Fresno taxpayer money should be spent on staff for council members, not movie tickets

Public scrutiny of how taxpayer money is being spent by elected officials is always a good thing. So Fresno City Councilmember Garry Bredefeld generated attention when he held a press conference to declare that four of his colleagues were using their district accounts as “slush funds.”

Bredefeld accused his longtime political rivals on the council — Miguel Arias, Esmeralda Soria, Nelson Esparza and Tyler Maxwell — of abusing their city credit cards.

“Councilmembers each have operating budgets of $700,000 with incredibly minimal-to-no oversight of their expenditures,” Bredefeld said.

To back up his claim, Bredefeld detailed how the four had amassed charges for eating at top restaurants, creating glossy brochures, hosting community parties and spending hundreds on things like candy apples, and treating office interns to movies.

“Some of these council members have forgotten long ago that this is taxpayer money. These are not slush funds,” Bredefeld told The Bee in a meeting prior to his press briefing.

The spending highlighted by Bredefeld certainly includes questionable expenses that, even if justified by a council member, would been seen as suspect by most Fresnans. Having meals out at top-flight restaurants and throwing parties is not the intended use of taxpayer money.

But the overarching story about council members’ district accounts is more complicated than Bredefeld lets on, for this reason: Fresno remains a poor city, and it takes significant staffing in certain members’ offices to meet the needs of underserved residents in their districts. Staffing takes money.

Credit card misuse

That is not to excuse how council members are using their city-issued credit cards.

For one thing, Fresno’s own use policy, outlined in Administrative Order 1-9, makes clear that the credit cards are to be used sparingly, not as a routine practice.

“The credit card shall be used for the purchase of goods and services that are for the official business of the City of Fresno when normal Accounts Payable procedures cannot be utilized, e.g., fuel purchases, travel-related expenses, conference registration fees, etc.,” says the policy.

In an interview after Bredefeld’s press conference Thursday morning, Council President Nelson Esparza said it was his belief that council members used both methods interchangeably.

For example, the four members singled out by Bredefeld showed $1,000 or more expenditures for food in luxury boxes at Fresno Grizzlies minor-league baseball games.

Esparza spent $4,000 for “brand development” and another $2,300 for a party when he became council president (a practice that was standard until the interruptions caused by COVID, he said).

Expenses by the other council members included flowers for birthdays, AirPods, candy apples for Halloween, movie tickets for interns, candy and bicycles for children.

Esparza defended the brand development charge, saying it included communications training that is helping him as council president, a role in which he represents the city overall at public events.

For his part, Bredefeld declined to get a city credit card.

Challenges confront council

One can drive through much of the districts represented by Arias, Soria, Esparza and Maxwell and see rundown neighborhoods and shuttered businesses. The needs are real, and the council members’ challenges are sizable.

To better deal with the demands, Esparza said he backed the move to raise each member’s office account to $700,000.

When he started on the council in 2019, his office consisted of just himself, a chief of staff and an aide. “In my central Fresno district, we were stretched extremely thin,” he recalled. Now, with four full-time employees, “we can be proactive as well as reactive,” said Esparza.

Bredefeld called on the council to pare back district accounts from $700,000 to $250,000, which would support two staffers. That might work for him, as he represents the northeast part of Fresno, which is middle-to-upper income, has good shopping and ample recreation at Woodward Park.

But paring back that much is too severe. Fresno is California’s fifth-largest city, and most of it has deep needs — poverty, unemployment, a high number of renters — that require government involvement to help raise the quality of life. Scaling back to $500,000 is more reasonable, and there needs to be either stronger oversight on the use of those funds or rules implemented for members to follow. Keeping it at their discretion is not working.

Council members earn $80,000 a year and have $5,000-a-year stipends. Use those funds to treat interns to movies; get local businesses to donate items for community outreach events.

The impression caused by questionable spending is that it is meant to benefit the council member’s re-election. That is not being a good public steward.