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New Light Shed on Corruption Probe;
Investigation: Complaints from neighboring cities led authorities to look into political appointments in Cudahy, Bell Gardens.
by Richard Marosi, Times Staff Writer,
Authorities investigating alleged political corruption in Cudahy acted in response to complaints from managers in nearby cities concerned that such practices would spread throughout the region if gone unchecked, according to city managers and a search warrant affidavit.
The search warrant was one of two affidavits unsealed Friday that shed light on investigations in Cudahy and nearby Bell Gardens. The managers in both cities, both former city council members, are under investigation for voting for measures that cleared the way for their appointments.
Managers from other southeast Los Angeles County cities approached prosecutors because they feared the moves in Bell Gardens and Cudahy would be copied elsewhere and undermine years of reforms statewide aimed at keeping administrations free of political influences.
"It would be a step back to old machine politics," said Jack Joseph, deputy executive director of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments.
"If the profession were changed from essentially a professional lifetime manager [position] to a political appointment, it changes the whole nature of the council-manager form of government," Joseph said Friday.
Bell Gardens City Manager Maria Chacon, charged on suspicion of violating conflict-of-interest laws, was not available for comment. Nor was Cudahy City Manager George Perez, who has not been charged with wrongdoing.
The search warrant affidavits had been under seal since April, when authorities raided the city halls of both cities as well as the homes of Perez and Chacon.
The documents detail the ascendancy of both officials based largely on the testimony of former council members and officials. They also show that investigators believed the city attorneys in both cities played significant roles in the appointments of Perez and Chacon.
Cudahy City Atty. David Olivas was the alleged "brains" behind the council meetings where Perez was appointed, according to the testimony of William Davis, the city's former community development director.
Bell Gardens City Atty. Arnoldo Beltran allegedly orchestrated a meeting between council members and Chacon on the appointment issue, according to the affidavit.
Neither Olivas nor Beltran were available for comment.
Neither attorney has been charged with wrongdoing.
Los Angeles Times, July 7, 2001
Bell Gardens Official Charged in Conflict-of-Interest Case;
Courts: City manager is accused of making a power play to gain her post. Lawyers say Latinos are being targeted, which prosecutors angrily deny
Richard Marosi and Greg Krikorian, Times Staff Writers
Prosecutors have charged Bell Gardens City Manager Maria Chacon with violating conflict-of-interest laws by allegedly orchestrating a power play that pressured City Council members to vote for her appointment.
The felony complaint, after a two-month investigation, marks the first charges levied against a public official by the newly formed public integrity division of the district attorney's office.
Prosecutors contend that Chacon, as a council member last year, voted for measures that cleared the way for her appointment to the $80,000-a-year city manager's job and influenced fellow members to go along with her plan. She is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday, and prosecutors are recommending that bail be set at $20,000.
Chacon's attorneys called the charge unfounded and accused prosecutors of singling out Latino officials for heavy-handed treatment.
"This is a witch hunt, and it's focusing on southeast Los Angeles County," said Mark Rosen, referring to current political corruption investigations in other nearby, largely Latino cities.
Chacon was not available for comment. If convicted, she could face three years in state prison.
The criminal complaint, filed late Monday, sparked wide-ranging reactions in Bell Gardens and nearby communities. Some viewed the criminal filing as a strong step against widespread corruption.
"It's marvelous what [prosecutors] are doing for our city," said Rogelio Rodriguez, a former councilman and a Chacon opponent. "This will send a message to other cities."
The allegations of targeting Latinos drew angry denials from the district attorney's office. Prosecutors said inquiries are proceeding countywide and stem from complaints filed by citizens, many of whom happen to be Latino.
"We respond to complaints, and [in this case] we received a complaint," said David Demerjian, head of the public integrity division.
Chacon is considered the most powerful public official in Bell Gardens. Credited for spearheading a campaign to oust the white-majority council in the early 1990s, she has consolidated her power by getting a series of allies elected.
Last year, she voted as a council member to repeal a law that required one year to elapse before a council member could be appointed to a staff position such as city manager. Prosecutors say Chacon then met privately with at least one council member at his residence to influence the appointment vote.
Her appointment drew angry protests from residents who said she was not qualified because she does not have a college degree or training in running a city.
Other Bell Gardens officials could face prosecution for participating in the alleged scheme, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Wilson.
Wilson said he is seeking access to city documents that could implicate others. He said officials could be charged with aiding and abetting, or with violating the Brown Act, the state law that requires open meetings of public bodies.
City Atty. Arnoldo Beltran has not turned over those documents because he says they are protected by attorney-client privilege.
Chacon cleared a key hurdle Tuesday in her bid to resume receiving her salary. She was removed from the payroll in April after prosecutors told the city her contract was void because of her alleged crime. But a judge ruled Tuesday that the law cited by prosecutors is unconstitutional because it denies Chacon a right to a hearing.
It is not clear if the city will resume paying her. Council members are to discuss today whether to place her on administrative leave.
The district attorney is also investigating George Perez, Cudahy's city manager and a former councilman, for alleged conflicts of interest. And Huntington Park Councilwoman Linda Luz Guevara is under investigation after allegations that she does not live in that city.
Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2001
Probe Focuses on Official's Real Residence;
Huntington Park: D.A. investigators search offices and home in a corruption investigation of councilwoman
Richard Marosi, Times Staff Writer
District attorney's investigators served search warrants and closed offices at Huntington Park City Hall on Thursday as part of a corruption probe of a council member suspected of not living in the city.
The raid marks the launch of the latest investigation into southeast Los Angeles County cities and came as several Cudahy City Council members and officials were ordered to testify before the Los Angeles County Grand Jury.
The Huntington Park raid by about 10 investigators focused on the city offices and the business of Councilwoman Linda Luz Guevara, according to city officials.
Investigators also executed a search warrant at a home in Downey alleged to be Guevara's true address.
Rumors about Guevara's residency have swirled for years. Earlier this year, residents launched a recall effort against her because they believe the house she lists as her residence in Huntington Park is actually her mother's address.
Guevara's critics claim she actually lives in Downey with her husband and son. Sources said investigators found her Thursday morning at the Downey house. Authorities also executed warrants at her son's school in search of documents containing residency information.
Guevara, a paralegal who was elected to the council in 1997, was not available for comment. Mayor Ric Loya said Guevara should step down if the allegations are true and "thus bring an end to the turmoil that the city is now in the midst of."
The Huntington Park investigation exemplifies Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley's increasingly aggressive stance against allegations of public corruption. The newly formed public integrity unit has launched several probes in recent months, mainly against city officials in Southeast L.A. County.
Earlier this year, a South Gate City Council candidate was charged with election fraud stemming from allegations that he does not live in the city. His case is pending.
The most wide-ranging investigation involves alleged conflict-of-interest violations by the city managers in Bell Gardens and Cudahy. Both managers--Maria Chacon in Bell Gardens, George Perez in Cudahy--are former council members who voted for ordinances that cleared the way for their appointments.
Chacon and Perez--neither of whom have college degrees--each makes more than $80,000 per year running their cities.
The Cudahy probe reached a crucial stage this week as several council members and city officials testified before the L.A. County Grand Jury. After the two-day hearing, some officials emerged badly shaken.
Though they could not comment on the secret proceedings, one called the prosecution's investigation a "witch hunt."
"We walk in as witnesses, we come out as targets," complained one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, Chacon has launched a legal battle to resume her salary after prosecutors advised city officials that it was unlawful to pay an official who is in violation of conflict-of-interest rules.
Chacon, who has not been paid since late April, claims she is entitled to her salary because she has not been charged with any crime. According to court documents, Chacon states that she may have to step down if the city does not resume paying her.
Though some officials in the blue-collar cities targeted in the investigations criticize prosecutors' tactics as heavy-handed, others applaud their efforts as long overdue.
"It was about time that they put a stop to this woman," Rosa Mesa, a resident involved in the recall attempt, said of Guevara. "When someone lives in Huntington Park, you see each other. We never saw her anywhere."
Huntington Park Councilman Ed Escareno added: "We don't have anything to hide. We welcome any investigations. I see it as an opportunity to prove that [residents'] faith in voting for us is justified."
Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2001
Grand Jury Report Faults City Management
By Mike Ward, Times Staff Writer
The Los Angeles County Grand Jury has accused the city of Pomona of sloppy management, poor staffing, neglect of affirmative action and failure to resolve financial issues that "threaten to overwhelm the city's resources."
In a report released this week, the panel says the City Council hired an inexperienced city attorney without any formal evaluation process, approved redevelopment deals with the county that could be financially ruinous and agreed to sell land at a bargain price to a private developer without consulting the city's finance director.
The basis for the report is a detailed analysis of city management by the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse. It found an understaffed and under-financed city government making decisions with too little information and relying on employees with inadequate technical expertise.
Mayor Donna Smith said many of the criticisms, which are based on a study that ended in June, are out of date. For example, she said, the city has solved its most pressing financial problems by halting planned reductions in the city utility tax.
City Administrator Julio Fuentes said many of the grand jury's criticisms are valid and that many of its recommendations are being carried out. In fact, he said, the city was working on reforms before the grand jury completed its analysis.
"The city is on the right track," Fuentes insisted. But, he added, "You don't turn an organization around in a year and nine months," referring to his own hiring in 1989 and to major personnel changes that followed.
Eight members of Fuentes' 12-member management team have worked for Pomona less than two years.
The grand jury report does credit the city with recent progress.
"City leaders appear ready to take a new direction, one that will lead (Pomona) away from the controversy, charges of favoritism and negative work environment that were so prevalent two years ago," the report says.
Suzanne Proctor, who headed the grand jury committee on government operations while the study was being done, said she hopes the city will do more with the report than it did with recommendations from the 1987-88 grand jury, which found numerous shortcomings in the city Redevelopment Agency. None of the recommendations from that report were carried out, Proctor said. "Not one."
The new report should fare better, because Pomona asked for the grand jury study and paid two-thirds of its $90,000 cost. The county paid the rest. The city had no control over the findings.
The recommendations were approved by the 1990-91 grand jury before it disbanded in June, but the report was not released until this week in order to give Pomona officials time to review and respond to it.
Fuentes on Monday released a 19-page response to the 160-page report. In general, he stressed the city's extensive efforts to put new policies and procedures in place and to put the city on solid financial footing.
The grand jury report said the city has not developed a long-range financial strategy, even though it "faces several substantial and immediate financial risks." Pomona's financial problems are more acute than other cities, the report said.
The grand jury compared Pomona with four other Southland cities of roughly the same size -- Pasadena, Ontario, Riverside and Torrance. The panel found that Pomona has the lowest revenue per capita, but some of the toughest problems. It has more violent crime than any of the other cities, ranks just behind Ontario in population growth and has the second-highest unemployment rate.
To compound its financial problems, the grand jury noted, the city has been steadily reducing one of its major sources of revenue, the utility tax. In addition, the city faces a $4-million shortage in its fund to pay legal claims and a $10-million under-funding of pension obligations.
Fuentes said city officials are doing long-range financial planning, even if no written strategy is in place. Since the grand jury report was written, the City Council has increased the utility tax and other fees and has ordered a study that could lead to higher charges for numerous city services.
The grand jury found that one reason for under-financing is the diversion of property tax revenue to redevelopment projects. Then, the report said, the Redevelopment Agency made a bad decision to share its revenue with the county.
The panel said Pomona's agreements with the county, signed in 1982 and 1988, are "a source of significant financial loss and could be an even greater financial burden in the future."
The complicated agreements, negotiated by the city to obtain the county's help in developing a regional mall, will hurt Pomona financially unless construction begins by July, 1993.
But the mall site is contaminated with hazardous waste, which must be cleaned up. To complicate matters, there are malls proposed in nearby Chino and Chino Hills.
If Pomona's mall is not built, the city will have to repay loans to the county at 7% interest and will have lost other revenue without deriving any benefit.
The grand jury recommended that the city renegotiate the agreements. Fuentes said the city has tried to renegotiate but has no power to force the county to change the terms.
Other issues raised in the report:
* The city adopted an affirmative action policy in 1988 but has no program to carry it out and no system of monitoring compliance. As a result, the grand jury said, the city could face lawsuits over its failure to adhere to minority hiring agreements for the Police and Fire departments.
Fuentes acknowledged the city's tardiness on affirmative action but said a plan will be ready for adoption by December.
* The council hired City Atty. Arnold Glasman and his firm, Glasman, Colvin & Adams, on an interim basis in 1989 and permanently a few months later, although neither Glasman nor his partners had any municipal legal experience.
The grand jury said the council interviewed five firms for the job without setting criteria, then allowed Glasman to approve the form of his contract without outside legal review.
Fuentes said Glasman was versed in municipal law from representing private interests in business transactions with cities and redevelopment agencies.
Councilman Tomas Ursua said the city hired Glasman because he was low bidder. Ursua said Glasman was not his first choice but "we're saving money and the guy works pretty hard."
* The City Council agreed to sell land to a private developer for $620,000 below its appraised value without consulting the finance director or following formal policies or procedures.
The deal involved five acres that the council agreed to sell to San Dimas Mayor Terry Dipple and his partner, Brian Barbuto, last year for $805,000.
The deal was in escrow for more than a year before the council canceled the sale over the objections of Dipple and Barbuto. Fuentes said the sale was a policy decision the council was entitled to make.
* The Redevelopment Agency paid $244,500 to a contractor to work on cleanup of the regional mall site without a written contract. It also failed to monitor costs on other projects.
One law firm that was supposed to get agency approval for any rate increases nearly doubled its hourly rates over six years without any notice to the city.
Fuentes said the agency has established policies and procedures that will require written contracts and monitoring of costs.
* The city has failed to set goals for department heads and to evaluate their performance.
The grand jury said that one department head had not been evaluated in nine years and that the goals established for some departments were so vague (the Police Department is instructed to deliver services in a "realistic, sensitive and positive manner") that it is impossible to measure performance.
Fuentes said previous administrations neglected performance evaluations and admitted that he did not pay much attention to them when many jobs were vacant. Since most of the jobs have been filled, he said, evaluation systems have been put in place.
* The Redevelopment Agency and the community development department are understaffed and the Redevelopment Agency lacks technical expertise.
The grand jury said the city should hire a deputy city administrator, whose responsibilities would include overseeing these agencies, and should fill other vacant positions.
Fuentes said the council has authorized a new deputy city administrator position and the community development and redevelopment staffs are being beefed up.
* The city's coffer for paying insurance claims is under-funded by $4 million. The grand jury says the city's risk management program, which handles worker's compensation and other legal claims, "lacks cohesion and direction."
Fuentes said the program is more comprehensive and better organized than the grand jury suggested. He said he will recommend that the city use new revenue to solve the funding problem.
In addition to the criticisms, the grand jury issued several commendations.
The panel said the Police and Fire departments respond to emergencies just as quickly as departments in comparable cities, although other cities have larger departments.
Fuentes said the grand jury recommendations are helpful and that the study was worth the cost, even though the findings were not surprising.
"It's always good to bring a fresh perspective in from the outside," he said.
Ursua said the report confirms his belief that city government has not been well run and that the city has made poor deals in redevelopment, though he said it is an open question whether "it was because of corruption or stupidity."
The councilman said the city is making progress but still suffers from "sloppiness, waste and inefficiency."
Proctor said the Pomona study was one of the highlights of her term on the grand jury because it offers a means of improving the workings of government.
In this instance, she said, the grand jury was not looking for wrongdoing but for a way of helping a city deal with problems that grew out of years of conflict and turmoil. She said Pomona officials took a very positive attitude toward the study and hopefully "they can use this as a tool of change."
Grand Jury Findings
In its report on Pomona, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury compared the municipality with four other Southern California cities of roughly the same size: Pasadena, Ontario, Riverside and Torrance. The panel found that Pomona has the lowest revenue per capita but some of the toughest problems. It has more violent crime than any of the other cities, ranks just behind Ontario in population growth and has the second-highest unemployment rate.
Population (1990 Census)
Pomona: 131,723
Ontario: 129,300
Pasadena: 131,591
Riverside: 218,500
Torrance: 133,107
Total revenues (1989 fiscal year)
Pomona: $69,355,844
Ontario: $80,249,025
Pasadena: $251,318,344
Riverside: $306,165,634
Torrance: $120,521,140
Revenue per capita (1989)
Pomona: $527
Ontario: $621
Pasadena: $1,910
Riverside: $1,401
Torrance: $905
Full-time city employees
Pomona: 844
Ontario: 892
Pasadena: 1,600
Riverside: 1,973
Torrance: 1,366
Population growth from 1980 to 1990
Pomona: 42%
Ontario: 46%
Pasadena: 11%
Riverside: 28%
Torrance: 3%.
