How Fontana and San Bernardino County built a machine that stole from taxpayers for five decades, and why no one was ever held accountable. It began with a casino credit line. It ends, if it ever ends, with an assistant city manager involved in the processing his brother’s real estate applications and a planning commissioner whose brother is a member of the county board of supervisors and a principal in the city’s preeminent real estate company who oversees and holds tremendous sway over the municipality’s official land use decisions.
In between, the residents of Fontana and San Bernardino County have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a corruption machine so durable and so patient it simply waited out every reform, replaced every actor who left or got caught, and kept running.
This is the story of that machine, how it was built, who built it, what laws were broken, and why, across five decades, four mayors, three county supervisors and a bribery prosecution, no one, at least from Fontana, has paid the price for their depredations.
By Carlos Avalos
Era One: The Ratelle Years (1973–1987)
The Man Who Built the Template
Jack Ratelle was Fontana’s city manager for fourteen years, and during that time, he turned a struggling Inland Empire city into his personal enrichment machine. The mechanism was not subtle. Developers who wanted entitlements, approvals, or public infrastructure money paid Ratelle through a credit line at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Ratelle made weekly or bimonthly trips to collect, then returned to City Hall with stories about winning or losing at the dice tables. It was both his cover story and his collection mechanism.
For council members, the bribes were tailored to circumstance: a city contract steered to one councilman’s welding business; a no-show job created for another’s unemployed son-in-law; direct cash distributions to Mayor Nat Simon and others. The arrangement was Continue reading →

An Ohio-based smoke bomb designer/importer and two other companies have agreed to pay more than $4 million to the United States for costs and damages from the El Dorado Fire of 2020, which was ignited when one of the Ohio company’s smoke bombs created flames when it was used as the culmination of a gender reveal party. The flames spread into what was a nearly 23,000-acre conflagration, which resulted in the death of a firefighter.
Wholesale Fireworks Corporation, which is located in Hubbard, Ohio, and its subsidiary, American Fireworks Wholesale LLC, agreed to pay $4 million to settle claims brought on behalf of the United States Forest Service.
A third defendant, Pink or Blue Gender Team Incorporated, a Florida-based company, has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle claims related to the fire.
The fire was ignited on September 5, 2020, by a pyrotechnic device manufactured by Wholesale Fireworks and altered by Pink or Blue Gender Team at a gender reveal party thrown by Refugio Manuel Jimenez, Jr. and Angelina Renee Jimenez in El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa. The flames from the device lit dry grass surrounding it, whereupon the couple, party attendees and bystanders sought to douse the flames with bottled water and called 911. The intense heat, the parched condition of nearby vegetation and winds caused the fire to quickly spread and move onto the mountainside, where the inaccessibility of the terrain in the fire’s path resulted in the fire raging out of control. Continue reading →

Loma Linda University Medical Center and Loma Linda University Health Care along with their affiliated organizations have agreed to pay $7.5 million in civil penalties, reimbursements and fees in addition to implementing extensive compliance measures to resolve allegations that their employees unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and confidential patient information at facilities throughout Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The $7.5 million settlement was worked out between the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, the District Attorney of Riverside County and Loma Linda University Health Care, following an investigation that was ongoing for nearly four years and a two-month long discussion between the party’s with regard to the implication of the information obtained in the course of the probe.
The investigation began in April 2022 and focused on how waste generated at hospitals, clinics, and medical facilities within the Loma Linda University Health network was being identified, handled, stored, and disposed of.
Investigators found numerous instances in which regulated waste was improperly disposed of into regular trash containers destined for municipal landfills. Items that turned up during inspections of landfills in both Riverside and San Bernardino included hazardous Continue reading →

The last known sighting of a grizzly bear in San Bernardino County was in 1922 in Horse Canyon in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. It was promptly shot and killed.
Six years earlier, in October 1916, the last known grizzly bear in Los Angeles County had been similarly dispatched.
In 1924, two years after the grizzly end of grizzlies in Southern California in Horse Canyon, what was believed to be the last sighting of the species in California occurred in Sequoia National Park.
Now, more than a century later, California officials are considering re-introducing into the state’s wildlands and protecting them within circumscribed areas to be designated as their habitats.
A bill by California State Senator Laura Richardson, Democrat of San Pedro, would would call upon state wildlife officials to determine whether it is possible to relocate some to grizzlies to California in an effort to re-establish the populations of the massive ursines to those areas of what was their natural habitat which are at what is considered a safe distance from areas occupied by humans. If such an undertaking is determined to be “feasible and advisable,” the bill outlines another set of steps by which the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Continue reading →

Corrosive “Christianity” in the form of Greg Laurie and the “mega (but MAGA) churches”

