Lobbyist Didn’t Disclose Ties to Firm, Probe Finds

One of San Bernardino County’s Sacramento lobbyists encouraged county officials to buy a jail in Adelanto without disclosing that he worked for the jail’s owner, a county investigation has found. But it also “found nothing to indicate criminal behavior on anyone’s part,” said a statement released by the county Thursday.

The lobbyist, former Assemblyman Brett Granlund, told two top county officials in 2004 that the private jail was a “quality facility” that could help ease crowding in the county’s chronically packed jails, according to the statement.

In January, county supervisors agreed to buy the jail for $31 million.

At the time he was recommending the purchase, Granlund, a Republican who had represented Yucaipa while an assemblyman, was working for the jail’s owner, Terry Moreland, and his companies, according to the four-page statement. Granlund works for the firm Platinum Advisors LLC.

Granlund should have disclosed his relationship with Moreland to county officials in writing, concluded Leonard Gumport, a Los Angeles attorney the county hired to investigate the jail purchase and other matters. But Gumport found that Granlund did not unduly influence County Administrative Officer Mark Uffer, Sheriff Gary Penrod or other staffers responsible for researching the jail purchase, and that the lobbyist did not receive a commission from the sale.

“Did he have any influence over the negotiations? Absolutely not,” said Uffer, who said his contact with the lobbyist before the Board of Supervisors approved the purchase was limited to a phone call.

“The only disturbing fact ... is the perception issue, that Brett represented two sides,” Uffer said.

Granlund said that, within the last month, Platinum had instituted a policy that potential conflicts of interest must be disclosed to clients in writing. Supervisors approved a three-month extension to the firm’s lobbying contract Dec. 13.

Calls to the Sheriff’s Department were not returned.

The inquiry into the jail purchase began this summer amid allegations that Supervisor Dennis Hansberger’s top aide, Jim Foster, had violated ethics rules by buying surplus county land by using Granlund as an intermediary. It gradually widened to include all transactions involving surplus county land during the last five years and the jail purchase.

The investigation cast another shadow on a county besieged by a corruption scandal in the mid-1990s that implicated two former top county administrators, Supervisor Gerald Eaves and a host of other politicians and businessmen in bribery and kickback schemes.

Hansberger criticized the county’s response to Granlund’s role in the jail purchase as “not even a slap on the wrist,” saying it should sever its ties with the former assemblyman. “Mr. Granlund had divided loyalties, and he knew it,” the supervisor said.

Board Chairman Bill Postmus, whose district includes Adelanto, issued a three-sentence statement Thursday, saying he had reviewed the report and considered the matter closed.

Granlund said he welcomed the report’s broad conclusions, but took issue with details. He said the county had been told about his work for Moreland and that his involvement with the jail purchase was innocuous.

“The people negotiating the jail, I don’t know them, they don’t know me.... They wouldn’t know me if they found me in their oatmeal,” he said.

Officials with Moreland’s companies did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

County officials would release only a summary of Gumport’s findings, saying they involve a personnel matter and that their release would violate the privacy of employees interviewed and could potentially be used for lawsuits.

The county has rejected a public records request from The Times asking for the entire report, which totals more than 100 pages.

Thursday’s statement “doesn’t begin to say all the things that report has to say,” Hansberger said. “To me, it’s not entirely complete.”

County officials asked Gumport, who represented the county in its lawsuit against figures in the corruption scandal, to review the land deal involving Foster after a box of related documents landed anonymously on Uffer’s desk this summer.

At issue was whether Foster bought four-tenths of an acre of county land through an intermediary, an act prohibited for San Bernardino County officials since 2001.

The district attorney’s office also launched an investigation, but has not filed charges.

Gumport’s probe highlighted the divisions among top county officials, with Uffer and Supervisor Paul Biane calling for Foster to step down and Hansberger, his boss, supporting him.

Foster resigned in September after Gumport submitted his initial findings to the board, but maintains that he and Granlund were not partners in the land deal.

The county has also refused to release that report, saying the Foster investigation was a personnel matter.

The county statement Thursday said two other county employees had bought surplus land in the last five years, but both were lower-level employees to whom the county policy did not apply.

Gumport has finished his investigation, county officials said.