Average unemployment rate 1990
Pomona: 7.2%
Ontario: 5.0%
Pasadena: 4.6%
Riverside: 7.5%
Torrance: 3.3%
Violent crimes as a percentage of all crimes in 1989
Pomona: 21%
Ontario: 20%
Pasadena: 18%
Riverside: 15%
Torrance: 11%
Note: Pasadena and Riverside own and operate their own electric utilities; the other cities do not. Figures include electric utility revenue of $93.8 million for Pasadena and $131 million for Riverside.
Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2001
'Pride of Foothills' and evolution of a recall;
Glendora election to pit old vs. new, north vs. south
By Marianne Love, Staff Writer
GLENDORA -- Looking back at the evolution of this foothill city, it's easy to see the role politics played in the apparent division of the community into north and south, rich and poor, and pro versus slow growth.
While there may not be one factor that sent Glendora into the depths of reform and an impending recall election, a trip through time reveals a picture of the political fabric that began with a tear and now possibly is beyond repair.
On March 5, voters will decide the fate of Mayor John Harrold and councilmen Richard Jacobs and Paul "Sonny" Marshall. The majority council have been targeted for recall by a political action group that says the three men abused their power.
Harrold, Jacobs and Marshall say nothing they have done since a turnover of the majority council in the March 2001 election was illegal, unethical or gained through back-room deals to further their political agenda in the "Pride of the Foothills."
Instead, the men like to think of themselves as political revolutionists.
It will be the 23,682 registered voters, who will sift through dirty campaign tactics, glossy mailers with half-truths and one last City Council meeting, to judge who goes or stays.
When you look at major issues, the five councilmen agree.
In 5-0 votes, the City Council decided Glendora's crumbling, aging infrastructure of streets and water-delivery system needed an infusion of money to replace and repair them.
All agreed to hire a financial and management consultant and to form adhoc committees to preserve the foothills and explore more trails and parks.
It's how the job gets done that causes friction.
Councilmen Mike Conway and Marshall Mouw often have differed with their colleagues.
Spending down the city's reserves became popular in one camp but not the other, a cause of tension between old-time Glendorans and the new regime's philosophy of not squirreling the cash and giving people a better quality of life.
Critics appear fiscally conservative.
"[Opponents] do not want to spend money," Marshall said. "We had a professional, financial audit done by a reputable firm which showed we were up to 89 percent of reserves in our general fund, and we should be at $4 million. We had $15 million."
Dissension has became evident at council meetings the past 12 months, often times resembling a circus. Political tensions caused meetings to last five hours. Council watchers became animated, disrupting meetings with catcalls, laughter and sneers.
One resident was removed from council chambers for making an obscene gesture, while another is accused of threatening the mayor and disrupting a public meeting.
Councilmen lambasted residents from their seats on the dais.
Animosity, hurt feelings and hatred took over. It's become personal.
All -- some would say -- because of change.
A change from a few favorite families, cliques who controlled the city -- Joe Finkbiner, for example, who was on the council for 20 years -- to what others call an open government that shares the wealth with all, including their enemies.
"A fundamental change in the power structure came in March, 1999," Jacobs said about one turning point in Glendora politics when he and Harrold were elected. "We introduced democracy. Before things were based on an old model, a single person dominating the city and its politics. We broke up concentration of that power structure."
Early Glendora Founded in 1887 and incorporated in 1911, Glendora began as a small citrus-producing community until the 1950s when large-scale residential development emerged, threatening open space and the quaint, small-town atmosphere.
Political watchers say that up until that time and throughout most of the '60s, '70s and '80s, elected officials and residents conducted themselves with respect and decorum.
Disagreements happened, but respect won over.
"These were years of rapid growth and development with many subdivisions and a growing population," Assistant City Manager Culver Heaton, a longtime employee, said. "Everyone, for the most part, was new and accepted development and more new people into the community."
The construction of the Foothill [210] Freeway in the late '60s and early '70s could be seen as an imaginary dividing line through the north and south of the city.
Heaton said by the '80s and early '90s, the community was almost built out. Developers took on problem parcels and eyed the lower hillsides.
The community watched Diamond Bar being carved up, and under Finkbiner's watch, passed the first rural hillside residential zone.
"We were trying to avoid tract homes in the hillsides," former Mayor Bob Kuhn said. "We were leaning toward custom homes. That led to a fundamental argument. And for political reasons, it's easy to attack the establishment and say, 'Look. They are letting them build anything on the hillsides' when nothing could be further from the truth."
The 1980s This period showed some of the first signs of political division.
As the community matured, residents adopted an attitude of "not in my back yard" about issues.
The Morgan Ranch development of large, expensive, two-story homes on small lots in the hillside shocked some.
Others favored less yard maintenance.
When the hillsides at the north end of Lone Hill Avenue looked like they might be developed, the community organized.
"From that time forward, this new council, and more recent councils, have struggled with balancing private property rights with issues concerning hillside development," Heaton said.
The '90s Glendora had one ZIP code: 91740.
As the community grew, the post office on July 1, 1993, decided the population warranted two.
The dividing line became Route 66, formerly known as Alosta Avenue.
South Glendora kept the 91740 ZIP, the north was now 91741.
Earlier, in 1979 and 1980, an unincorporated portion of Los Angeles County in the south was annexed into Glendora against residents' will. The derogatory term "Baja Glendora" -- an image of run-down homes and trailer parks -- followed.
It rears its ugly head during political campaigns and is used by some candidates to remind those in the south they don't live in the privileged north.
Critics of Jacobs said he didn't help close the gap when he insisted on referring to "the good old boys, those guys up on the hill, guys at the country club, guys behind gated communities" -- all of whom lived in the northern section.
"There was only one Glendora," said resident Stan Levin. "Harrold and Jacobs pandered to those living in the south and asked, 'What was the council doing for them?' The council had been looking at Glendora as a whole."
Then, council meetings were televised. More of the community became arm-chair legislators and land-use watchers.
Others played to the camera.
Historically meetings ended around 9:30 p.m.
Now, everyone's delighted if they end by midnight.
Land-use issues Glendora's inability to get land-use issues down pat has added fuel to the fire.
There was a case brought by the Historical Preservation Committee over the destruction of a house to build a parking lot across from City Hall on Foothill Boulevard. That suit cost the city $60,000.
Another example was the Robert and Linda Gagne case in 1997 over a zoning dispute. The couple eventually sued, claiming a violation of their civil rights. They said the city allowed a single-family house to be built on a small lot above their home. So far, the legal tab is close to $1 million and has not been settled. The city is suing its legal representatives for malpractice.
More political divide Political analysts say the election of Christine Degrassi in 1994 was the beginning of a deeper chasm in the community.
Degrassi, a one-term councilwoman, didn't warm herself to her peers when she challenged them on many issues.
Embroiling the city in a lawsuit -- that eventually cost Glendora more than $125,440 -- didn't sit well with others.
The way the council treated Degrassi and residents was the impetus that catapulted today's mayor from his living room to the Council Chambers.
"The way people were being treated was rude," Harrold said.
"I'm used to the courts where everyone is allowed to speak without being intimidated, without being heckled when they disagree with other people's policies," said Harrold, a deputy district attorney.
The first resistance he met was when he talked about salary raises for police officers and a resolution to support the death penalty for minors who kill law enforcement.
"They treated me badly," Harrold said. "They got me upset. One of our officers [Louie Pompeii] was murdered. All the people wanted was a resolution toughening the law."
Glendora marketplace It was a patch of land at Lone Hill Avenue and Gladstone Street that served as a major catalyst of division.
Heated debates ensured about how 48 out of the 80-acres would be developed.
A historic tug of war culminated 30 years of rancor over what is now known as the Glendora Marketplace, a huge retail development still under construction.
It was the voters in March 2001 who decided 2-to-1 how the center should be developed.
At that time Harrold and Jacobs faced off with challengers, many of whom are still challenging the two men today.
