Ontario City Council member Alan Wapner billed the Ontario International Airport Authority, whose board he sat on, $184,997 in travel reimbursements for 72 trips he took between March 2021 and June 2026.
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The FBI searched Wapner’s Ontario home in July, bringing extra scrutiny to the long-time elected official.
He received a combined $98,663 from the other four boards he sat on. In all, the five agencies spent $283,630 for his travel over a five-year period.
The $184,997 for the airport board is 64 times the amount of combined travel reimbursements the other four members of the OIAA board received over the same period. Board president Ron Loveridge was reimbursed $2,865 for travel between 2021 and 2026. The other three board members never requested any reimbursement for travel expenses.
“My travel was necessary for me to be effective in my position,” Wapner wrote in an email. “None of my trips were junkets. Just the opposite. Frankly, I was and am tired of traveling, I wish other commissioners and council members would put their time in so I wouldn’t need to.”
What the airport authority got for all of Wapner’s travel isn’t clear to the board president.
“I cannot speak to the value or benefit of trips taken by a commissioner who did not report back to the board or management regarding the outcome of that travel,” Loveridge wrote in an email. “What I can say is that travel undertaken on behalf of the authority should have a clear business purpose and provide value to ONT and the communities and stakeholders we serve.”
Until recently, Wapner served on the boards of five agencies:
- The Ontario International Airport Authority,
- The Ontario City Council,
- San Bernardino County public transit agency Omnitrans,
- The Southern California Association of Governments, and
- The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority.
Over the past five years, Wapner went on 132 trips he said were made on behalf of the five agencies — an average of 26 a year. Many of those trips were mundane, including numerous trips to Sacramento, Washington, D.C. and Palm Desert.
But on travel paid for by the airport authority, he visited Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, the Bahamas, New Orleans, Alaska and Turkey. Wapner made repeated visits to Hawaii, once charging the airport authority $7,000 to rent a three-bedroom house in Lahaina, Maui for a week.
“These trips gave me direct access to airline executives, concession operators and federal officials whose decisions affect ONT’s growth,” Wapner wrote. “For other agencies, the purpose was to advance regional transportation priorities and recruit businesses and investment for Ontario.“
Records of Wapner’s travel expenses were released to the Southern California News Group following California Public Records Act requests.
FBI searches
After the July 28 search of Wapner’s home by the FBI, the Ontario City Council replaced Wapner on all the committees he had been appointed to, including the OIAA board.
Warrants were also served at the Chino-area home of San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman. Hagman is also an OIAA board member. The FBI also searched the Rancho Cucamonga home and Ontario office of attorney Frank Lizarraga, the former general counsel for the Southern California Association of Governments, and he spent 13 years as an Ontario planning commissioner. And they searched a business and home in West Covina associated with James Su. Su is the founder and president of Chinese-language multimedia company EDI Media Inc.; at a Beverly Hills mansion; and at the Chino office of Parkcrest Construction. Subpoenas for information were delivered to Ontario International Airport and Ontario City Hall.
It’s not publicly known what FBI agents were searching for. As of Thursday, Oct. 22, no charges are known to have been filed against any of the men whose homes or offices were searched.
After the FBI searches, Wapner dropped out of a planned run for mayor of Ontario this year. Instead, he’s seeking another term on the City Council, which he’s served on since 1994.
OIAA travel expenses
The most expensive trips paid for by the OIAA started in early 2023.
That January, he charged the airport board $8,939.40 for a 17-day trip to attend the American Association of Airport Executives Aviation Issues Conference in Maui. The trip included a $7,000 charge to rent a three-bedroom house in Lahaina for that time. The airport authority paid for tickets for Wapner and his wife Judi, but it’s not clear who else stayed in the rented house during that time.
- In March 2023, he took Judi on a five-day trip to the Passenger Terminal Expo conference in Amsterdam, charging the airport authority $7,581.
