The Mayor of Orange, Dan Slater, is scheduled to give his State of the City Address this Friday the 20th hosted by the Orange Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau at Chapman University.
The Chamber of Commerce describes the event on its website as “Mayor Dan Slater presents a look at the past year and the plans for the coming year. The Citizen of the Year and Businesses of the Year awards are presented. The program will also be livestreamed on the Orange Chamber Facebook page. Following the program, there will be a lovely cocktail party on Aitken Arts Plaza, the lawn in front of the Musco Center.”
Individual tickets for citizens of Orange to see the Mayor give the address in person are $85 each, with tables for 20 priced as high as $10,000 for “Sponsors”. The Chamber is a private 501(c)(6) non profit corporation, not a charity, that stands to profit financially from the Mayors exclusive speech. The situation is further complicated as numerous sources have confirmed to us that Chamber Chief Executive Officer Patty Cordova is paid by Mayor Dan Slater to run his social media accounts.
We spoke to a Board Member of a local 501(c)(3) charitable organization that spoke to us on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “This is how things have been done for decades in Orange, it stinks of pay to play and it needs to stop. It is know locally as “the Orange way”.
We asked Chamber Chair, Rick Martinez if we could send a reporter to cover the event and were told that “the Committee” had denied our request. Journalistic ethics prevent reporters for paying to cover events under any circumstances. It is simply not done, nor should it be.
We spoke to 2 long time TV reporters that covered Orange County for years for their respective network owned and operated LA TV news outlets and asked for their input on the event. Both told us that they have never paid to cover an event and that under no circumstance would their news management ever allow them to pay to cover a political speech.
Both spoke to us on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized by their employers to speak to us. The first, a legendary and award winning news reporter that covered Orange County for more than a decade said “Its horseshit, total horseshit. How in the world does the Mayor think this is ok to allow a private entity to charge citizens to see a State of the City speech given by an elected Mayor?”.
The second reporter who also covered Orange County for more than a decade stated “it’s just dirty, it is literally pay to play. It is not ok”.
As noted above, the Orange Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau is an IRS 501(c)(6) tax exempt organization but is not a charitable organization. The last Tax return for the organization per the IRS was filed in 2022. 501(c)(6) entities are required under Section 6033 to file a tax return every year. According the the IRS, “These rules apply uniformly to 501(c)(6) entities—no special exemptions or unique forms exist for them beyond the standard thresholds. Failure to File: Automatic revocation of tax-exempt status after three consecutive years of non-filing.”
EDITORS NOTE: We reached out to Mayor Dan Slater for comment but he did not reply.