Political action committees And finally, in the mind of Brad Kovar, who twice unsuccessfully ran for City Council, the proliferation of political action committees in the late '90s drove another wedge into the community.
And this upcoming recall election is no different.
The group that made the recall a reality had a war chest amounting to $127,000 as of last month.
The former planning commissioner says that while committees like that might be a necessary evil, they are only a short-term fix for a nagging problem.
"Bottom line. You must be responsive to the needs of ordinary citizens and, at the same time, when a council abandons the concerns of the majority of citizens, the majority of citizens will abandon the council," Kovar said.
Life in Glendora after March 5 Depending on which side of the recall bench one sits, political watchers say the view of Glendora after March 5 will be rosy or murky.
Its reputation has plummeted over the past year. Some report the political turmoil in Glendora has made it the laughingstock of the San Gabriel Valley -- affecting real estate prices, businesses and prides.
If the recall is successful, supporters say politics will become tranquil and dignified.
"I see it going back to what it was in the '50s, '60s and the '70s," said former City Manager Art Cook, who retired in the summer of 1997 after 41 years with the city.
It was "a time when [decisions] were made based on what's best for Glendora and not best for personal egos," he said.
Cook, a recall supporter seen by some as still pulling strings in City Hall, says if it's not successful, Glendora will cease as a community of volunteers.
"There'll be a small group of people getting involved and a narrow group who will be trying to exercise its own will and desires," he said. "And, the majority of the community of 100 years, who have given to this town to make it what is, will be ostracized."
In true Glendora style, Community Services Commissioner Roy Schall disagrees.
If the recall is successful, Schall said corruption inside City Hall will continue. If the makeup of the council remains as is, politics in Glendora will be open.
In either case, it's not hard to predict politics will come under a microscope to judge the council's actions by the losers, until the next election, when it starts all over again.
Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2002
A Scramble for Power, Patronage; The Battle for Lucrative City Attorney Contracts in L.A. County's Heavily Heavily Latino
Cities Has Resulted in Some Nasty Allegations. Ex-Partners in a Well-Connected Firm Are in the Center of the Storm
Ted Rohrlich, Times Staff Writer
As new groups scramble to consolidate power and patronage in Los Angeles County's small cities, the pushing and shoving usually takes place underneath public radar.
One exception involves a pair of lawyers who, adversaries complain, have not exactly been using the good government handbook.
The lawyers, Stanford-educated J. Arnoldo Beltran and Harvard-trained H. Francisco Leal, have played power politics in pursuit of lucrative municipal attorney contracts long held by white-dominated law firms, and now also sought by competing Latinos, in cities with new or changing Latino majorities in southeast Los Angeles County and the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.
They have used the specter of recall campaigns as a threat against newly elected Latino officials if those officials do not vote to give them contracts, the officials or their associates charged in interviews with The Times. In one instance, a political ally of the lawyers, state Sen. Richard Polanco, allegedly did the threatening for them.
The lawyers and Polanco deny the charges.
There is nothing new about mixing recall politics and the pursuit of city attorney jobs, which are awarded in small cities by majorities of five-member city councils. In Los Angeles County's largest cities, city attorneys are elected.
Edward Dilkes, a veteran white municipal lawyer, recalled that in the 1970s, he was part of a generation of lawyers allied with tax conservatives and environmentalists who seized political power largely at the expense of older, pro-development whites who had settled in Southern California after World War II. Dilkes said he got the city attorney's job in Rosemead after advising such allies on how to run a recall there.
But the allegations lodged against Beltran, Leal and Polanco go beyond merely advising. They involve a form of coercion--specifically, promising to call off recalls in return for contracts.
Because of the rifts they have created, the allegations are significant for another reason: They provide an unusual opportunity to glimpse normally secretive operations of the political machine Polanco is building as it continues to gain and keep footholds in Los Angeles County's local governments.
Polanco, a Democrat who represents northeast Los Angeles in the state Senate, has become known as the leading architect of Latino empowerment in California largely through his successes in sponsoring Latino Democratic candidates for the state Legislature. But he has also dabbled in local politics. He acknowledges that he has possible county supervisorial ambitions when he is termed out of the Legislature in 2002.
As his political allies, lawyers Beltran and Leal have enjoyed considerable success in recent years. They have represented, at various times, eight Los Angeles County cities with contracts each worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. They also became lobbyists in Sacramento for some of the same cities, earning tens of thousands of dollars more.
But as participants in a volatile business where job security is only as solid as a three-member city council majority, they also experienced their share of defeats--losing some of these same contracts to other lawyers in a hotly competitive field.
This past summer, Beltran and Leal broke up their partnership, dividing the cities that their firm represented in a move that Leal attributed to stylistic and personality differences. Leal is smoother, thinner, and at 39, 10 years younger than Beltran. He is the diplomat. Beltran is more plain-spoken and direct.
The allegations of coercion lodged against them and Polanco involve only three cities--Bell Gardens, which Beltran still represents; the city of Commerce, which Leal's breakaway firm still represents; and Lynwood, from which the Beltran-Leal firm was fired.
In Bell Gardens, two council members facing recalls said that Beltran and Leal told them early this year that the recalls could stop if the law firm were retained.
Councilman Joaquin Penilla said Leal told him: "What does it take for me to get you not to fire us? What does it take? You want us to stop the recall tomorrow? We'll do it."
"Beltran then said, 'I have a lot of powerful friends, and they'll be very disappointed if we get fired,' " Penilla said.
Another of the council members, Salvador Rios, said that Beltran talked to him too.
"He says he can do anything to keep us in office, but don't fire him ," Rios said. "And I said, 'What could you do?' And he said, 'I could stop the recall just for you.' "
Beltran and Leal deny making the statements.
In Commerce, a different form of pressure was applied.
Leal admits he launched a retaliatory campaign to punish the councilman he held most responsible for firing him by targeting the councilman's half-brother, a school board member, for electoral defeat. Leal said he now regrets that move, which he attributes to letting his anger and hurt get the better of him.
He also wrote a petition to recall the councilman.
Then something strange happened.
Facing recall, the councilman, Hugo Argumedo, suddenly reversed himself and voted to rehire Leal.
Exactly what persuaded Argumedo to change his mind remains unclear since Argumedo would not explain himself for this article. But someone who knows him said Argumedo explained to him that he acted under duress, after he was told that the lawyers would dump big money into the recall campaign against him unless he changed his mind.
Leal and Beltran deny making any such threats.
In Lynwood, Polanco himself became involved.
A council member, Ricardo Sanchez, said that Polanco, the state Senate majority leader, told him that a recall attempt against Sanchez could be stopped if the firm were rehired.
Sanchez had broken away from Lynwood's first-ever Latino City Council majority, which had hired the firm, and formed a new majority with two black council members, which had fired Leal and Beltran.
Sanchez said Polanco told him, "We should work things out. The recall could die if we allowed these people to come back."
Sanchez said Polanco referred to Leal in their conversations as "his boy."
Polanco, whose public demeanor is perennially buttoned down, denied threatening Sanchez and denied referring to Leal as his "boy." "I don't talk like that," the senator said.
He said he met with Sanchez and other members of the Latino bloc, at Sanchez's request, to see if he could repair a breach between Sanchez and Leal and patch up the fractured Latino majority.
"I sit down and I tell them . . . 'Look, you guys are just getting started. You've got to learn to work together,' " Polanco said.
The senator said he has no financial ties to Beltran and Leal, other than that they have made campaign contributions to him, and merely supports them as qualified lawyers in a field that "has been closed to ethnic minority law firms."
Beltran and Leal's reputed involvement in recalls, and a perception that they are closely tied to Polanco, have contributed to an atmosphere of fear even in cities where there were no recalls. Some council members who are already known as dissidents were cautious about what they would say. "I don't feel comfortable being quoted by name in any article regarding them ," said one.
Bell Gardens
Bell Gardens is a 2 1/2-square-mile city of 40,000 in southeast Los Angeles County that was settled by whites fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and incorporated in 1961. Thirty years later, it became the cradle of the current Mexican American political ascension, when a Latino voting majority recalled a nearly all-white City Council.
Beltran, then a real estate lawyer active in politics, was involved in that recall effort through an organization called NEWS for America, whose "news" was that Mexican Americans no longer needed to wait and practice coalition-building with other ethnic groups since they were so numerous--N(orth), E(ast), W(est) and S(outh).