- In Oct. 2023, he spent six days in Istanbul, Turkey, at the Routes World 2023 conference, costing the OIAA $7,973.
- In January 2024, he returned to Hawaii, attending another AAAE event in January 2024, this time on the big island. The OIAA reimbursed Wapner $7,166 for his six-day trip.
- In April 2024, Wapner and Judith spent 10 days in Frankfurt, Germany, at Passenger Terminal Expo 2024, for a total expensed cost of $10,045.
- Wapner returned to Istanbul in July 2024, for the Airports Council International Europe conference, for $7,835.
- In January 2025, he spent a week at the AAAE Aviation Issues Conference in Kauai, Hawaii, charging the OIAA $4,803.
- A month later, in February 2025, there was a week-long trip to Nassau and Paradise Island in the Bahamas to attend the three-day Routes America 2025 conference, which cost $5,422.
- In April 2025, Wapner and his wife attended Passenger Terminal Expo 2025 in Madrid, Spain, at a cost of $12.052.
- In September 2025, Wapner took a 10-day trip to Hong Kong to attend a Routes World conference, for a total of $12.701. Airfare alone cost the OIAA $7,437.
- In January 2026, it was back to the big island of Hawaii again, for the AAAE Aviation Issues conference at a cost of $10,821.
- And then in April 2026, he attended the Routes America conference in Rio de Janeiro, costing the OIAA $14,325, with Judi once again joining him on the trip.
Wapner’s travel expenses between 2021 and 2026 complied with OIAA’s rules at the time, board president Loveridge wrote in his email.
“However, approval of an overall travel budget should not be confused with the commission having knowledge of individual trips,” he wrote. “Mr. Wapner did not report back to the full commission regarding the conferences, meetings or other events he attended. As a result, the other commissioners were not aware of the trips he took, the frequency of his travel, or the cumulative cost of that travel.”
The money spent on Wapner’s travel did not come from tax dollars, but from airport revenue, Loveridge noted.
Over the past 10 years, Wapner also earned about a quarter of a million dollars for attending meetings on behalf of the Ontario International Airport Authority.
That’s almost double what Hagman made during the same period and about four times of what board members Jim Bowman, Julia Gouw and Loveridge made. OIAA board members weren’t technically paid a salary, but were paid a stipend for attending meetings, including those beyond the normal monthly meetings.
“I travel more and attend more meetings because I work harder,” Wapner wrote. “The other commissioners do not contribute the necessary time to provide the direction our CEO needs to do his job.”
He’s previously said that the stipends were balanced out by the years he worked for the airport authority for free, prior to the airport being returned to local control in 2016.
At least one good governance expert questions the motives behind Wapner’s extensive travel and meetings.
“Personal profit from public service is the definition of corruption,” said Catherine Lhamon, executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at UC Berkeley. The center’s goal is to give Americans the information needed to effectively participate in democracy. “The goal of public service is to make the government work for the people.”
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Practices like Wapner’s travel on the public dime should be “a serious concern for all of us,” she said.
According to Wapner, both the stipends and the travel were investments in the airport’s future.
“I do not claim credit for the $4.5 billion annual impact ONT provides,” he wrote. “But, if I had not led the long and difficult fight for local control, the airport would have closed. This would have had a catastrophic impact on Southern California. Just getting the airport was not enough; I had to put in the thousands of hours to assure its success. My name was on the line. If my efforts didn’t result in a successful airport, my efforts would have been for naught.”
Guardrails for OIAA board
At their Sept. 24 meeting — after the Southern California News Group requested Wapner’s travel records and reported on his stipend payments — the OIAA board approved changes to the bylaws governing board member activities.
“It’s become painfully obvious that we need clear rules, clear expectations for public officials’ behavior,” Lhamon said. “Where those rules don’t exist, it’s a good idea to correct those and create those rules.”
And existing rules need to be safeguarded and enforced, along with the public and press monitoring the activities of public officials, she said.
The board’s cap the monthly stipend received by OIAA board members at $1,000, no matter how many extra meetings they attend.
