What's at stake?
The case was filed in October in Fresno County Superior Court but has not been served.
A former program director is suing a Fresno-based community development company for wrongful termination and accusing its president — prominent former City Hall politician Oliver Baines — of whistleblower retaliation.
Giulio Sanchez, a Fresno-based attorney representing the company — the Central Valley New Market Tax Credit Fund — said the company wasn’t aware of the lawsuit until contacted for comment by Fresnoland this week and confirmed the case has not been served.
Sanchez said the company denies all allegations of wrongdoing.
According to a civil complaint filed in late October in Fresno County Superior Court, Lillian Macias Weiland was a program manager at Central Valley NMTC in the fall of 2020 when, she says, Baines “handwrote bonus checks to himself” totaling $84,000.
Baines, according to the complaint, didn’t disclose the payments, which, Weiland said, were only discovered after she reviewed company bank statements. The company was forced to change previously filed tax records, classifying the cash as taxable wages and, subsequently, required to pay additional penalties and interest on its payroll taxes.
Around February 2021, Baines allegedly “again objected to his wage classification (presumably to avoid tax liability),” which Weiland “understood could unlawfully reduce Mr. Baines’s personal tax obligations.”
Baines reportedly directed Weiland and others to reclassify the “bonus checks” as a loan.
Later that year, the lawsuit says, Central Valley NMTC received tax refunds in connection with the $84,000 that was now being called a loan.
“The $84,000 was added to loans on the books to Mr. Baines,” the lawsuit says, noting that auditor reports say that Central Valley NMTC “periodically makes unsecured advances” to Baines, described as “non-interest bearing and due on demand.”
According to the lawsuit, Baines owed the company $341,676 in late 2022 and, the following year, he reportedly owed Central Valley NMTC $251,827.
“These amounts included the $84,000,” the complaint states.
‘In good faith’
Weiland said she believed the issue was settled until the summer of 2024 when bookkeepers running a routine audit questioned the status of the $84,000 loan.
“Mr. Baines interceded, indicating that he was issued W-2 for the $84,000, and it should have been treated as wages rather than loan,” according to Weiland’s complaint, which she said contradicted previous filings and representations to regulators.
Weiland says she “promptly objected to Mr. Baines’s attempt to reclassify the $84,000, warning that the change could misrepresent taxable income, violate federal tax law and audit standards.”
Weiland claims she took her concerns directly to Baines and the audit team, providing a “chronology of prior filings and explained that any change back to ‘wages’ would require re-amending all returns.”
Exactly a week after Weiland provided her timeline report to the auditors, she alleges that Baines fired off an angry email, chastising her and effectively demoting her on the spot.
While her salary remained unchanged, the complaint says Baines immediately stripped her management authority, demoted her title from “program director” to “coordinator” and instructed her not to communicate with “any support staff” without written permission from Baines. The alleged retaliation, the complaint says, limited Weiland to clerical duties.
She says she was later specifically instructed not to communicate with the company’s audit team.
She says the demotion was “inconsistent with her prior performance evaluations.”
Whistleblower retaliation?
According to the lawsuit, Weiland took her concerns to Tom Richards, described in court records as the company’s “managing member.”
Richards is also the chair and CEO of the Penstar Group, a Fresno-based development and real estate investment company. He also has been involved in numerous high-profile organizations, including chairing the board of directors of the California High Speed Rail Authority.
Richards’ role in the Central Valley NMTC Fund isn’t clearly detailed in the complaint, but claims he had the “authority to investigate and correct the noncompliance with the law.”
While both Baines and Richards are named in the complaint, neither man is listed as a defendant.
The lawsuit doesn’t detail any actions or reactions that Richards may have taken, but says Weiland was subsequently fired on Oct. 23, 2024. The company told her that her job had been “eliminated.”
But Weiland alleges that Baines had already been holding a grudge against her prior to the loan/wages reporting issue that blew up over the summer of 2024. In January of that year, Weiland claims, she called out Baines’ use of company credit cards for “non-business use, including airline charges for another local public figure who accompanied Mr. Baines on out-of-town trips.”
Weiland said she “declined to participate in conduct that would have violated federal regulations and tax law and fulfilled her affirmative obligation to comply with the standards for the audit.”
Weiland is seeking unspecified damages for lost wages and wrongful termination.
Her attorney, John Migliazzo declined to comment on the case this week and did not respond to a followup question about whether and when the case might be served.
Back in the news
It’s not the first time in recent years that Baines and the Central Valley NMTC Fund have seen their names in court documents accusing someone of wrongdoing.
According to federal court records, disgraced former congressman TJ Cox launched the Central Valley NMTC Fund in 2010 and, in 2016, used the company’s name to fraudulently secure a loan for one of his other investment projects — Fresno’s controversial sports complex at Granite Park.
Federal prosecutors said Cox “fabricated” records to make it appear as if the tax credit company had agreed to back a $1.5 million loan for Cox’s Granite Park investments. Cox would later plead guilty to the charge but deny personally profiting from the scheme.
Earlier this week, Cox received a one-year federal prison term in connection with his fraud convictions after cutting a deal with prosecutors that at least one local legal analyst has questioned.
While it’s unclear what led to Cox’s lower-than-anticipated prison term, a federal sentencing memorandum notes that Central Valley NMTC — and Baines specifically — told the FBI that the company had not been victimized by Cox.
In fact, court records show, Baines and the company, actually retroactively ratified the loan guarantee before the federal indictment dropped.
“When Granite Park later defaulted,” Cox’s sentencing memo notes, “CVNMTC honored the guarantee and assumed the lender’s position.
“The loan was subsequently sold for full value as a fully secured commercial asset to Land Value Management, an unrelated entity that has never claimed it is a victim, has suffered no loss, and remains fully collateralized.”
Land Value Management is also a Fresno-based real estate investment company owned by a prominent developer — James Huelskamp.
Earlier this year, Huelskamp’s company stepped in to save Granite Park’s operator — also a former Cox business partner — from eviction proceedings and a lawsuit over the park with Fresno City Hall.
Baines, a former Fresno police officer turned two-term southwest city councilmember, also has a long history and numerous political connections around the central San Joaquin Valley.
Weiland’s lawsuit is scheduled for a case management conference on March 5, 2026, before Judge María G. Díaz.