Two years after the Bell Gardens recall, its local leader, Maria Chacon, herself won election to the council, and Beltran became city attorney. Chacon put together her own three-member slate of council candidates to join her on the governing body in 1997.
Beltran backed this slate--which he knew, if successful, would contain his future employers--by asking political friends to contribute. There was nothing illegal or unusual about that. Some city attorneys or would-be city attorneys do not do it because they take a long view that contributions aimed at making friends also, unavoidably, make enemies of the friends' opponents. But Beltran's view was: "Unless and until the rules change, I'm going to help people who help me."
Shortly after the slate was elected, trouble erupted between its members and Chacon and that led to her effort to recall them.
As tensions mounted, former Bell Gardens Planning Commissioner Alfredo Martinez said that Beltran told him repeatedly that a recall was in the works against the slate, even before a petition was filed. "He said, 'These bozos don't believe we're going to recall them,' " Martinez said. Beltran denies making the remark.
Many issues were involved. One was the use of city funds to subsidize a single-family-home development to be built in part by TELACU, an acronym for The East Los Angeles Community Union. TELACU is an influential nonprofit community development corporation, containing profit-making subsidiaries, that has long been a mainstay in providing Polanco with financial and political support.
Financing for the Bell Gardens portion of TELACU's 53-house project, which extended into neighboring Commerce, was contingent on a $ 2-million Bell Gardens loan.
The City Council initially gave the project a green light. But Chacon's handpicked council members, David Torres, Salvador Rios and Joaquin Penilla, had second thoughts. They said they worried that the loan might not be repaid and that houses, which they said were to be sold for $ 150,000 or more, would prove too expensive for most Bell Gardens residents.
Beltran stepped in to try to save the deal, Rios said.
He said Beltran called him to arrange a private meeting between him, Polanco and the key developer, TELACU President David Lizarraga's son, Michael, who is TELACU's executive vice president.
Beltran denies setting up the meeting.
At the meeting, which Penilla also said he attended, Rios said Polanco pushed for the housing project, saying it would be good for the city.
Polanco, who early in his career worked for TELACU, acknowledged attending. "I was invited to give a recommendation . . . on the experience of TELACU as a housing developer and to share with them history about the organization . . . and I did, as I have done for others who I believe are capable and qualified and, if given the shot, will do a good job," he said.
Rios and Penilla remained unmoved, and together with Torres, voted against the project.
As a recall movement against all three gathered steam, they also moved to fire Beltran. Leal said he then stepped in to try to prevent the loss of a "million-dollar" account. "I'm the relationships guy," Leal said. "I can ask. I can plead. . . . Arnoldo Beltran can't."
Leal said he sought out council member Penilla to make "mostly a plea based on loyalty."
Leal, as well as Beltran, denies Penilla's account that Leal offered to call off the recall against Penilla in return for Penilla's vote.
Leal said it was absurd to imagine that he would say he could stop a recall inspired by Chacon, the most influential politician in town.
Rios, however, said that first Beltran and then Chacon herself made similar pitches to him.
Rios said Beltran told him: "I could stop the recall just for you."
Then Chacon joined their conversation and said, as Rios tells it: "If you don't fire Beltran, we can keep you in office."
Beltran denies saying he would call off a recall. But he acknowledged that he listened as Chacon said "basically, 'We want to work with you.' Obviously, the comment means, 'We don't want you out of office.' "
Chacon said: "I don't recall that at all."
Penilla and Rios, along with their ally, Torres, went ahead with their vote to fire Beltran.
Beltran responded by helping to raise money for their recall. "Some of my friends contributed," he said.
Polanco reported giving $ 1,000 through a campaign committee he controlled.
Saying that was his only involvement in the recall, he explained that he gave the money to help Chacon, who "has been a strong friend and supporter of all of us." By "all of us," he said he meant himself and Democratic state Sen. Martha Escutia, a lawyer whose legislative career he launched in 1992 by helping her win election to the state Assembly representing Bell Gardens and other southeast cities. He also included Democratic Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh, a former Polanco aide who became a law clerk and lobbyist for the Beltran and Leal firm, and then last year, Polanco's choice to replace Escutia in the Assembly.
Escutia's campaign records show that she, too, sent a $ 1,000-contribution to the Bell Gardens recall committee. She sent it to the address of the Beltran and Leal law firm in downtown Los Angeles.
The recall was successful.
The day after new City Council members were sworn in, Beltran was rehired.
The new members, who had campaigned on a pledge to approve the TELACU project, quickly did that too.
Commerce
Commerce is a small industrial city six miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles that boasts that it has no local property or utility taxes. Established in 1960 when industrialists and homeowners decided they would be better off incorporating than risking annexation, the city has more than 40,000 workers but only 12,000 residents.
Leal got the Commerce city attorney job in 1994 and kept it until 1997, when City Councilman Hugo Argumedo led a move to oust him. Leal attributed their squabble to personnel matters. There were also disagreements about a multimillion-dollar project known as Rail Cycle.
Rail Cycle was to involve construction of a giant facility in Commerce to remove recyclables from 8 million pounds of garbage that would be trucked daily into the city from other towns. The remainder of the waste would be put on trains bound for a landfill in the San Bernardino County desert.
The project's partners, Waste Management Inc. and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Co., hired a well-connected Latino political figure, Robert Morales, a longtime aide to former state Sen. Art Torres, the current state Democratic Party chairman, as their consultant. His job was to drum up community support for the project.
With Morales' help, Rail Cycle won a conditional use permit from the City Council in late 1992. But four years later, when Argumedo was running for council on a campaign against the project, major construction had still not begun. Rail Cycle's partners cited unforeseen delays in winning approval for their desert landfill.
Citing the inaction, Argumedo asked Leal for a legal opinion that he could use to revoke Rail Cycle's conditional use permit.
But Leal would not provide one. Leal said that he was concerned Rail Cycle could sue the city and win and advised that a better course was to wait, since the project might die of natural causes.
Argumedo would not be interviewed for this article, but associates described him as fed up with what he saw as Leal dragging his feet. He engineered Leal's firing and the hiring of a replacement who said that the city would be on solid legal ground stripping Rail Cycle of its permit.
Rail Cycle sued, and Leal's replacement, interim City Atty. Fernando Villa, won in court, persuading a judge that Rail Cycle could not reserve land indefinitely for future use. The company has appealed.
Leal and some of his associates, meanwhile, set out to punish Argumedo for having fired Leal.
Initially, they targeted Argumedo's half-brother, Hector Chacon, the effective head of Argumedo's local political family, who at the time was running for reelection to the school board of Montebello Unified, which also serves Commerce and nearby cities.
Leal and others associated with either Polanco or the law firm helped fund a campaign committee, called Parents for a Better Education, whose sole purpose was to defeat Hector Chacon.
Leal launched and directed the committee without Beltran's knowledge, both men say.
Polanco denies any connection with Rail Cycle or the committee.
The committee's records show that besides Leal, key donors included David J. Olivas, another lawyer who worked for the Beltran-Leal firm; George Castro, a financial manager who is Polanco's brother-in-law; George Pla, a longtime TELACU insider who heads Cordoba, a consulting firm; and Dario Frommer, then an attorney-lobbyist subcontractor for the Beltran-Leal firm. Frommer later became Gov. Gray Davis' appointments secretary, recommending to the governor who should get patronage jobs in state government, and is now an Assembly candidate from Los Angeles.
Chacon would not agree to be interviewed for this article.
However, his campaign consultant, Phil Giarrizzo, said his client had no doubt where his opposition was coming from. Chacon identified "the people who want to see me defeated because of my brother" as "Polanco, Leal," the consultant said.
Chacon, who had been the school board's top vote-getter, barely survived the challenge, finishing in third place with only three seats up for grabs.
Leal also wrote a petition to recall Argumedo.
He wrote it at the request of Edgar S. Miles, a Commerce activist who had reasons of his own to target Argumedo, according to both Miles and Leal.
Faced with the possibility of being recalled, Argumedo suddenly reversed himself on the question of Leal as city attorney and voted to rehire him.
Someone who knows Argumedo, who was interviewed on condition that his name not be published, said the councilman explained to him that the change of position was made under duress. "They told me, if we didn't take them back, they'd put $ 30,000 into the recall against me," the source quoted Argumedo as having said.