New travel rules only authorize board travel of “sufficient benefit to the OIAA.” And they limit board members to one domestic conference a year and one international conference every other year, each with preapproval by the rest of the board.
According to the records released by the OIAA, Wapner took 17 trips in 2023, including three international trips to Amsterdam; Edmonton, Canada; and Istanbul.
The new rules also prohibit paying for a spouse’s travel expenses.
“There’s no reason for us to be going everywhere and anywhere,” board member Debra Porada, who helped draft the new rules, said at the Sept. 24 meeting. “There was just too much money spent.”
Loveridge, formerly the mayor of Riverside, said there’s value in attending conferences and other events.
“Looking back at my time in elected office, many of what I call my good ideas came from going to conferences and listening and understanding best practices,” he said at the meeting. “We ought to have a report when people go to a conference, maybe a page or two …”
“A page or two, professor?” Porada teased. Loveridge now teaches political science at UC Riverside.
“One page?” he responded.
“How about a couple of paragraphs?” Porada said.
“There ought to be some kind of report back,” Loveridge continued. “If you didn’t find anything important, maybe you shouldn’t go to the conference next year.”
Wapner, no longer an OIAA board member, said the board is scapegoating him to cover for its poor performance.
“In fact, every agenda had stipend reports,” Wapner wrote. “Loveridge complained about my travel. In fact, had he read the airport budget, he would have seen the line item for travel. That would have been the time to question it.”
The OIAA board continues to strengthen its internal guardrails. At its Oct. 19 meeting, the board voted to develop an in-house internal auditing program, including hiring a full-time internal auditor.
Wapner’s other travel
Wapner’s travel-related expenses for the other four boards he sat on totaled $98,663 between 2021 and 2026.
The City of Ontario paid $62,855 between 2021 and 2026. Wapner attended 35 conferences, and went on lobbying trips, visits to baseball stadiums and conference centers, along with a trip to an autonomous vehicle company. The trips ranged from $4,642 for a May 2026 trip to the Select USA Investment Summit in National Harbor, Maryland, to $385 for a June 2024 trip to a National League of Cities meeting in Sacramento.
Between 2023 and 2026 Wapner filed expense requests with Omnitrans totaling $17,578. The seven trips included conferences in Orlando; San Jose; Anaheim; Kansas City, Missouri; two trips to Washington, D.C.; and Detroit. The agency paid between $1,701 for a July 2024 trip to an American Public Transportation Association seminar in San Jose and up to $3,801 for a May 2026 trip to an APTA legislative conference in Washington, D.C.
The Southern California Association of Governments paid Wapner paid $12,574 for 13 trips made between 2022 and 2026. The expenses ranged from $97 paid to cover driving to and from Palm Desert for a SCAG General Assembly meeting to $1,759 paid for him to attend a National Association of Regional Councils retreat in Portland, Maine.
“It’s worth noting the majority of the travel expenses relate to his role as regional representative on the board of the National Association of Regional Councils,” SCAG spokeswoman Ana Vallianatos wrote in an email.
Between 2023 and 2026, Wapner filed expense requests worth $5,625 with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority. There were numerous trips to Sacramento to attend California Association of Councils of Governments (CALCOG) events, along with trips to Monterey, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The cheapest was $397, for a trip to Sacramento for a day visiting the Legislature on behalf of CALCOG and the Self-Help Counties Coalition, which advocates “for effective policies, fostering collaboration, and ensuring accountable, transparent investment” in transportation infrastructure, according to the group’s website.
More about Alan Wapner
- FBI serves warrants at locations tied to elected officials in San Bernardino County
- Who is Alan Wapner, the Ontario council member linked to FBI investigation?
- Amid FBI raid fallout, Ontario council replaces Alan Wapner on all city committees
- Alan Wapner paid 4 times as much as most Ontario airport board peers
- Ontario Airport Authority Board tightens stipend and travel pay policies
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