Every month, a few new items quietly appear on a list on the county’s website, alongside a community organization’s name — a running list, updated monthly, of all the grants elected supervisors have doled out under long-running programs.
So far this fiscal year, the board has paid out more than $15 million to everything from senior centers, business groups and cultural services to schools and museums.
And some of that money has gone to nonprofits that have fallen out of compliance with state requirements and can’t legally do business, a review by The San Diego Union-Tribune shows.
San Diego County’s Community Enhancement and Neighborhood Reinvestment grant programs have attracted scrutiny for years, seen by critics as ways for elected officials to solicit political support.
Such spending used to be the subject of public debate and approval. But last year, county supervisors did away with the requirement that they approve the grants in public.
In the year since – absent any advance disclosure of grant records – Supervisor Joel Anderson has given away at least $300,000 in public money to four charities in his district that were later legally barred from doing business in California.
The East County supervisor is not alone.
In a review of public grants issued by supervisors since they knocked down the rule requiring prior board approval, the Union-Tribune identified eight awards to seven charities that were out of compliance in the eyes of the state Attorney General’s Office. Most of those awards came from Anderson’s office.
Under state law, nonprofits that fail to file required documentation or that allow their tax-exempt status to lapse cannot legally do business. That includes accepting grants or delivering services.
When asked about the grants given to nonprofits that can no longer legally operate, the supervisors generally said county staff, not their offices, were responsible for ensuring compliance.
In a number of cases, organizations became delinquent after being awarded their grants.
That appears to have been the case for the San Diego Bowl Game Association. Together, Supervisors Terra Lawson-Remer and Nora Vargas handed out $35,000 to the tax-exempt entity behind the Holiday Bowl and other community events, which state regulators list as delinquent.
“It is possible that after this (organization) was given an award, they may have run afoul of the state’s Attorney General or Secretary of State office,” a county spokesperson said in an email. “If so, that would get flagged if they tried to get another CE/NRP grant, and they would not be allowed to receive one until the matter with the AG or Sec. of State was resolved.”
At least one nonprofit was awarded money after having been marked delinquent months earlier.
The Ramona Soccer League received a delinquency notice from the state in March 2023 and was listed in December as having been awarded a grant by Anderson’s office.
Cynthia M. Krawtschenko, who became the league’s treasurer in December, said that the organization received another delinquency letter this March that it is now taking care of.
Many of the organizations supervisors steer grant money to “are run by volunteers and experience high turnover and communication delays,” a spokesperson for Anderson said. The county can also “experience delays in receiving required documentation from these grantees.”
A few months after receiving a $250,000 grant from Anderson’s office last year, the Ramona Archway Association was notified by the state that it was delinquent after failing to file required documentation. When asked this month about the cause of its delinquency, the association did not respond, but it has since renewed its charity status.
Anderson’s office also doled out $50,000 to the San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce, funding intended to help with advertising and organizing its community initiatives, according to the description on the county website.
The chamber earlier this year was barred from doing business for failing to register with the state’s Registry of Charitable Trusts, the attorney general’s office said in a February letter recommending its tax-exempt status be revoked. A foundation that the chamber controls is marked delinquent.
Other grant recipients, like the Jacumba-Boulevard Revitalization Alliance and the Ramona Soccer League, said staffing changes and financial stresses had contributed to their paperwork filing delays.
The Lakeside Polo Youth Foundation got $25,000 from Anderson’s office and Girls Rising $10,000 from Lawson-Remer’s. Both organizations said they were experiencing delays from the state in updating their charity status, despite having filed their documents.
Despite those circumstances, the county’s decision to skip public approval of the awards to such community groups still elicits concern from transparency advocates.
David Snyder, the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said that whenever public approvals and input are cut from governing processes, questions should be asked.
“It’s hard to imagine that this was so time-consuming or so expensive that the public needed to be shut out of discussions about this,” Snyder said. “It begs the question whether there’s information that the county just didn’t want the public to have easy access to.”
For decades, the board of supervisors has handed out millions through such community grant programs to organizations in their districts. More than $10 million was dispensed annually on average in the last three fiscal years with the Neighborhood Reinvestment and Community Enhancement programs.
To promote transparency, supervisors regularly placed grant details on their meeting agendas for public comment and formal board approval — until last year.
On June 13, 2023, the board unanimously voted to end the practice, with Anderson spearheading the effort.
In a letter to colleagues on the board, he wrote that the new practice would save time and cut administrative costs for employees, and pointed to similar processes used by two small business grant initiatives and a similar program in Los Angeles County.
Without the board’s approval, staff from the county Office of Economic Development and Government Affairs would have to vet grant proposals to ensure their compliance.
“I wanted to make sure there were checks and balances, transparency and the most timely, effective way of moving forward,” Anderson said.
In the meantime, supervisors are now left to rely on their own offices’ due diligence to manage spending.
“Democracy is reliant upon transparency,” said Sean McMorris from California Common Cause. “You want to see jurisdictions disclosing more to the public when they feel they can, as opposed to pulling back on what they currently disclose.”
Established in the 1990s, the pair of grant programs have shared a tumultuous history.
At the start, supervisors earmarked about $5 million a year — or $1 million each — to fund organizations in their districts. That was later doubled to $10 million, and it grew as the years went by.
In 2006, it was discovered that former supervisors Ron Roberts and Pam Slater-Price had taken multiple trips funded by organizations to which they had steered thousands of dollars over the years. Supervisors would later implement a requirement of the full board’s approval for grants as a result.
In response to a transparency advocacy group’s report on the county’s grant programs, Anderson’s office said in a statement in late 2022 that he believes “any allegations regarding the potential misuse of taxpayer funds and resources must be taken very seriously, if we are to continue to ensure the public we serve that the County of San Diego prioritizes our role as responsible stewards of all County assets.”