After Voting to Ban Pot, Mayor Duffy Grows Pot and Councilman Peotter Takes Pot Money… No, Seriously.

A bold claim like this needs a lot of references, so be prepared for a lot of citations.

In a bombshell of an election-year scandal, our Mayor, Duffy Duffield, has been found to be growing the exact same plant that he prohibited other people from growing in 2015 (http://savenewport.com/2015/11/10/pot-ban-drug-cartels/ — which did cause a crime increase, as we predicted), and is currently still banned in Newport Beach under his law, where he serves as Mayor.

In his Adelanto manufacturing facility, where he makes his Duffy boats, Duffy recently asked for permission  and received permission to subdivide the plot into sections.  Co-Councilman Scott Peotter was paid between $10,000 and $100,000 since at least April of 2017 for his architectural planning and lobbying of the Adelanto council, which he spoke in front of last year.

Duffy, who runs a business on a street called “Muskrat”, at 17260 Muskrat Ave Adelanto CA 92301, founded Muskrat Consultants (https://www.corporationwiki.com/p/30rc51/muskrat-consultants-llc)

Muskrat Consultants is a licensed Marijuana Cultivator from the state of California (Page 12, here: https://www.bcc.ca.gov/clear/documents/distributor.pdf)

Apparently, people from Newport Beach were up there with Duffy back in 2015, purchasing land for pot cultivation (http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20170206/for-frontier-enterprises-muted-entry-into-medical-marijuana-in-adelanto)– the ties to this begin to get very clear.

So Duffy paid Peotter to “make sure the deal got done” up in Adelanto, on the same street that these other Newport people were buying land on, and the same year that both Duffy and Peotter outlawed their competition from doing anything related to marijuana in Newport Beach.

Could this get any worse?  Sadly, yes.

Duffy runs a business of the same name on the harbor.  The Fair Political Practices Committee of California sent a letter stating that Duffy could not participate in Harbor votes because of a conflict of interest.  Since then, Duffy has had to recuse himself of all votes on the harbor.  Meanwhile, Peotter has been on Duffy’s payroll and has still been voting on harbor issues.  This presents a huge conflict of interest, as Peotter is making votes on the harbor while being paid by the person who has been banned from making votes on the harbor, with an obvious implication that Peotter is voting Duffy’s will by proxy.  But, as Duffy has many other business interests even outside of the harbor, he has had to recuse himself on those, too– but Peotter, while on his payroll, still voted.

Peotter’s involvement as a consultant for Duffield raises significant conflict of interest issues and potential violations of Government Code Sections 87103 (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&sectionNum=87103.), 1090 (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&sectionNum=1090.), and City Charter Section 608 (https://www.codepublishing.com/CA/NewportBeach/html/NewportBeachCH.html#06.608), the violation of which requires removal from office.

For about 2 months, rumors have been circulating that Peotter might be on the payroll of Duffy.  Duffy has refused to address the issue, and Peotter has repeatedly denied this in forums (video coming soon).

Diane Dixon officially endorsed Peotter during the campaign to recall him, and is currently endorsing him for his bid to run for office.

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