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August 2024 board meeting report showing Central Basin cash in February 2024 at $14.2 million when Victor Ponto took over after the illegal firing of Dr. Rojas.
May 2025 cash report (the latest posted) showing cash at $9.5 million, a nearly $5 million drop in cash.
August 15, 2025
By Brian Hews • [email protected]
In August 2020, during the first COVID spike and with Dr. Alex Rojas as General Manager, Central Basin had $13.5 million in the bank and ended the 2020–2021 fiscal year at $15 million.
Depite paying down debts, cash reserves were growing, and the agency even purchased a building. The building was slated for completion and occupancy by 2025, thereby eliminating the need for leased space. However, it remains empty due to inaction by the board majority of Nem Ochoa, Gary Mendez, Juan Garza, and Joanna Moreno. The same majority of Ochoa, Mendez, Garza, and Moreno recently approved, on a 4-3 vote, to lease office space in a high-rent area of Cerritos.
During that time, the agency sold its former building at a significant profit while Dr. Rojas and his team (most have been fired, two have wrongful termination lawsuits) reduced operating costs for the district by nearly $300,000 a year.
For 2021–2022, the agency closed the year with $18 million. In 2022–2023, the agency went from $18 million to $14.5 million, once again paying down debts, which in turn increased its all-important Standard and Poor’s credit rating to A3.
In early 2024, cash remained at $14.5 million. Then, Dr. Rojas, with Central Basin Directors Thomas Bekele, Juan Garza, and Martha Camacho-Rodriguez, violating Dr. Rojas’ personal employment contract and California Water Code, was illegally placed on leave in early February.
Weeks later, the same directors installed Burke, Williams & Sorensen attorney Victor Ponto—who had zero operational water experience—as general manager.
Over the next few months, cash reserves plunged by more than $3 million.
Before the illegal firing of Dr. Rojas, the agency’s financial position was reported monthly during board meetings, with clear documentation of funds available for any general expense. However, after July 2024, three months after Ponto’s appointment, those reports mysteriously vanished from board meeting agendas.
The ruling majority—President Ochoa, Vice President Gary Mendez, and Directors Moreno and Garza—apparently realized that omitting the reports reflected poorly on them and reinstated the monthly reports in January 2025.
But they did so in a way that will raise more questions about Central Basin’s cash balance and financial management.
In the January 2025 meeting, the board approved the July–December 2024 financial reports in one motion. Once those reports were approved, the monthly report miraculously reappeared on agendas.
The Treasurer’s Report from the January 2025 meeting showing the approval of six months of cash reports in one motion. The report only contained December 2024 cash balance. Garza and Ochoa were on the Finance Committee at the time and approved all agenda documents.
Those new reports confirmed what Los Cerritos Community News had already documented: another sharp cash decline on top of the initial $3 million drop reported in November 2024.
As of May 2025, the latest cash report included in Central Basin’s August board meeting agenda, the agency’s cash balance had plumetted to $9.5 million—a staggering $5 million loss since the illegal firing of Dr. Rojas in February 2024, when the balance was $14.2 million.
In an internal memo, Interim General Manager Elaine Jeng, who often maliciously defames Dr. Rojas in internal memos obtained by LCCN, blaming him for all of Central Basin’s problems, tried to explain the situation, writing, “The balance in the US Bank operating account can swing from a few hundred thousand dollars to over $3 million, depending on the timing of receipts from purveyors and payments made by the District to Metropolitan Water of Southern California for potable water purchases.”
But in previous years, the cash report that was reviewed monthly until they fired Dr. Rojas, never showed the “swing” Jeng referred to.
The agency’s own cash and investment reports, along with bank statements, make it plain: this board and its management are tearing through reserves at a breakneck pace.
In August 2020, when Dr. Rojas was hired:
When Dr. Rojas was illegally placed on leave in February 2024 the cash was at $14.2 million because more debt was paid down.
Now the cash is $9.5 million.
When contacted by LCCN, Central Basin Director Art Chacon did not mince words, “They are hiring employees and not telling anyone or advertising the positions as dictated by the law. Some, I hear, are getting paid over $200,000. Then the ruling board hires MV Cheng for $25,000, they just increased her contract to $500,000. Our attorney fees are well over $700,000, and for what? When I was president and Dr. Rojas was in charge we had consistent profits and raised our reserves. Now we are bleeding cash and burning through those reserves. We have been asking for reports but no one gives them to us as minority board members. Where is the district attorney in all this, they need to investigate.”
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