California Educational Solutions (CES), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, appears to want to keep all its good work private.

CES has no website. Public records state that the charity’s office is housed at Inglewood city clerk Yvonne Horton’s private residence and that she is the president of CES. Horton’s husband, Jerome, is the chairperson of the CA Board of Equalization (BOE). CES’ articles of incorporation were filed on June 14, 2004.”

CES receives a significant amount of corporate donations for what appear to be networking parties.

CES received three significant donations in 2011.

The largest, $25,000, was from Time-Warner.

Time-Warner broadcasts Inglewood City Council meetings.

“In a common sense way this [kind of situation] is a conflict of interest. When it comes to ethics laws, everything is legal until it’s not. We are always troubled when we see money moving around that seems to not be exposed to the general public or appears to be a conflict of interests, unfortunately it’s is only the legislature or a ballot initiative that can close these kinds of loopholes and of course the legislature has other priorities than tightening ethic laws against themselves. It’s like telling the players instead of the referee to come up with their own rules,” said Phillip Ung of California Common Cause.

In 2012 the City of Inglewood wrote an ordinance that shut down public access television and made it so that any programming must first be approved by the City Council and City Manager.

“It is common practice for cities that do not have studios or production facilities to designate and operate local cable access channels as ‘governmental’ access channels.”— January 24, 2012 City of Inglewood memo, Subject: Government Access Channel Policy.

Prior to 2012, the Inglewood-based INcomTV filmed city council meetings. INcomTV has a studio and production facilities.

According to tax records, the purpose of Time-Warner’s donations to CES was to sponsor “Connecting Women to Power” events. The events were promoted on the state’s BOE website by Yvonne Horton’s husband, who is also the BOE Chairperson. The press release on the BOE website did not disclose that Jerome Horton’s wife is the president of CES.

“Pouring big bucks into a lawmaker’s pet cause enables special interests to sidestep campaign contribution limits and make a positive impression on those whose votes they need,” wrote Jim Sanders in a Sacramento Bee story dated May 12, 2012.

With ballot initiatives averaging $2-3 million to get qualified, one of the tools we have to stop these legal albeit unethical activities is to inform our elected officials that this kind of behavior is not decent.

It certainly isn’t decent for a person such as Yvonne Horton—who frequently invokes Jesus Christ when she is given time at city council meetings.