In the April 8, 2021 Letters to the Editor, I wrote about issuing my third request to Culver City Forward (CCF)—a tax-exempt organization—to obtain a copy of its IRS Form 990 tax filing.
Again, CCF failed to respond. In prior letters, I described the relationship between Michael Hackman and his affiliates (Hackman), CCF, and former City Council Member Thomas Small.
That relationship deals with Hackman founding and funding CCF and Small controlling the distribution of those funds; while Small voted on at least one Hackman project without disclosing the relationship.
Fortunately, one can obtain a copy of CCF’s 2019 Form 990 from ProPublica’s website. A couple of the highlights of that Form 990 are: (1) CCF took in contributions of exactly $300,000 from a contributor whose identity is described as “RESTRICTED”; and, (2) Small served as the Chief Executive Officer and only employee, garnering benefits of approximate $87,000, while alleging working an average of 40 hours per week.
Other details may be observed from an annotated copy of that filing, which is now available at: www.LGEsquire.com/2019_CCF_Form_990-Annotated.pdf.
However, Hackman and his attorney made contradictory filings with the California Secretary of State, e.g., Michael Hackman continuously served as CCF’s CEO until June 2020.
That was when Small first became the CEO. If Hackman’s filing is correct, at the least, Small had a no-show/ghost job.
Do you think the City Attorney should investigate the players and the game they played?
Will any City Council Member have the ethical strength to request an investigation? If not, the City Council will lead all big-time developers to believe that Culver City is ripe for the picking.
— Les Greenberg, Esquire