Audit: Avocado board went overboard on perks

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Something is rotten at the state agency behind a splashy $7.3 million annual marketing blitz on television, billboards and in magazines to promote California-grown avocados, a new state audit indicates.

Employees and board members at the California Avocado Commission enjoyed lavish perks and benefited from up to $2 million in questionable spending in the past three years, the audit concluded.

Among the benefits cited by the auditors were home-remodeling projects, free professional hockey and baseball tickets, gym memberships, clothes described as uniforms from high-end retailers, automobile allowances and $850-a-night hotel rooms at four-star coastal resorts.

During the three-year audit period, 18 employees used commission credit cards to run up more than $1.5 million in charges to make "a significant amount of discretionary expenses that appeared questionable at best," the report said.

About $17,000 was spent on gifts, meals and flowers to celebrate employees' birthdays and employment anniversaries, the report said. An additional $39,000 purchased clothes at Nordstrom, Talbots and Ann Taylor that were classified as "uniforms" after spending $8,700 to embroider the commission logo.

Commission board members, their spouses, guests and employees spent thousands of dollars, the report noted, on "massages, nail service, facials and body treatments" during "nutrition committee" and directors meetings at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel and at luxury spas in La Jolla and Del Mar in San Diego County.

The commission is funded by mandatory fees collected from the state's 6,000 avocado growers that ultimately are passed along to consumers. Its activities are overseen by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which referred the matter to California Attorney General Jerry Brown's office for further investigation.

Michael Jarvis, a spokesman for the agriculture department said, "The audit speaks for itself."

At the avocado commission, no employee has been fired for the spending cited by audit, said board Chairman Rick Shade, a grower from Carpinteria on the Central Coast.

But Mark Affleck, chief executive of the commission for 20 years, resigned his $300,000-plus-a year job in May so he could "devote more time to his church," Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Shade said.

Affleck said he could not comment because he was unfamiliar with the audit findings.

The commission is negotiating with Affleck to pay back $17,000 worth of permanent improvements made to his home so he could telecommute, Shade said.

But some avocado growers remain troubled by the report. "It's incredibly blatant," said Mike Reardon, who cultivates 140 avocado trees in Fallbrook in San Diego County and pays the commission 2.6 percent of his sales as fees.

Information from The New York Times is included in this report.