Leal and Beltran deny having made such a threat.
Leal suggested that Argumedo voted to rehire him for another reason. Leal said that the law firm that replaced his was costing more. The increased legal fees had become a big issue in the recall.
Who was behind the recall remains something of an official mystery.
Donors to the effort were not enumerated in a campaign report. Miles said that was because no contributor gave more than $ 100 and therefore names did not have to be disclosed under state law.
But not everyone believed that the recall was exclusively the grass-roots effort it seemed to be.
Bill Orozco, a political operative and one-time aide to former state Senate majority leader David Roberti, said he believed one of Roberti's successors, Polanco, was behind it.
He said he visited Polanco to try to persuade him to call off the recall, which had also targeted an Argumedo council ally.
"I told Polanco, 'Can we stop that recall taking place in Commerce?' " Orozco said. "And he said, 'No, I'm going to see that the two candidates are recalled.' He said, 'I didn't like what they did to people who are loyal to me , so I'm going to punish them and take them out of office.' "
The two candidates were indeed recalled, although Argumedo later won reelection.
Polanco said that his alleged conversation with Orozco never took place. "People are going to say things and do things and create things based on sour grapes, and I think I get credited at times for things that I have very little to do with," the senator said. In fact, he said: "I had nothing to do with that recall."
Lynwood
If Bell Gardens was ground zero in Latino takeovers of city councils from whites, Lynwood was ground zero in Latino takeovers from blacks.
A three-member Latino council slate wrested control of the city from black politicians in 1997, with the aide of an independent expenditure campaign financed by an out-of-town billboard company looking for business opportunities and managed by the political consultant-husband of state Sen. Escutia.
After the slate won, Leal sought the city attorney's job and said he asked Polanco to lobby on his behalf. Polanco acknowledges providing a reference.
Leal got the job but lasted--as did slate unity--less than a year.
Slate member Ricardo Sanchez had a series of disagreements with his fellow Latinos on the council, who subsequently launched a recall campaign against him. Sanchez then allied himself with two black council members, forming a new majority which named him mayor and fired Leal. Sanchez blamed the lawyer--Leal says inaccurately--for playing a role in the recall attempt.
Leal said he once again turned to Polanco for help.
Polanco paid Sanchez a visit.
There are two very different accounts of what happened next.
Sanchez and a friend whose account was read into the record at a public meeting said that the senator told Sanchez that the recall attempt could be stopped, if he came back into the fold and voted to rehire Leal and/or a Latino city manager who had also gotten the ax.
"He was saying, 'We should work things out. The recall could die,' " Sanchez said.
Leal and Polanco deny that Polanco made that statement. Polanco said he had nothing to do with the recall attempt in Lynwood. He said he spoke generally, as a peacemaker. "I sit down and I tell them . . . 'Look, you guys are just getting started. You've got to learn to work together.' "
Leal says he regards what happened in Lynwood as "a tragic story, where a Latino community has been empowered but has been unable to overcome differences for a greater good."
He portrays himself as something of an idealist, trying to help "well-intentioned, humble individuals who want to improve these cities," but don't have the education or experience to do so.
Sanchez is not buying this. He survived the recall attempt when a petition alleging numerous improprieties on his part was invalidated for lack of enough valid signatures. But he remains embittered. "I have a lot of hate," he said. "They made me look like the worst guy in the whole world."
Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1999
Caught In A Battle For Survial;
Special Report -- Bell Gardens' Most Prominent Politician Helped Wrest Control Of The City From Whites And Established Latino Power. But Former Allies Are Now Denouncing Her...
Hector Tobar, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1998
In Bell Gardens, home to 44,000 people, one woman dominates the community's political life. To some, she is a heroine, a leader in the movement for Latino power. To others, she is a bully and a demagogue who is single-handedly destroying city government.
Her name is Maria S. Chacon. She is a Mexican immigrant from Chihuahua who became an American citizen just a few years ago.
Nearly everyone agrees that Chacon helped orchestrate the 1991 revolution that swept out the City Council's old guard. Now, after years filled with embarrassingly wacky public meetings and near-riots at City Hall, many of Chacon's old allies have had enough.
"Councilwoman Chacon is a cancer on this city!" resident Gabriel Velasco said during the Aug. 24 council meeting, a typically raucous gathering punctuated by hissing, cheers and bilingual catcalls. That meeting, like others before, ended with police escorting Mayor David Torres and his council allies out a side exit lest they be physically attacked by the Chacon supporters at the front door.
A similar kind of disorder has spread throughout the Bell Gardens body politic since the revolution, with persistent allegations of corruption, nepotism and general incompetence at City Hall. Bell Gardens has become the laughingstock of suburban Los Angeles County government, prompting more than a few residents to wonder what has gone wrong.
"I don't like this for my city," Betty Avila told the council that August night, echoing the sentiments of many. "This is a farce."
Why is Bell Gardens mired in conflict when neighboring, once largely white cities like South Gate have made a relatively smooth transition to Latino power?
A look at the historical record shows that the self-righteousness of the leaders who took over Bell Gardens' city government in the early 1990s was corrupted by an undercurrent of self-interest.
Some of the leaders were landlords with years of gripes against City Hall. Their movement launched a vengeful, wholesale housecleaning of Bell Gardens' bureaucracy, dooming the city to years of political chaos.
All five members of the current City Council cut their political teeth in the movement Chacon helped start. In fact, no Latino has ever been elected to the Bell Gardens City Council without Chacon's support, including the three members who are today her declared enemies.
"It's been devastating and painful," says Chacon, "for me to see that people you think you know, people you supported, can turn their backs on you so quickly."
Few of her former allies raised any protest when Police Chief Fredrick Freeman took the extraordinary step of walking into Chacon's City Hall office Aug. 12 and taking her into custody for allegedly inciting a disturbance during a council meeting two nights earlier.
"The news of her arrest pleased many people," said former Mayor Frank Duran, who was elected to the council in 1992 with Chacon running his campaign. "She deserves to be arrested and dragged out."
Old Council Accused of Anti-Latino Efforts
Once, nearly every Latino in Bell Gardens was united in a cause.
In 1990, Latinos made up 87% of the population in the self-proclaimed "Hub of Progress." Yet no Latino had ever been elected to the council.
The revolution that would change that started at the nearby Huntington Park courthouse, where Bell Gardens' Municipal Court cases are heard. It was there that a number of landlords, including Maria Chacon, felt that they were being hounded by the city to improve their properties.
Chacon would help organize those property owners into the core of a movement.
"Division 5 in the courthouse was full of property owners who had a dream just like everyone else," Chacon recalled. "They came to this country to buy a piece of land, only to be persecuted by city officials . Each one of us thought they were alone."
Bell Gardens officials had charged Chacon with multiple code violations, court records show, after she ignored an order to improve conditions at her property on Gallant Street for five months. She pleaded guilty to one violation and was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.
"She was abusing her tenants," said former Bell Gardens building inspector Carlos Levario, who said he worked on the case. "They were living in substandard conditions."
Another landlord who would become a leader in the movement, George T. Deitch, was cited for vermin infestations at one of his apartment complexes after his election to the council.
Housing in Bell Gardens had deteriorated, in part, because of overcrowding in the city. During the 1980s, Latino immigration fueled a 24% population increase. In 1991 the council--then made up of five whites--approved a plan to lower density by reducing the number of apartment units. The plan to rezone 3,000 properties would also have effectively limited construction of new apartments.
Opposition to the rezoning plan united the landlords and their Latino tenants, allowing the landlords to embrace the rhetoric of ethnic politics. If there were fewer apartments, the argument went, there would be fewer Latinos.
Chacon organized a drive to recall the white council members. It was soon known as the No Rezoning Committee. She charged the council with trying to empty Bell Gardens of Latinos.
"The sleeping giant has awakened," Chacon told The Times in December 1991. "The council has lost touch with the city. They are arrogant. . . . They are racist."
Four white council members were ousted. Four new council members were elected--with Chacon, not yet a U.S. citizen and thus unable to run, acting as their campaign manager. In 1994, Chacon won a council seat and eventually became mayor.
Once in power, the No Rezoners purged not only top-level city administrators, but also code inspectors and other lower officials, creating what detractors describe as a climate of intimidation that continues to define politics in the city.
