When a $3-million grant is not a grant

I'd been unable to understand, until a few days ago, how the San Gabriel River Discovery Center, a project that would destroy 10 or 11 acres of habitat within the only wildlife sanctuary on the San Gabriel River, qualified for $3-million grant from a state conservation agency. The answer, it appears, is that it didn't qualify, but the agency gave the money anyway.

As the California Public Resources Code states, the San Gabriel & Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy was created to, among other goals, "provide open-space, low-impact recreational and educational uses, water conservation, watershed improvement, wildlife and habitat restoration and protection, and watershed improvement within the territory." The Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, or RMC, even established a grant program to award state bond money to projects that meet these goals.

Clearly a project that replaces the current Whittier Narrows nature center with a building 15 times bigger, that nearly quadruples the size of the current parking lot, and that destroys some of the most accessible areas of a 70-year-old wildlife sanctuary would never be approved in the normal RMC grant process.

Perhaps that's why the discovery center didn't go through the normal RMC grant process.

As Belinda Faustinos, RMC executive officer, wrote in a letter accompanying documents that make up the discovery center grant (documents obtained through a request to the RMC):

"Please note that the San Gabriel River Discovery Center project was not included in the regular competitive grant process, so the grant guidelines . . . do not apply to this particular project."

Previously, I had wanted to think there was some better explanation for the apparent shenanigans behind RMC funding for the discovery center. But now I have to agree with the Claremont Insider:

"Voters thinking that they are protecting nature and open space approve billions of dollars in bonds to generate the funds the RMC uses for its grants, and then the money leaks out in dribs and drabs under false pretenses to the pet projects of Southern California's elected and non-elected officials. And they do it all with stunningly little accountability to the voters."