This story was originally published by Fresnoland, and is Part 2 of Under-the-radar contracts. No oversight.
Just 11 days after the Fresno City Council doubled the city’s contracts approval threshold to $100,000, former Councilmember Luis Chavez inked a new contract with Alex Tavlian’s consulting company worth that exact amount.
It was July 2024 — just four months away from the November election that year. The race for Fresno County District 3 supervisor was down to two candidates: Chavez and his former boss Sal Quintero, an incumbent running for a third term.
A Fresnoland review of line-item invoices found that during an election year, Chavez’s use of taxpayer dollars for advertising and public relations services from Tavlian’s company reached a high, as the consultant put out social media ads for Chavez and did outreach to residents in his district on his behalf.
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.
Payments for Tavlian’s services peaked in October 2024 — the month before the election — when Local Government Strategic Consulting billed Chavez’s office $16,666.66 for constituent outreach and $9,915.33 for Facebook ads.
That same month, Park West Associates — Tavlian’s political consulting company — spent $7,626.12 on attack mailers falsely accusing Quintero — a longtime Democrat and Chavez’s only opponent — of supporting a MAGA Republican measure to censor books in Fresno County libraries.
In a July 2025 investigation, Fresnoland revealed that a dark money political group in Orange County, California — with ties to Tavlian — subsidized most of the money used for the attack mailers in a race Chavez eventually won.
Later in December 2024, with less than three weeks left in his city council tenure, Chavez handed out another $100,000 contract to Tavlian’s company, which outlined an identical scope of work as the July 2024 contract of the same amount.
Both contracts were signed by Chavez and Tavlian. They also had sign off from senior-level lawyers at the City Attorney’s Office — something required by Fresno City Code to approve and confirm the legality of all city contracts in form.
City Attorney Andrew Janz declined Fresnoland’s request for comment, and did not respond to questions sent via email.
Chavez, who declined Fresnoland’s request for an interview, did not respond to a detailed list of questions sent via email. Tavlian did not respond to requests or an interview, nor emailed questions.
Councilmember Miguel Arias — one of the three councilmembers who proposed doubling the city’s approval threshold for contracts in June 2024 — told Fresnoland that payments to Tavlian’s consulting company should’ve either been cut off or flagged to the Fresno City Council.
“Any violation of those budgetary limits should have triggered council approval, whether it was back then for $50,000, or today for $100,000,” Arias said. “The rules are very clear and they apply to us and to the administration.”
He said each councilmember’s use of taxpayer dollars is a reflection of the Fresno City Council as a whole, and some decisions could undermine trust between elected officials and with Fresno residents.
“If one person skirts the rules for personal, political gain, that’s what concerns me,” Arias said.
The key role of the city’s finance department
When it’s time to pay a contractor, Fresno city councilmembers can’t just cut a check for $100,000 of taxpayer funds by themselves.
After a third-party consultant files an invoice to the City of Fresno, the Finance Department processes payments to the consultant following confirmation from the city department or council district office.
It’s a key aspect of the process, and raises the question whether the city has a way to identify when consultants’ payment requests are greater than proposed — especially if the city’s $100,000 threshold limit applies to them.
So in the 2025 fiscal year, when Chavez’s office paid a total of $131,042.35 to Tavlian’s government consulting company, it was the city’s finance department that processed those payments.
City Manager Georgeanne White told Fresnoland that the Finance Department correctly processed payments to Local Government Strategic Consulting, and made no errors over the years.
That’s even though the two $100,000 contracts that Chavez gave Tavlian’s consulting company in the 2025 fiscal year had an identical scope of work.
Although White declined Fresnoland’s request for an interview, she responded to questions over email.
Even though payments from Chavez’s office to Tavlian’s consulting company were greater than the threshold, White said some of those expenses don’t count.
“The $50,000 and $100,000 limits refer to consulting services only,” White wrote over email. “The LGSC contracts included expenses in addition to consulting services that were not subject to the $50,000/$100,000 limit.”
During the 2025 fiscal year, the only other expenses besides consulting services that Tavlian’s company billed Chavez for were $31,042.36 in social media ads leading up to and during the November 2024 election.
White didn’t point to any specific regulations in Fresno’s city code or city council policy that creates a carve out for social media ads or other expenses that don’t count toward the city’s $100,000 approval threshold for contracts.
“Interpretation of contracting authority is provided by the City Attorney’s Office,” White wrote again over email. She did not provide the specific legal interpretation to Fresnoland, and neither did City Attorney Andrew Janz.
While the rules for contracts exempt from city council approval are laid out in the June 2024 city council resolution, as well as city code, Councilmember Mike Karbassi told Fresnoland there also exists an internal “legal memo” from the City Attorney’s Office — that says so-called “pass-through expenses” don’t count toward the $100,000 threshold.
Pass-through expenses are a common practice in business contracts: When a consultant completes work for a client, it can at times include purchasing materials or items that consultants expect to be reimbursed for — something seen as separate from services they provide.
Karbassi, who has served on the city council for more than six years, told Fresnoland that Facebook ads are considered a pass-through expense, since it’s a purchase made with a social media company, not a service provided by a consultant.
Back in October, Karbassi said that he would share with Fresnoland the legal interpretation on pass-through expenses — something not articulated in the city council’s 2024 resolution, nor in Fresno City Code.
“I want you to have the information I’m having, so let me see what I can do about getting you that,” Karbassi told Fresnoland in early October.
Karbassi never made the legal memo available to Fresnoland. He also declined subsequent requests for comment.
And, if such a memo exists, it apparently didn’t make it to many of Karbassi’s council colleagues.
Councilmember Tyler Maxwell, who has served on the council for almost five years, told Fresnoland he had never heard of such a memo.
Councilmember Miguel Arias, who is about to complete his seventh year on the council, echoed Maxwell.
“If somebody submits to you a contract in which a million dollars is ‘pass-through’ and $50,000 is direct services, that defeats the intent of everything above $100,000 will be scrutinized by the legislative body,” Arias said.
Arias added that even if the more than $30,000 on social media ads for Chavez were somehow not subject to the city’s contracts disclosure threshold, Tavlian’s company billing $99,999.99 for constituent outreach still raises eyebrows.
“They’re skirting the policy,” Arias said. “It’s practically impossible to generate a receipt for that and suggest that it’s based on a legitimate direct service versus a predetermined amount to evade the limit.”
