Still Squatting: Central Basin’s Appointees Ochoa and Moreno Thumb Their Noses at the Law

Golden State Water GM Nem Ochoa and city of Vernon Engineer Joanna Moreno remain on CB’s Board, violating the State’s Water Code and CB Code. Using their voting-bloc majority, other directors are preventing any actions to remove them.

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August 19, 2025

By Brian Hews

Almost six months after my February reporting, Golden State Water’s Nem Ochoa and the City of Vernon’s Joanna Moreno are still warming seats on the Central Basin board they were supposed to vacate last year.

Because nothing says “good governance” like ignoring the very Water Code you swore to follow.

Here’s the magic trick. The board’s voting-bloc majority—Ochoa, Moreno, Vice President Gary Mendez, and Director Juan Garza—won’t start the legally required replacement process. Instead, the district’s counsel, Victor Ponto of Burke, Williams & Sorensen, produced an expensive letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta, arguing the statute’s clear terms for appointed directors should be, well, less clear.

The letter wasn’t agendized, wasn’t presented for public comment, and wasn’t voted on. Staff says it was “approved at the direction of the board,” which raises a simple question even a first-year ethics student could answer: how do two conflicted appointees with a personal stake in the outcome provide “direction” on a letter designed to extend their own tenures? If conflicts mean they’re supposed to step back, that leaves Garza and Mendez. Two directors don’t make a board.

This isn’t a paperwork squabble. The timelines and rules are not ambiguous. Directors who are appointed to replace directors who resigned (Ochoa and Moreno) serve the remainder of the term. When the term ends, the appointee steps down.

The district notices the nomination period, receives nominations, mails ballots, counts them in a Purveyor Workshop, announces the winners, and posts the names. Dates matter. The nomination window should have opened November 1, 2024. Ballots should have gone out around New Year’s. The terms ended at noon on the fourth Friday in February 2025. If you’re following along at home, all of that came and went while the bloc found new ways to say “later.”

The bloc’s strategy is painfully transparent: if you don’t like the law, act like it’s optional, then hide behind a lawyer’s letter to Sacramento. It’s governance by stall tactic. Meanwhile, General Manager Elaine Jeng sits in the back seat, staring out the window, pretending she can’t reach the brake.

Jeng and Ponto have one job here—execute the law and the district’s own code.

Director Garza’s (aka La Luz Del Mundo crony) public line is that the AG letter merely seeks “clarity and guidance.” Spare me. We didn’t need “clarity” to process resignations and replacements in 2024 when Michael Gualtieri and Thomas Bekele stepped down. The process worked then because the board chose to follow it. What’s changed isn’t the statute; it’s who benefits from stretching it.

The Brown Act problem is its own separate mess. According to Directors Art Chacon, Jim Crawford and Leticia Vasquez, the AG letter was never agendized or approved by the board. No agenda item, no public comment, no vote. If true, that’s a textbook Brown Act violation. The public has the right to know when their money is being spent to advance a private power play. Instead, the majority did it in the dark, and now they want the AG to hand them a flashlight.

Let’s also dispose of the “continuity” excuse. The only “continuity” achieved by clinging to expired seats is continuity of dysfunction. The code sets dates precisely because utilities need predictable, lawful leadership. You don’t get stability by keeping expired appointees in place like expired milk in the fridge and hoping no one notices the smell. You get stability by running the process on time and seating people who are actually, you know, allowed to serve.

And about that conflict. No matter how many lawyerly footnotes you attach, Ochoa and Moreno cannot ethically “direct” a letter designed to extend Ochoa and Moreno. That’s not a gray area; that’s the exact scenario conflict rules exist to prevent. The fact this even needs to be said tells you everything about the culture the bloc has created.

So here’s the scoreboard.

• Terms that ended in December 2024.
• A nomination window that never opened.
• Ballots that were never mailed.
• A Purveyor Workshop that was never held.
• A website that never announced replacements.
• A lawyer’s letter that never saw an agenda, rejected by the AG.
• A general manager who never pulled the lever to start the process.
• And two appointees who never left.

If you’re keeping track, that’s not a series of unfortunate events; that’s a plan.

Summary judgment, your honor. Seat the lawful replacements. Agendize the removals. Rescind the letter. Stop billing the public to argue the law should say what the bloc wishes it said. And if the majority insists on playing statute cosplay, AG Bonta should bounce the letter back with a sticky note that reads: “Try following the code you already have.”

Contact Brian Hews at [email protected] or follow @cerritosnews.bsky.social.