If a ruler harken to lies all his servants are wicked.
—Proverbs 29:12
Whom would Jesus bomb?
—a popular bumper sticker

By Phill Courtney
It was 2004—the second year of George W. Bush’s war on Iraq—and I was spending another Friday night on a corner at University Ave. and Iowa Blvd. in Riverside (where I lived at the time), not too far from my former college (U.C Riverside), protesting a war that was both illegal and immoral.
Illegal because the U.N. charter is clear: one country cannot attack another that hasn’t or isn’t about to attack yours, and immoral because fabricated claims had justified an attack that was then still slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, most of whom did not and never had supported their dictator, Saddam Hussien, and his crimes.
One memorable member of our peace group was an older woman from Puerto Rico and was perhaps (at the risk of invoking a stereotype, but it was true) one of our most fiery and outspoken members opposing this war and George W Bush. Although she was from the Christian community, she was now disgusted by how many fundamental and evangelical Christians were supporting the war.
Counted amongst those supporters, was a man who preached in what’s now referred to as a “mega-church,” with this one being right there in Riverside, and through his multi-media ministry dominance, had become one of the most famous men in the area to call himself a Christian. Yes, I’m referring to Greg Laurie, of the Harvest Church—famous for their crusades which often drew thousands to Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Continue reading →

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING BY THE GRAND TERRACE CITY COUNCIL
HEARING DATE: Tuesday, June 9, 2026
PLACE: Council Chambers, 22795 Barton Road, Grand Terrace, California
TIME: 6:00 P.M.
THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF GRAND TERRACE IS SCHEDULED TO HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING AT THE ABOVE TIME AND PLACE REGARDING THE FOLLOWING ITEM:
Levy and Increase (as previously authorized by property owners) of Annual Assessments for Fiscal Year 2026–27 for Landscape & Lighting Assessment District 89-1
Each year an Engineer’s Report is prepared and considered by the City Council for the levy of annual assessments for maintenance and operation of the District. Assessments for each parcel are included and incorporated into the property taxes for each property.
At the Public Hearing, the City Council will consider all oral and written statements made or filed by any interested person at or before the conclusion of the hearing regarding the improvements, boundaries of the assessment district and/or any zone therein; the proposed diagram, proposed assessments, and/or the Engineer’s estimate of the cost. The City Council will then consider and take final action on the Engineer’s Report for District 89-1.
If you have any questions regarding the assessments, the public hearing, or this notice, please contact Shanita Tillman, Senior Management Analyst with the Public Works Department at (909) 954-5191, or via email at stillman@grandterrace-ca.gov.
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on May 29, 2026 and June 5, 2026.

FBN20260004281
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
BETTER NAKED STUDIO BODY WAX AND AESTHETICS 2416 S GROVE AVE UNIT 33 ONTARIO, CA 91761: JESI LOVE T BALTAZAR
Business Mailing Address: 3721 COUNTRY OAKS LOOP UNIT A ONTARIO, CA 91761
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL.
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: N/A.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 17913). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ JESI LOVE T BALTAZAR, Owner
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 5/08/2026
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy K9236
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on May 15, 22 & 29 and June 5, 2026.

Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
The match-ups in the 2026 San Bernardino Municipal Election have a stark connection with personalities and issues extending back to 2018, which include items have been hashed through in that and every election since then.
Despite what many consider to be its foremost feature – John Valdivia’s effort at a political comeback – the entire affair has been remarkably quiet.
One of the recurrent issues that is being played up with greater emphasis than before is the persistent homelessness crisis.
Another element is the role the police department is continuing to play in San Bernardino politics.
Vying in this election are five candidates who were on the ballot in 2018 along with one member of the council that year who departed rather than seek reelection.
In a replay, of sorts, to what occurred in 2022, Mayor Helen Tran is running for reelection against five challengers, including former Mayor John Valdivia. In 2022, it was Valdivia who was the incumbent and Tran the challenger. The 2022 June Primary Election contest for San Bernardino mayor included former City Attorney James Penman, subsequent Seventh Ward Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz, former Fifth Ward Councilman Henry Nickel, Gabriel Jaramillo and Mohammad Khan.
Valdivia, who four years previously, in 2018, appeared to be a juggernaut who represented the future of San Bernardino politics when he had the leap from Third Ward councilman to mayor, had virtually self-destructed over the course of his first mayoral term, collecting massive political contributions which fattened his political war chest but simultaneously trading promises of city council action to benefit those donors, igniting a pay-to-play scandal that rivaled the depths of the graft-tainted dealings elsewhere in the county, including those in which the members of the county board of supervisors were enmeshed in, indeed a prodigious achievement in the annals of San Bernardino County’s historical political corruption. Continue reading →