Aficionados of Napa County government scandals will certainly recall former county supervisor Alfredo Pedroza and his potential conflict-of-interest issues that arose in 2021-22. They are just too numerous and too egregious to miss. But when you’ve got the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) doing a slo-mo investigation following many complaints from Napans, there is always a chance that the sheer passage of time will blur and soften the outrageous nature of the violations of public trust that he perpetrated. In the case of the FPPC, the wheels of justice turn very…imperceptibly.
Before turning to the FPPC, however, it is reasonable to briefly take a look at Pedroza’s alleged violations of his oath of office. They boil down to two related sets of issues.
First, as reported widely in local and Bay Area media, Pedroza gave his vote on the County Board of Supervisors to advance a vineyard development project, Walt Ranch, owned by his largest campaign donor, without revealing his connection to them.He recused himself from a further vote only because that connection was called out publicly by a private citizen in February of 2022. (Had this happened after January 1, 2023, there is the posssibility that he would have been charged with a crime, due to the further amended state-wide conflict of interest law (SB1439).)
Second, according to public records, Pedroza arranged for members of his family to purchase a 400+ acre parcel adjacent to Walt Ranch, which he bought from another of his largest donors, Peter Read, of Circle R Ranch, for $2 million, considerably lower than the assessed value of $3.5 million. Though Pedroza arranged the loan for the purchase (using his residence for collateral), received all official documents at his home address, and named his father-in-law, Esteban Llamas, as the CEO, Pedroza maintained that his immediate family would not benefit from owning what was dubbed “Vinedos AP LLC”.
When the FPPC opened its investigation of Pedroza in March of 2022, citizens breathed a sigh of relief. At last justice would be served. Now, more than three years later, the whole non-process has offered the public nothing but a dark sense of bureaucratic foot-dragging and concerns that no decision will ever be rendered. It is tempting to speculate on what, if anything, is being done, but just sticking with facts about the FPPC’s record is revealing and shocking enough.
It turns out that there are hundreds of unresolved cases at the FPPC and currently many of them are older than the Pedroza case. According to an investigative report on the FPPC from Cal Matters, titled ‘Notoriously slow:’ Lengthy investigations into California politicians leave voters in the dark”, the number of unresolved cases reached a high of nearly 1,900 in April 2020 and decreased to just fewer than 900 in September of 2024.
The average length of investigations was once 140 days, according to the Los Angeles Times, but in Napa’s case it is now over 1250 days. Pretty safe to assume we should not hold our breaths for a resolution from them anytime soon.
There was even some hope in late 2022 that the Board of Supervisors themselves might launch their own investigation of Pedroza’s actions. Precedent certainly existed for such a move, in light of a 2022 investigation, carried out by an “objective” Oakland law firm, to determine if there was wrongdoing in the relatively minor matter of Supervisor Belia Ramos possibly receiving a Covid shot to which she was not entitled. But ironically, in the much more serious issues surrounding Pedroza, it was almost inevitable that the Board would choose to ignore the situation. There were no good choices. To investigate would have set supervisor against supervisor, creating a situation that would have made collegial work next to impossible. So they chose silence.The implied complicity in Pedroza’s activities was certainly preferable to a civil war.
Yet beyond all this, there are two other players who got in on these investigations. The vaguest, least-publicized participation came from the Napa County District Attorney’s office. Once the facts of Pedroza’s case became public and the FPPC investigation was announced, some citizens demanded that Allison Haley, the Napa DA, perform independent inquiries into the level of Pedroza’s culpability, but as of this writing, the DA’s office is completely mum. After several emails and voicemails, there has been no response at all about current or even past involvement in the investigation.
A significant set of players are the FBI and the Department of Justice. We do not have an exact date for the opening of the investigation into Pedroza’s doings, nor the exact nature of possible charges, but we do know that investigations are ongoing. In late 2023, the Department of Justice conducted a wiretap of Pedroza’s phone, indicating a potential case of “wire fraud and a scheme or artifice to defraud, and other offenses,” according the Napa Register of September 24, 2024. His home was also searched on December 18. 2023. Still, whatever lines of inquiry the FBI is currently pursuing remain hidden from public view.
The best that can be said at the moment is that for those of us who treasure good local governance, who admire those public servants who fulfill their oaths of office to put the county’s interest ahead of their own, who will make as much noise as necessary to be sure honesty prevails in public affairs, there is thankfully no statute of limitations on our vigilance–whether Godot shows up sooner or a lot later.
