The battle to tame O.C. traffic now rages over fees for high-priced consultants: Thanks for watching, subscribe for more videos:
The warnings have been ominous for motorists winding their way to and from San Diego along a busy stretch of Interstate 5 in South Orange County — a future of crushing gridlock unless something drastic is done. Transportation planners have been trying to sell skeptical residents for more than a decade on an extension of the Highway 241 toll road to help ease traffic. Advertisement To win public support for the extension or an alternative solution, the toll road agency has turned to consulting firms to wage a multimillion-dollar public outreach campaign. But that spending is sparking questions about how the public agency is using the money. San Clemente officials, fierce opponents of a proposal to extend the toll road through the beach town, obtained the consultants’ billings through a public records lawsuit and have sharply criticized the payments to the high-priced, politically connected consultants. Billing records reviewed by The Times show a consultant at one firm was paid for working 28 hours in a single day. Another consulting firm received nearly $230,000 for more than 1,300 hours spent reading “emails of news from transportation stories; evaluate reporter perspectives” at up to $185 an hour, the records show. Meanwhile, the authority paid yet another consultant more than $3,000 a month to compile news stories at $90 an hour, according to the bills. Some digital media experts questioned a $380,000 budget in one year to produce content for two small websites and social media accounts for the tollway authority, as well as marketing to specific audiences, saying such work should cost far less. San Clemente City Manager James Makshanoff said some of the charges the lawsuit unearthed “defy belief” and called for an independent outside audit “to determine how much these consultants have been overpaid and why there appears to have been little to no oversight of these bills by the management.” Jeff Corless, chief executive and president of the firm that has received the most money, Venture Strategic Inc., said some costs were incurred from tracking and responding to misinformation put out by San Clemente and a flood of emails he said the city had encouraged people to send. “Their method is to tear down and destroy and spread misinformation and create confusion,” Corless said. His colleague, Alex Avetoom, said the source of the problem was an “antagonizing” campaign waged by San Clemente’s own consulting firm, Los Angeles-based Englander, Knabe & Allen, which had lost out to Venture Strategic in bidding for the tollway agency’s contract. The firm’s strategic proposal to San Clemente invoked Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” in explaining how it would battle the toll road extension, and mentioned filing public records requests for consultants’ fees as one of its weapons. City records show the firm in late 2017 was paid nearly $100,000. Adam Englander, a partner, said the firm didn’t start working for the city until early 20
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