Brand’s Yellowstone vacation with two prominent businessmen raises geyser of questions

For someone with a long tenure in city government and who wears thick eyeglasses, you’d think Lee Brand would have a better grasp of optics.

Not a good look, Mayor.

Let’s be clear: Brand can vacation wherever and with whomever he likes. And just because he chose to spend a couple days last week in Yellowstone National Park in the company of City Councilmember Paul Caprioglio and Fresno businessmen Richard Caglia and John Shehadey doesn’t automatically mean something nefarious is afoot.

But when Brand posts pictures of the foursome posing in front of Old Faithful on his public Facebook page, he’d better expect a geyser of questions. That’s just the way it is.

Brand ought to know this. No need to get all huffy with Bee city hall reporter Brianna Calix for simply doing her job.

“What difference would it make if I took a trip to Wyoming or did a dinner in Fresno?” Brand replied to one of Calix’s questions. “All four are successful business people who have known each other for years. …

“It was a trip among old friends. We had fun, did a little fishing, one day we went to Yellowstone and Big Sky Resort. We did nothing business. It was a getaway from stuff we all have in our lives.”

If Brand didn’t utter another word, if he referred all additional questions to his staff and wished the reporter a pleasant morning, that probably would’ve been the end of this. Instead, he became testy and indignant over questions based on a few well-established truths: That Caglia was one of Brand’s top campaign donors and is currently a defendant in an environmental justice lawsuit over a planned industrial park in southwest Fresno. And that Brand intervened on behalf of Shehadey, whose family owns Producers Dairy, when Tower District residents protested the company’s plans to demolish a historic building and use the site to park its refrigerated trucks.

“There’s nothing really here. People have the right to relax. There’s no conspiracy,” Brand said. “The Shehadey family and Caglia family have been doing business in Fresno for years.”

Brand could’ve stopped right there and still probably been OK. But he didn’t.

“If I went with someone who was convicted, or a felon, or four Russian spies, maybe there’d be something there,” he continued, inadvisedly. “These are all people who are upstanding citizens. … If Ashley Werner were there, maybe you’d have a story.”

Werner is an attorney with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, the plaintiffs in the environmental justice lawsuit. This isn’t the first time she has been publicly disparaged by a male Fresno politician.

Was that really necessary, Mayor? Isn’t he supposed to represent the interests of every citizen in California’s fifth-largest city, including the neighbors of Producers Dairy and the planned industrial park? Isn’t he supposed to be above the fray?

Not with comments such as that.

Just in case Brand doesn’t understand why his public chumminess with two men working with the city on development plans is a bad look, let me spell it out for him: Developers have long ruled the roost in Fresno. The city’s endless grid of stoplights, subdivisions and strip malls is proof of that. Instead of livability, neighborhoods were designed to maximize developer profits. And local politicians bent the knee every step of the way. Sometimes, they were even paid off to do so.

So when the mayor hangs out in Montana with two well-connected businessmen currently facing staunch opposition from neighbors harmed by their projects and who happened to get their projects through developer-friendly city government without complete environmental reviews, you bet eyebrows will be raised and questions asked.

Again, I’m not saying any improper deals were struck inside Caprioglio’s cabin. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But the appearance of possible impropriety is inescapable.

Maybe Calix caught Brand in a bad mood, since his proposal for a half-cent sales tax that evenly divides the revenues between police and fire services and city parks failed to gain political support. Not unless he can strike a deal with the Fresno for Parks coalition, which on Wednesday submitted 34,999 signatures for its own ballot measure. I’m told, at this late date, that isn’t likely.

Time for another vacation? I hear Death Valley is lovely this time of year.

This story was originally published July 19, 2018 at 3:03 PM.