The new council's alleged abuses of power are outlined in a series of lawsuits filed by former employees.
Former building inspector Levario alleged that Chacon and fellow council members Ramiro Morales, Rodolfo Garcia and George Deitch demoted him because he "reported the property of council members as needing rehabilitation." Bell Gardens paid Levario an undisclosed amount to settle the lawsuit.
Samuel Macias, a former public works supervisor, claimed in another lawsuit that council members targeted him for retaliation when he refused to hire one of their supporters for a city job.
Macias' suit also detailed an encounter with Chacon at City Hall, just after a group of Bell Gardens residents had filed a recall petition against her. Chacon wanted to know where Macias stood on the recall, "strongly implying that if he did not politically support her, his job would be in jeopardy," the suit states.
Macias was later laid off--for budgetary reasons, according to the city. Bell Gardens eventually paid more than $ 200,000 to settle his lawsuit.
Chacon denied Macias' allegations.
"What would I need his help for?" she asked dismissively.
Chacon, who will stand for reelection next year, sees herself as an ever-vigilant bulwark against corruption, a woman dismayed to have launched so many political careers only to be betrayed by her lesser, selfish allies. "It feels good to empower people. I believe that we have to do it," she says.
Decades of Experience Destroyed, Critics Say
In all, Bell Gardens has agreed to pay about $ 2.5 million to at least 10 former employees who claim they were unfairly dismissed or demoted after the No Rezoners came to power, city officials say. Among the former officials receiving settlements are two city managers, a city clerk, a police chief, a personnel director and a recreation director.
The dismissals of about 20 city workers--and the recall of all but one council member--effectively wiped out decades of government experience, critics say. Bell Gardens' new leaders were rookies without anyone they trusted to guide them.
Soon they found themselves the subject of much unwanted publicity.
Councilman Garcia came under fire for taking personal loans from city bureaucrats. Mayor Josefina Macias threw a chair at Councilman Duran during a closed session. And the only historic landmark in the city fell into disrepair when its longtime caretaker was fired and replaced by a councilman's nephew.
Later, Chacon's sister, Rosa Cobos, received city-allocated funding for a computer education center she operates. Many more council relatives were appointed to city commissions.
"They think it's the way it is in Mexico, that when you get in power, you bring in your friends," said one high-ranking Latino official active in Democratic Party politics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They got rid of people who were not going to be 'yes' people. In doing that, they lost a lot of good administrators."
'We Realized We Were Being Used as Puppets'
Angered by the firings and by cuts in youth programs, former Councilwoman Rosa Hernandez helped lead a drive to recall Chacon and Morales. Even members of the Bell Gardens Police Department joined the effort, some marching in support of the recall outside City Hall.
Chacon responded by organizing boisterous demonstrations at the council meeting.
Carlos Daniel Lopez, once the president of a Bell Gardens soccer league, said Chacon asked him to attend council meetings with dozens of his young players.
"We would go to the meetings and shout, 'Chacon! Chacon!' " Lopez said. The soccer players felt beholden to Chacon because she had persuaded the council to pay for their uniforms, Lopez said. But he said he soon found himself at protests that had little to do with his soccer league--including some at the Montebello Unified School District, which serves Bell Gardens children.
"We realized we were being used as puppets," Lopez said. "It was pure manipulation."
Finally, Lopez told Chacon he had had enough. Chacon, he says, reminded him about the free uniforms and the players' debt to her. At the next council meeting, Lopez denounced Chacon and dumped dozens of soccer uniforms in front of the dais, an act of public humiliation for which, he says, Chacon never forgave him.
A federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Lopez outlines his version of what happened next. With their children watching, Lopez and his wife were arrested and hauled off to jail for allegedly embezzling $ 700. Lopez's suit alleges that Chacon, then the mayor, had used her power to order the police investigation. A judge later dismissed the embezzlement charges.
"She is an arrogant and despotic woman," Lopez says of Chacon.
Chacon calls Lopez a malagradecido, or ingrate. Of his charges, she says, "That is not true. He's going to have to go to court to prove that."
In 1997, three new council members--David Torres, Joaquin Penilla and Salvador Rios--were elected to the council, supported by Chacon under the banner of the No Rezoning Committee. (The three defeated incumbents were themselves Chacon allies who had broken with her.)
But Torres said Chacon also turned against him and the other new council members soon after they were sworn in, when the council met to decide which of their members would take the largely ceremonial position of mayor.
"I was elected and Chacon got angry," Torres said. "She started to threaten me."
Penilla said that after he joined the council, Chacon "told me, 'I put you in here. You'll do what I say or get out.' "
Chacon and council ally Morales have fired back with allegations of petty corruption.
Councilman Rios, they say, took $ 1,650 in city funds to help pay for his honeymoon trip to San Diego. Rios did not return calls seeking comment. City Manager Nabar Martinez said Rios has returned the money to the city.
Said Chacon: "I stand up against corruption, so I am in the way of a lot of people who do bad things."
Chants of 'Recall!' Are All Too Familiar
Chacon and Morales have denounced the mayor and the council majority for allegedly planning to restrict churches in residential neighborhoods and for raising the council's remuneration from a $ 350 monthly travel allowance to $ 31,000 a year in salary and stipends.
The enmity between the former allies reached a climax at the Aug. 10 council meeting.
Cobos, Chacon's sister, rose to speak during the public comment part of the meeting, then refused to cede the microphone. Mayor Torres abruptly adjourned the meeting. Police cleared the council chambers.
Although the details of what happened next are in dispute, both sides agree that there was a confrontation between Chacon and her husband, Jesse, on one hand and Police Chief Freeman on the other.
Two days later, Chacon and her husband were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace and obstructing a police officer. The charges are pending.
The heated debate resumed at the next council meeting, which began with the council majority excluding Chacon and Morales from a closed session--a move that prompted Morales to compare Mayor Torres to the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. Once the public session got underway, Chacon and Torres engaged in an hourlong verbal wrestling match.
"Mrs. Chacon, you're out of order," Torres repeated again and again.
"Mayor Torres, you're not my father!" Chacon snapped back.
The meeting ended with Chacon's supporters in the audience--which included about two dozen young people from a neighborhood youth center--yelling a chant that has become all too familiar in Bell Gardens.
"Recall! Recall! Recall!"
True to their word, a few days later Chacon and her supporters filed papers to recall the council majority they had put in office.
South Gate City Attorney's Aides Donated To Campaigns
By Sharon Hormell, Staff writer
When he applied for the job of city attorney in 1993, Arnold Alvarez-Glasman promised to avoid involvement in South Gate politics.
But last year, three of his paralegals and his secretary donated $5,750 to the campaign committees of Mayor Albert Robles and Councilman Bill Martinez.
Because the campaign finance reports that Robles and Martinez filed with local and state governments did not accurately list the donors' occupations and their employers' name, as state law requires, it is not apparent from the public documents that the donors worked in Alvarez-Glasman's private Montebello law office.
Robles, whose losing 1994 campaign for the state Board of Equalization received $4,000 from the workers, and Martinez, whose City Council campaign received $1,750, could not be reached for comment despite repeated calls requesting interviews. There is no indication that Alvarez-Glasman got anything from the council in return for the contributions his workers sent.
Alvarez-Glasman's mid-1993 resume seeking the South Gate post said, ''Mr. Glasman knows that a good city attorney will be sensitive to the pressures of the elected officials, yet will avoid playing politics or counting votes''
Asked if his office workers' donations to Robles and Martinez might make it appear that he was politically favoring the pair, Alvarez-Glasman likened the contributions to those that might be made by a city employees' union.
''There is no inappropriate activity whatsoever. Campaign contributions are everyone's First Amendment right,'' he said.
According to campaign reports, Alvarez-Glasman himself did not donate to any South Gate council members last year. He said he made a donation in his own name of more than $100 to Robles' council campaign committee in March.
In January, the council gave Alvarez-Glasman a 25 percent raise, increasing his hourly fee from $100 to $125 per hour to handle city and redevelopment issues.
At that rate, he still earns less than the average rate of $145 per hour charged by his predecessor, William Rudell at the firm of Richards, Watson and Gershon. Depending on the complexity of the issue and the attorney assigned, South Gate was paying Rudell's firm $105 to $250 per hour. The council changed city attorneys in 1993 as an economizing move, several council members said.
