doesn’t make it ok. The worst part of this is there is no system of oversight that works. No checks and balances. No one on the City Council, other than Alejandra Gutierrez, who appears to know what’s going on.
First off,
Acknowledge Covid-19 was real , President leads by example Social Distance, Wear a Mask and Wash your Hands
First line of action is containment, contact trace, science is important
Don’t fire your Scientists in 2017 in China who monitor disease out breaks
Be proactive not reactive, have a disaster plan in Place this is not the first or last virus outbreak, but the worst
Use experienced Health Disaster Management individuals, don’t use your inexperienced Son in law to lead operations
Use experienced Health Distribution Teams to distribute PPE and ramp up production, not your Son in Law
Be consistent in your message, Social Distance, Wear a Mask and wash your hand
Don’t hold huge Rallies for political gain
Present Science not fiction
Containment is key, Scientist on the ground monitoring disease around the world, denial, not wearing a mask, not social distancing all promote dramatic spread. Look at New Zealand, they took the virus seriously, did contact tracing, isolated, contained and they didn’t have many deaths, They used Science. It’s not the first time viruses have taken hold, but when you don’t use science, do not have a plan and system in place to prevent the spread of viruses than you get a horrible outcome and mess. Trump removed the scientists in China who monitor disease, Trump did this back in 2017, Trump said, well we will hire them as needed, no that’s reactive and not proactive. So yes Proactive measures were not in place and should have been, the virus was not taken seriously by the repubs and they did not lead by example. Don’t hire your son in law who has no experience in a health crisis to organize PPE and distribution. A team of unknowledgeable people who lacked experience or direction in distribution of PPE, sourcing it or otherwise. The only example the repubs lead their followers to believe was that covid 19 wasn’t real and don’t wear a mask, don’t social distance and promoted huge congregations and fiction.
Keep voting for Libs and this is what you get!
What a frickin’ mess…and waste of our time trying to figure out who are the most guilty parties here. Well, I’ll continue to think for myself and wait for my next chance to vote. Cheers!
Sun – we made a ton of mistakes… trump first and foremost! But your interpretation of the situation is wildly simplistic. How is comparing us with new zealand in any capacity logical or reasonable? Trump screwed up in many capacities, but so did every country (not to mention governors like newsome in their over correcting the other direction response). We screwed up… we did… but so did countries with actual comparable situations to ours. Factor in how we’re over 110 million vaccines distributed from a situation that’s what, 14 months old and … well we also did a lot right! Identity politics make it easy to blame trump or Obama for anything/everything … they tend to be wildly and ridiculously simplistic. Trump was a shitty president… that’s a fact. But your thoughts don’t factor in reality. They are hyper partisan BS.
Jerry had to come out from under a rock to try and dispel this? That alone should tell anyone interested that the LA Mag piece was on point. Only in SB would a media interpreter be needed for the GP. So sad and hilarious at the same time. So, Jerry, you’ve never inflated a sentence? The DA doesn’t inflate charges? Anthony Wagner didn’t make a few bucks on a weed deal?
Look what you got voting the conservatives into power, Pure insanity, no governance, massive corruption and greed
@SUN… An interesting RANT. You might want to consider that the Pandemic is a world wide issue, not an American (U.S.) perpetrated by the one you hate so much. In fact, the one you hate deregulated the U.S. pharmaceutical companies red-tape to streamline the acceptance process for vaccines… Your guy, Biden, is like someone who participates in a 20 block parade in the 18th block and says “wasn’t I great leading the parade….” LOL!
Dukemunson, using an example like New Zealand, demonstrates how containment, tracing and using science, and, being consistent (Mask, Social Distance, Wash your Hands) on message by leadership helps to reduce major outbreaks., no matter the population size. You state Governor Newsom over corrected, but what you fail to recognize was Governor Newson was really trying to slow down a California Variant of Covid-19, which was spreading like wildfire., highly contagious and deadly. We all saw the numbers, and he was trying for containment. Those Countries which took the same approach as Trump, believing they could achieve herd immunity by just exposing the population to the virus, ended up with the same results, ie Brazil and others. You say Simplistic, I say logical. It is logical to use Experienced Health Crisis Management Teams and Scientists, it is not logical to use your Son in Law. It is not logical to attack Scientists for Speaking the Truth,. Remember, it was Scientists who developed the Vaccine. However, it takes more than just a Vaccine, it takes logistics to get the vaccine into the population of which was missing until now. You say BS I say Science. If you think Blasting Science is a Hoax, well think again, Climate Change has a real kicker with more deadlier disease, potable water shortage, food shortage, vector control, extreme drought, extreme fires, extreme floods with Sea level rise etc… which republicans tout as a hoax. Kind of like the hoax they touted about Covid 19 but much worse. If we don’t get our act together now, Climate Change, which is already happening will be worse than any Covid 19. We can either use Science and benefit or consider Science as a hoax and well, you can already see the results… Instead of republicans focusing continuously on their elections and voter
suppression, why don’t they focus on solving Climate Change. Do some actual work and help reduce the impacts. Science, Science , Science it’s not a hoax.
