According to information provided by the citizen that filed the complaint, the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) is investigating an allegation that Ocean View School District Trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin accepted campaign contributions and reimbursements from the Ocean View Teachers Association. The complaint alleges a violation in campaign finance laws including failure to report expenditures and contributions.
The citizen, who requested anonymity, explained to surfcitychronicles.com, “For months, I’ve watched Gina Clayton Tarvin make countless posts on Facebook, pushing a school bond that will ultimately cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Her hard sell approach has always made me suspicious as has what I consider to be her lack of transparency. Her supporters seem to try and cover for her all the time, and attack anyone that asks questions, so I simply decided to start looking over her filings to see how she handled money. Was she careful? Was she accurate? For the amount of money she is asking for, I think this matters. If we can’t trust her to even file properly, how can we trust her with hundreds of millions of tax dollars? Her relationship with the union concerns me too and these alleged violations involve union money. What will their role be with the bond money if Measure R passes? I started with her 2012 filing and found a few things that just didn’t seem to add up. It appears she failed to report thousands of union dollars contributed to her. I’m glad the FPCC thought there was enough there to look into this. Next I will be reviewing her more recent filings.”
As to the request for anonymity the citizen added, “I’m sure my name will come out soon but until it does I want to protect myself from the sorts of attacks I’ve seen people come under for simply speaking out at all about Gina Clayton Tarvin. Personal attacks, professional attacks, public attacks at board meetings, web sites created to shame people; it’s horrible. And she’s never addressed any of it publicly or distanced herself from it like I think any responsible elected official would.”
Surfcitychronicles.com reached out to Tarvin for comment about the FPPC investigation, but did not receive a response.
Attached is a portion of the filed complaint, along with the letter the citizen received from the FPCC (which appears to show that Tarvin was made aware of this investigation via email the same day the letter was sent, on August 26th of this year).
Updates as they occur.
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