State law says candidates who receive $100 or more from a donor must truthfully disclose the donor's full name and address, occupation and employer. Candidates and their treasurers sign the reports, swearing under penalty of perjury that they have used all responsible diligence in preparing the forms, said Fair Political Practices Commission spokeswoman Jeannette Turvill.
Failing to disclose the real occupations and employers of donors is an illegal practice informally known as campaign money laundering. The Fair Political Practices Commission can levy fines of $2,000 per offense against the donor and recipient, or turn cases over to the District Attorney's Office for criminal prosecution.
The FPPC does not confirm, discuss or deny ongoing investigations, so Turvill would not say if the agency is researching South Gate council campaigns or Robles' failed 1994 state Board of Equalization campaign.
However, South Gate City Clerk Nina Banuelos said an investigator from the FPPC had requested Robles' council cam paign finance records dating back to 1991 as part of an audit of all candidates in the Board of Equalization race.
''People have the right to know that the companies and their employees are supporting a particular candidate,'' Turvill said. ''If the disclosure (report) is not accurate, that can be a deliberate attempt to defraud the voters.''
On the required forms, Alvarez-Glasman's three paralegals were listed as working at three different paralegal or secretarial services bearing their last names and their home addresses in Chino, Chino Hills and Arcadia, although none holds an official county permit to do business as those firms.
The secretary, who lives in Monterey Park, was identified as working at Alvarez-Glasman's firm, but her occupation was misidentified as an attorney on the campaign disclosure form.
Two of the paralegals could not be reached for comment despite repeated calls to their homes and office. The secretary and the third paralegal said in separate interviews that they made the donations voluntarily and were not reimbursed, but each declined to discuss the circumstances or reasons for writing the checks.
Alvarez-Glasman said he knew of the donations by his workers, ''probably, in passing, they may have mentioned it,'' but stressed, ''I had nothing to do with that, and it is up to you to decide if it is a coincidence.''
Because he is also a Montebello City Council member, his office often receives mailed requests to donate to political campaigns, and it is up to each individual to decide whether and how much to give, he said. Those who donate receive no benefit and incur no penalty if they don't give, he said.
No employee is reimbursed for a political donation, he said, declining to say how much he pays his secretary and paralegals.
According to campaign finance reports, none of his office staff has donated to any sitting council members of Montebello, where Alvarez-Glasman has held office since 1985, or Pomona, the other community he represents as city attorney.
Long Beach Press-Telegram, June 20, 1995
Political Allies at Issue in Bid to Unseat Soto; Campaign: The Councilwoman Says Her Opponents Want to Return Control to the Old Boy Network. Challengers Question Soto's Ties to Ousted Councilman C. L. (Clay) Bryant
By Mike Ward, Times Staff Writer
POMONA -- In the midst of her first reelection campaign, Councilwoman Nell Soto says she's still a valiant enemy of the Old Boy Network.
Her opponents in the March 5 election, however, seem more concerned about her friends, who they say include special interest contributors and recalled Councilman C. L. (Clay) Bryant.
Neither the Old Boy Network nor Bryant is on the ballot, of course, but they have emerged as the prime campaign targets.
Soto, 64, said her opponents are bent on returning Pomona to the control of the people who nearly ruined it, the group she has dubbed the Old Boy Network.
"The people who are supporting my opponents are those people who have been kicked out of City Hall, the old leeches, the old hangers-on, the people who have gotten rich off Pomona taxpayers," she said.
Meanwhile, Robert Jackson, a 33-year-old teacher who has become the most aggressive campaigner among her three opponents, said the removal of Soto from office is the logical follow-up to the recall of Bryant, her political ally on the council who was ousted in June.
"She was and is the other side of the Clay Bryant coin," Jackson said. "We must rid ourselves, as we did of Clay Bryant, of those responsible for the turmoil this city has faced."
Both Jackson and another candidate, Timothy Smith, a 41-year-old air-conditioning technician, have accused Soto of catering to special interests. Smith said Soto has given the city "the worst representation in recent history" and "has been a constant source of embarrassment."
Jackson and Smith are appealing to the same block of voters: those who advocated Bryant's recall. Bryant was targeted in part for his role in effecting wholesale change at City Hall, including the firing of a city administrator and police chief and the ouster of other key officials.
The fourth candidate in the race, Reyes Rachel Madrigal, a 57-year-old associate professor at Mt. San Antonio College, is trying to remain above the fray. She has avoided criticizing Soto directly, saying only that "the image of Pomona has suffered as a result of the infighting that has occurred."
Madrigal and Soto are Latinas in a district whose population of about 22,000 is estimated at 43% Latino.
Soto won election to the council four years ago and in 1989 forged a "new majority" with Bryant and Councilman Tomas Ursua that remolded city government before the coalition fell apart, first with a split between Ursua and Bryant, and then with Bryant's recall.
Soto said the political turmoil has produced positive changes, including a new city staff that is more responsive to citizens. "Sure, there's been a lot of bickering and you know why?" she said. "Because change is hard to come by. . . . Change is hard to accept by those who have been in power for the last 30, 40 or 50 years."
Soto was born in Pomona and counts her great-grandson as the ninth generation of her family to live in the city. As she was growing up, she said, Pomona was a segregated town, with Latinos barred from the municipal pool except on days set aside for them, exiled to a special section at movie theaters and excluded from living north of Holt Avenue.
Discrimination and growing up poor shaped her politics and her attitude toward the Pomona establishment. Active in the Democratic Party most of her life, she helped her husband, Phil, win election to the state Assembly in the 1960s, and she ran campaigns for other politicians before winning a seat herself on the Pomona City Council in 1987.
She knows many city officials throughout the region because of her job as local government and community affairs representative for the Southern California Rapid Transit District. Through her contacts in city government, she recruited the current Pomona city administrator, Julio Fuentes, and other newcomers who have filled key positions in the city.
Soto lists among her achievements the formation of a community group to fight gangs, the initiation of a volunteer mounted patrol and a mobile substation for the Police Department, and the installation of new playground equipment in neighborhood parks in her district.
Both Jackson and Smith have accused her of siding with special interests, such as billboard companies and gambling club promoters, and have criticized her vote for a motel project on Holt Avenue.
Jackson has strongly criticized Soto for accepting nearly $3,000 in campaign contributions from the billboard industry and $1,000 each from City Atty. Arnold Glasman and Miller & Schroeder, a bond consulting firm employed by the city.
Jackson said the donations represent a conflict of interest because Soto voted to hire Glasman and the bond firm and has been backing a proposal that would allow billboard companies "to keep their dilapidated eyesores in our city."
Soto said there is no conflict of interest because she promises nothing in return for contributions. For example, she said, she has never voted to increase the number of billboards but favors allowing sign companies to replace some aging billboards with new ones on the outskirts of Pomona.
Both Jackson and Smith have assailed Soto for voting last year to put a measure on the ballot to legalize card clubs. The council withdrew the measure after a barrage of protests from residents.
Soto said her opponents have wrongly accused her of favoring casino gambling. Soto said she voted to put the measure on the ballot only because she believes residents have the right to make that decision. She said revenue from card clubs, such as those in the City of Commerce and Gardena, could produce enough money to enable Pomona to cut or eliminate its unpopular and relatively high tax on utility bills.
Smith and Jackson said they strongly oppose card clubs in Pomona.
Jackson, a veteran of the Marine Corps, holds a teaching credential from Cal State Dominguez Hills and has lived in the city for 12 years. He teaches at a Pomona junior high school.
Smith, who has lived in Pomona 19 years, said he offers voters independence without ties to any group. "I think we're ready in Pomona for a new politics," he said.
Madrigal, who has lived in Pomona more than 30 years, teaches Spanish at Mt. San Antonio College. Her varied background includes work on farms and factories and as a teacher and school administrator. She holds a doctorate in education from Claremont Graduate School.
She said the current council has been quarrelsome and indecisive. She said she can make difficult decisions and would work diligently to bring harmony to the council.
The 1st Council District takes in the central portion of the city west of Garey Avenue and south of the San Bernardino Freeway. The March 5 election will be the first in Pomona in which voters choose council members by district. If no candidate receives a majority of the votes, the top two finishers will meet in a runoff April 16.
