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With Aisha Wahab off to Washington to complete the remaining congressional term of disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, she has notched a final win in Sacramento with the successful passage of a new state law to regulate Alameda County’s discretionary spending – and the local officials with whom she clashed on the bill are planning their next moves.
District 1 Supervisor David Haubert told Bay Area News Group on Monday that the Board of Supervisors would be convening soon for a closed session discussion on potential legal recourse following the passage of Senate Bill 1193, which was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Aug. 27.
Haubert, District 4 Supervisor Nate Miley and Wahab’s office had not responded to requests for comment from the Pleasanton Weekly as of Wednesday morning.
“SB 1193 establishes an open, accountable, and transparent process that strengthens public confidence and ensures taxpayer dollars are invested in addressing the needs and challenges of our communities,” Wahab said in a statement celebrating Newsom’s signature on the bill.
The bill calls for a majority board vote and staff report describing the purpose of discretionary funding requests by individual supervisors – practices that are already in place – and requires them to be agendized as a discussion item at regular meetings rather than part of the board’s consent calendar. Wahab’s legislation applies solely to Alameda County.
Potential impacts
Discretionary funding items are not currently listed under the board’s consent calendar – consisting of matters considered routine and nature and typically voted on as a package – but they are frequently passed as part of a mass motion without further discussion. It is unclear whether the bill will change that.
SB 1193 is also set to prohibit supervisors running for reelection to their seats – but not for other positions – from placing discretionary funding items for their district on the board agenda within 90 days before an election in which they appear on the ballot.
The prohibition does not extend to grants that would benefit the whole county, or a different district, and it does not prohibit supervisors seeking reelection from voting on discretionary funding items brought to the agenda by their colleagues.
With new laws going into effect Jan. 1 – well after the reelection of the two incumbents on this year’s June primary ballot, District 2 Supervisor Elisa Marquez and District 3 Supervisor Lena Tam – the 90-day pre-election prohibition is a moot point for the current cycle.
Had SB 1193 been in effect this year, it could have impacted nearly $150,000 in funding from Tam’s office and nearly $60,000 from Marquez’s office in the 90 days ahead of this year’s primary race.
Those numbers account for nearly 5% of Marquez’s $1.4 million in discretionary spending during her tenure on the board, and more than 40% of Tam’s $366,000, according to a data analysis from the SF Chronicle published over the summer on Alameda County supervisors’ discretionary spending between the start of the 2019-20 fiscal year and May 12.
Barring a successful legal challenge, Haubert, Miley and District 5 Supervisor Nikki Fortunado Bas will be subject to the new rules should they seek reelection in 2028.
Haubert, who ran unchallenged in 2024, could have been prevented from placing approximately $35,000 in discretionary funding items on the board agenda ahead of his appearance on that year’s primary ballot had SB 1193 been in effect at the time, including $15,000 grants to Innovation Tri-Valley and the CHP 11-99 Foundation.
For his part, Miley beat out challenger Jennifer Esteen and won a seventh term outright in the 2024 primary election. SB 1193 could have prevented him from putting at least $3,600 in discretionary fund awards on the agenda had it been in effect.
Discretionary spending trends
Those amounts are relatively small portions Haubert’s and Miley’s overall discretionary fund awards in recent years.
Haubert’s office has awarded the most of any of the five supervisors over the period evaluated by the Chronicle at $3.1 million total, with Miley’s office at $803,000.
The funds awarded by the two Tri-Valley supervisors in the 90 days ahead of their last election amounted to approximately 1.1% and 0.5% of their totals, respectively.
The organizations that had received the most funding from Haubert’s office were Quest Science Center at $903,000, the Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association at $239,000, One Nation Dream Makers at $145,000, Tri-Valley Seek and Save at $140,000, and the Alameda County Agricultural Fair Association at $140,000, according to the Chronicle.
Those receiving the most funding from Miley’s office were the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office at $100,000, Eden United Church of Christ at $61,000, 144,000 Elect Foundation at $55,000, OakBRITE at $50,000 and the Conservation Society of California Oakland Zoo at $40,000, according to the Chronicle.
Since May 12, Miley’s office has granted approximately $14,000 in discretionary funding, and Haubert’s office has doled out more than $80,000.
Haubert’s recent grants include $3,000 that was approved by the board on July 14 to the Pleasanton Weekly’s parent organization, Embarcadero Media Foundation, for the Junior Journalists program – for which the foundation is a fiscal sponsor.
“Money does not influence coverage,” according to Embarcadero Media Foundation’s editorial independence policy.
Orange County origin story
SB 1193 was modeled after a previous state bill targeting Orange County that was passed in 2024 in the midst of an embezzlement scandal that saw its former supervisor Andrew Do sentenced in 2025 to five years of prison for using his position to funnel more than $10 million in pandemic relief funds into nonprofits that he had undisclosed ties to.
Although no such widespread scandal has come to light for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, Wahab appeared to allude to recent conflict of interest and bribery allegations involving county officials in an Instagram video celebrating the bill’s passage.
“(The bill) basically says that if the Board of Supervisors in Alameda County is spending our discretionary tax dollars, they need to very publicly state the who, what, when, where, and why of the spending of the money,” Wahab said in the Aug. 27 video.
