Friday, June 17, 2011

Wally Herger campaign manager is ButtePIC's interim executive director (and before that, board member)

Butte County Private Industry Council interim executive director John Peace was Representative (2nd District) Wally Herger's campaign manager, according to a photo caption from 2006 and a Redding Record Searchlight story in 2008.

Peace is also Executive Director of the Oroville Economic Development Corporation and a member of NorTEC.

But to address the obvious query, Peace indicated his ButtePIC positions did not result in Herger exerting influence there: in response to my emailed Q "Did Herger, or anyone acting at his behest or on his behalf, cause monies to be brought into ButtePIC, or have influence on who received funding?", Peace replied, "Absolutely not."

The ButtePIC imploded earlier this year, under its previous head.

Peace declined to answer more questions about ButtePIC finances, pending completion of an audit (by Tenney & Co. of Marysville/Yuba City); but according to NorTEC assistant director Michael Cross, this audit (projected to be complete somewhere around the end of July) is only addressing Workforce Investment Act funds. (Cross also said Butte County is doing a separate audit, of how their county funds were spent.)

There's also a bankruptcy filing in the works; I've emailed Peace asking when it's expected to be filed.

*I believe Peace has been a ButtePIC board member for some years (he was in 2010), but am not certain when he joined; to my knowledge, the composition of the ButtePIC board was never posted online.

Thurs June 30 update: I'm having trouble finding out from Mr. Peace what the other funding streams were, that came through ButtePIC into Nevada County projects, and I haven't gotten a response about the bankruptcy filing details either.

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