Sun – no… using New Zealand (a multi) island nation as an example is simplistic… and dumb. We partially/occasionally followed the science and we partially/occasionally ignored it… and that was from a republican, democratic and independent perspective. We aren’t better off than Florida and we aren’t better off than Texas. Europe’s had their surges. A lot of mistakes. Trump was a train wreck. But he was also part of getting us to 110 million vaccinations today. You are blinded by partisan identity politics. Which… ok… so are quite a few people on both sides. It was/is a pandemic. Trump sucked… so did newsome. Merkle is struggling. Boris has had quite a few hiccups. You are right about science though… just wrong about the interpretation. Both sides embraced/ignored it at varying times… such is life in our current idiotic hyper political situation. You though are as much of t he problem as anyone that is as far on the left or right as you …
Thank you Los Angeles magazine, and Mitchell Kriegman for your expose’ on corruption in Santa Barbara County.
Enjoy Portugal, maybe you could teach a class remotely on investigative journalism, and/or courage & integrity in reporting.
11:34 – I’m obviously hugely disappointed with our Mayor…but what was her flub at the protest? I wasn’t there…so I’m perhaps slightly in the dark…excessive show of force, or…?
12:18pm – Well crap!! I just watched that video, and I now I have to say something nice about the Mayor! She seemed to handle this pretty well! What the heck did she do wrong in this video? She was being yelled at by someone right next to her with a megaphone who’s demanding she listen and then saying she’ll never listen to the mayor…where’s the mistake on the mayor’s part here? Maybe it’s a different video as this one is a 1:16 video (but also put up by BLM M). If that’s the one though, what did she do wrong? Again, maybe I’m missing something but the mayor is being yelled at by an angry group…what could have done differently. She’s seemingly handling it pretty well. What’s the criticism here?
Sac – But do you say that in a bad way? (Being surprised). I can’t fault her for this…and Lord knows I have faulted her for quite a bit of late!!!
Duke, let’s help you with context:
The BLM women had tried multiple times to meet with the mayor before this march. She didn’t respond.
The mayor comes out from behind police lines, with police dressed in riot gear, to meet people who had just lain in the streets for 8.5 minutes in silence to understand just how long it took to murder George Floyd. That is perhaps the worst entrance into a highly charged moment she could have possibly made.
That was a time of extremely high tension in the country. There were protests everywhere, and some devolved into looting. The female organizers of the march in Santa Barbara were adamant that there would be none of that here.
The mayor said she didn’t want to march with BLM because she had concerns about COVID spread.
So she rips her mask off, a la Trump, and yells at them.
She is no social and racial justice warrior, though she was happy to let people drape her in that banner.
Context helps! As such, terrible video to recommend…in a vacuum, the lady with the microphone comes off quite poorly in that exchange! And “ripping her mask off to yell at them”? She didn’t seem to be yelling…the only yelling I heard/saw was the lady yelling at her through a microphone…who was maskless!! Again, context helps…and so that does move the needle…but again, terrible video (as a criticism of the mayor)! This video looks pretty good for the Mayor who’s seemingly the calm one here! She seemingly (naturally) takes down her mask to address the person who doesn’t have a mask on that’s yelling at her. I’ll give you the presence of riot police behind her doesn’t look great, but as you said…high tension situation…
There is no comparative value between an island nation of 5 million people and the United States. It’s truly a ridiculous and nonsensical comparison.
Keep voting for Rs and their capitol attacks and you deserve what you get.
It’s almost like we should stop voting for R’s and L’s and instead vote for centrists that actually can fix things without the insane political ties to either side.
Who’s got some dirt on Murillo so we can get rid of her too. Let’s make a list of everything everyone knows on here. I know you all have some info on her so we can get her expelled too. One man can make a change, all of you can change a city.
Oh wow where do you want to start? Look at the Santa Barbara channel on Youtube. There are several videos there of Cathy’s ineptness over the years: What to Watch For With Your City Council, No Respect for Homeowners, and How the City Council Spends Its Time.
There’s the PODER protest she organized to bully the Mexican family that owns El Bajio, a tiny tacqueria on Milpas, when they wanted a business improvement district.
She had no problem, however, in handing a business improvement district to the rich white merchants in Montecito on Coast Village 3 weeks ago. Maybe she feels Latinos can’t have nice things too?
She bullies City Council members, particularly the women, but males are by no means exempt. She was only backed by unions in her Assembly race. None of the local Democratic Party establishment orgs backed her.
The total sexist crap she said in Jerry Roberts’ interview re Alejandra Gutierrez. This is no feminist leader.
She was AWOL in all three recent disasters: Thomas Fire, Debris Flow, and Pandemic.
The whole Black Lives Matter fiasco, coming out from behind police lines, when they’re dressed in riot gear. Ugh. The optics are just so bad.
She has no understanding of business development, and she’s not smart enough to know to ask people who do know what to do, so State St’s implosion proceeded unchecked under her watch.
This fiasco with the cannabis licenses.
She just really needs to go.
SUN 9:20 PM – I agree with your analysis and would just add a few points. Although trump fired “the early warning CDC employees” in China, which didn’t help, it has been reported that the Intelligence Community warned of the existence of the virus as early as November or December, 2019. This warning was ignored by trump and his administration, because he didn’t want the stock market to dive and thus affect his re-election hope and/or his portfolio and those of his rich supporters. Had such a warning been given to Hillary Clinton (or most other people who could have been the POTUS), she would have immediately implemented the measures you mentioned. She would also have used the Defense Production Act to manufacture PPE and, eventually, the vaccine. She would have further used the Act and/or the military to distribute the vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died who didn’t need to because of trump’s narcissism, greed and incompetence. We need to remember this if he decides to run in 2024.