“It also highlights that every single staffer of the Board of Supervisors needs to file a conflict of interest – there’s a lot of, you know, conversations around that space – when they’re directing policy, we want to make sure that there’s no conflict of interest,” she continued. “And it has a whistleblower documentation that needs to be posted online.
While Wahab did not elaborate, “conversations around that space” have come to include scrutiny of the board amid its critiques of SB 1193 in recent months, and as ties emerged in court documents filed over the summer between some county officials and California Waste Solutions.
A prominent federal bribery case against the recycling company’s father and son founders David Duong and Andy Duong, along with former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao and her partner Andre Jones, is set to go to trial next month.
Following bribery allegations from Livermore resident Kiersten Skov this summer against Haubert’s chief-of-staff Shawn Wilson and the ensuing media buzz, Wilson publicly admitted to doing media consultant work – although nothing nefarious – for the Duong family as they sought to rehabilitate their company’s image in the face of the ongoing federal investigation, and to offering a $10,000 sponsorship on their behalf to East Bay Insiders blogger Steve Tavares, whose podcast he used to co-host.
Skov alleged that Wilson attempted to bribe her into silence about a notice from the District 1 office last year that was sent to some unincorporated residents outside the service area, erroneously telling them they were required to have curbside garbage pickup service from Livermore Sanitation Inc. and would be penalized by the county if they didn’t. The county staffer has denied allegations.
‘A different alleged conspiracy’
Skov’s allegations at a late June press conference hosted by Wahab’s office during the push for SB 1193 preceded recent court filings in the Oakland corruption case that refer to members and staff of the Board of Supervisors, but do not appear to criminally implicate them.
Financial records and text messages between Wilson, the Duongs, and the prosecution’s star witness Mario Juarez regarding the alleged attempt to suppress Tavares’ reporting are among the exhibits that federal prosecutors are seeking to have admitted for the upcoming trial, despite opposition from the defense.
“The statements at issue here relate to a different alleged conspiracy, one to quash a news story about a nonconspirator’s unrelated conduct on a trip to Vietnam,” attorneys for the defendants wrote in a July 31 filing seeking to have those exhibits excluded as evidence.
Prosecutors allege a phone call recorded by Andy Duong demonstrates that he, his father David Duong and Juarez “met with an associate of the reporter at a restaurant in Livermore and gave him a $10,000 check for the purpose of preventing the story”, with bank records allegedly confirming that the money was withdrawn from a CWS account.
While Tavares said he did not take the money or fully grasp the situation at the time, the story that the Duongs were allegedly attempting to have axed did not come to fruition, leading them to believe the bribe had been successful according to prosecutors.
The prosecution is also seeking to have text messages between Miley and Juarez, a former member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, admitted as evidence in the upcoming trial.
Bas – a former Oakland City Council member who briefly served as mayor after Thao was recalled in 2024 – along with Tam’s chief of staff Celsey Frost, who previously worked for a different company affiliated with Juarez and the Duongs, are expected to be called as witnesses for the prosecution.
Political spending by California Waste Solutions
Although recent scrutiny has centered on Wilson, he is not the only local figure to publicly disclose accepting money from the wealthy and influential Duong family and CWS, who were generous political donors at the local, state, and federal levels until 2024.
California Waste Solutions, which remains under contract with the cities of Oakland and San Jose, continued its support this year for the statewide conference on illegal dumping hosted by Miley’s office, with a $500 grant accepted by the board June 2, following grants of $2,500 in 2024 and $10,000 in 2020.
Over the years, the Duongs, CWS and other leaders from the company have made campaign donations to numerous past and present local officials including Miley, Tam, District 20 Asm. Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro), U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), former Alameda County district attorney Nancy O’Malley and her desired successor Terry Wiley, and to Swalwell, Wahab’s predecessor in Congress.
A number of Orange County supervisors and candidates have also received donations from CWS, the Duongs and other employees with the company, according to that county’s campaign finance data.
That includes a $2,500 contribution to the Supervisor Andrew Do Legal Defense Fund from CWS in 2022.
The road ahead
Whether SB 1193 results in major changes or does away with alleged conflicts of interest in Alameda County remains to be seen, as does whether it is successfully challenged in court.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors continued to come under fire and received calls for further reform this year in a civil grand jury report critiquing its growing discretionary spending in the face of a countywide budget deficit, according to Voice of OC, after the legislation that SB 1193 is modeled after took effect there at the start of 2025.
Nonetheless, Wahab remained optimistic about the bill after learning that Newsom had signed it into law last week in her final days on the State Senate before she was scheduled to be sworn into Congress on Wednesday.
“So very good governance bill, bipartisan support, no ‘no votes in the legislature – I want to thank everybody that’s supported the bill, and I’m very proud that this is the work we do – and, again, grateful to everybody that has worked with us,” Wahab said in her Aug. 27 video from outside the State Capitol.
Meanwhile, jury selection in the upcoming federal trial is set to kick off Oct. 13, with dates on the docket for Oct. 14 through Nov. 24 at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Oakland.
The Duongs are set to offer a fuller look into their side of the company’s and family’s story to the Tri-Valley this month, with the documentary “The King of Trash” scheduled for a special screening at Regal Hacienda Crossings in Dublin on Sept. 19 ahead of its global release.
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