What's at stake?
Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz made the bombshell announcement Thursday that his office advised former city Councilmember Luis Chavez in 2023 to bring his contracts with Alex Tavlian's consulting company for a city council vote. He never did.
Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz on Thursday directly contradicted statements from Luis Chavez about the former councilmember’s contracts with political consultant Alex Tavlian’s company.
“The City Attorney’s Office properly advised former Councilmember Luis Chavez in January of 2023 that any future agreements with LGSC for the same services prior was required to go to the city council for authorization under Fresno Municipal Code Section 4-107(e),” Janz said from the council dais at City Hall.
After months of not speaking to Fresnoland about his city contracts with Tavlian’s consulting company, Chavez broke his silence last week and told Fresnoland that he couldn’t recall receiving any legal advice about entering into contracts with Local Government Strategic Consulting.
He also told Fresnoland that all his contracts received complete sign-off from the Fresno City Attorney’s Office.
Janz refuted Chavez’s claims only after the Fresno City Council unanimously voted in closed session to issue a “limited waiver of the attorney-client privilege.” That allowed Janz to share information with the public that his office did provide legal advice to Chavez about his contracts with Tavlian’s company.
After receiving that legal advice in January 2023, Chavez went on to award three contracts to Tavlian’s consulting company — worth a total of $245,000. None of them went before the Fresno City Council for review.
Using taxpayer dollars, Chavez’s former city council office paid Tavlian’s consulting company $318,872.85 between January 2021 and January 2025. The public was in the dark about those payments until they were revealed in a Jan. 7 Fresnoland investigation.
About 70% of those payments — or $224,346.82 — went to Tavlian’s consulting company after the Fresno City Attorney’s Office advised Chavez he had to get city council approval for contracts with Local Government Strategic Consulting.
Chavez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The contracts were a focus of Fresnoland’s two-part investigation into city contracts that, under a certain policy, get handed out by city leaders with no oversight.
Contracts worth $100,000 or less are not required to be brought before the Fresno City Council for approval, and they are effectively undisclosed to the public. Fresnoland’s investigation found that, between January 2020 and January 2025, city leaders regularly handed out contracts to consultants using the policy.
Some consultants ended up getting more than one contract worth $100,000 or less in a single fiscal year. Fresnoland found a dozen examples of companies with multiple contracts in a single fiscal year — which cumulatively were worth more than the city’s threshold for contracts exempt from city council approval.
Additionally, Fresnoland found that some consultants billed more than the initial contract value, even though the city’s contracts threshold applied.
For three consecutive fiscal years, Chavez paid Tavlian’s consulting company more than the city’s threshold for contracts exempt from city council approval. For years, that threshold was $50,000. It was doubled to $100,000 in June 2024.
Fresnoland also found that Chavez’s payments to Tavlian’s consulting company peaked right as Chavez was simultaneously running for District 3 county supervisor — a seat he currently holds.
Between July 2024 and January 2025, Chavez’s council office paid Tavlian’s company for constituent outreach services — a total of $99,999.99.
Chavez’s council office also paid Tavlian’s company another $31,042.36 for Facebook ads leading up to and during the November 2024 election.
One city leader suggests a private committee to find solutions to transparency issues
One week after Fresnoland’s investigation, it’s unclear what reforms could possibly look like.
Earlier at the Thursday city council meeting, Councilmember Mike Karbassi announced his intention to create an ad-hoc committee to discuss changes to city policy, including the city’s Transparency Act. Typically, ad-hoc committees are closed to the public, so Fresno residents would not be able to observe how city leaders discuss how to amend the city transparency under that framework.
Karbassi has a history of preferring closed-door policy discussion over tense subjects. Back in April 2023, he questioned why a budget conversation was slated for an open public session, instead of first taking place in a private, closed-door budget committee meeting.
He said over email to City Manager Georgeanne White that it would be better to have the conversation in private, since a public one could lead to “a fight, which won’t look good publicly.”
Additionally, Karbassi told Fresnoland back in June 2024 that having a more transparent city budget process made it less efficient.
Karbassi said at the Thursday council meeting that he would be bringing forward an item for the Jan. 29 city council meeting to establish an ad-hoc committee that would look into amending the city’s Transparency Act.
