A series of changes have come to IE leadership.

Rancho Cucamonga Mayor Dennis Michael announced plans to not run for reelection in November, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reported two days ago.

Michael served as mayor for 16 years, and announced his retirement at the State of the City address, fifty years after he joined the Rancho Cucamonga Fire District. The town would be incorporated the following year.

“I’ve been blessed to call our community home my entire life and to serve this city for 50 years in one capacity or another,” Michael said.

Riverside City Manager Mike Futrell will leave for Pasadena as city manager, the Raincross Gazette reported. Futrell had served Riverside since 2023. 

During his tenure, Riverside constructed a new library on the Eastside, expanded the Museum of Riverside, built the Northside Agricultural Innovation Center, and built a new police headquarters.

San Bernardino announced Tarik Rahmani as its new finance director on April 3. Rahmani was previously Chief Financial Officer and Interim Deputy City Manager for North Miami Beach, and President of Finance for the League of California Cities.

“I am honored to join the City of San Bernardino and look forward to working with the City Council, staff, and community to advance sound financial practices and support the City’s continued growth and success,” Rahmani said.

The Western Riverside Council of Governments (WRCOG) fired their Executive Director, Kurt Wilson, March 27. The WRCOG unites the policies of 18 cities, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, and the Eastern and Water Municipal Districts. 

The WRCOG did not provide any explanation for the termination. The decision came following a closed session meeting related to a public employee performance evaluation. Wilson joined the WRCOG in 2021. Prior to that role, he was a Rialto councilmember, a city manager in Beaverton, and a City Manager for Stockton. 

In September, Stocktonia reported that Wilson successfully sued Stockton for $2.3 million on allegations of breach of contract and violations of open meeting laws. The city council fired him in July 2019, saying he had broken his contract by using city time to advance his career. Wilson argued that the city’s failure to follow the open-meeting law invalidated the vote to fire him. 

Wilson did not immediately comment when reached. In a LinkedIn post, Wilson expressed appreciation for WRCOG staff, and said he was proud of the WRCOG’s Regional Energy Network, financial alignment and work done to remove the Stephen’s kangaroo rat from the endangered species list.

“I’m especially grateful to the frontline staff at WRCOG who add unrecognized value to member agencies, bringing a level of professionalism and commitment to their roles,” Wilson wrote.

Former Deputy Director Chris Gray will serve as Interim Executive Director. Gray also served as interim director before Wilson joined. He started in WRCOG in 2016 as director of transportation and planning.

CalMatters’ Anat Rubin and Jessica Pishko reported on Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco’s four year investigation into Riverside County’s elections. Our reporters obtained emails from Bianco and sheriff’s investigators to residents who accused the county of election fraud back in 2022. 

The first person Bianco put on the case, Investigator Christopher Poznanski, concluded that the investigation was meritless by July 21, 2022, the emails reveal. 

Steve Tuminello, a public relations manager for the political organization called Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), emailed Bianco on Sept. 9, 2022. He said he was aware of the closed investigation, and offered Bianco additional resources to investigate elections. 

“I was quite disappointed with the investigators. We have new ones looking into it with the new info we are being provided,” Bianco replied.

From July 3, 2023, until Oct. 28, 2023, that new investigator, Robert Castellanos, interviewed county election staff, then-Assistant Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco and then-Registrar of Voters Rebecca Spencer, according to reports he made which were found and described by Inland Empire Law Weekly. Castellanos was concerned whether the server used by the Registrar of Voters could be improperly remotely accessed, a possibility denied by the people he interviewed. He also was concerned about the county’s practice of resolving two ballots sent by the same person.

Read the story from CalMatters: Internal emails show how fringe groups fueled Sheriff Chad Bianco’s ballot seizure 

The California Assembly passed Assm. Corey Jackson’s (D-Moreno Valley) election monitoring bill on Monday. Assembly Bill 1562 would give county elections officials the option to randomly select precinct board members, rather than relying on applications from volunteers. The system would be similar to jury duty. Nevada has operated a similar system since the 1950’s.

“This year, I've been rereading some of the works of our founders, such as Hamilton and Jefferson, and they repeatedly know that the ultimate safeguard for our democracy is an informed and engaged citizenry. By including more citizens in the electoral process, we strengthen the natural gardens of our democracy,” Jackson said on the Assembly Floor. 

The votes were largely along party lines, with three Republicans and 55 Democrats voting in favor, one Democrat and nine Republicans voting in opposition, and eight Republicans and six Democrats not voting.

Freshman Assm. Natasha Johnson (R-Lake Elsinore) voted against the bill. When the bill was heard in the Elections Committee hearing on March 25 she asked why said she would not be in support because the state’s election resources needed to be spent on improving election integrity and speed, not by diverting resources. 

The Assembly also passed bills to improve the transition of students from juvenile detention into schools, extend each county’s ability to build Emergency Medical Services Funds with penalties on criminal fines and require contractors bidding on local public works to disclose wage-and-hour violations. 

Each bill will need to be considered by the Senate and the Governor before becoming law.

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