Council - Will Rogers
PUBLIC RECORDS
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CAMPAIGN FINANCE
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Criminal Case: People vs Will Rogers – Los Angeles Superior Court – Case number unavailable
Filed: April 4, 1980
Case Type: Criminal
Status: Guilty/Convicted
Summary: Rogers, who was 23-years-old at the time, pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of possession of marijuana. He also admitted to the theft of some clothes from the Broadway department store, where he worked as a loss-prevention officer, though the charges of burglary and theft were dropped. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail, serving about half that time. He was released from probation in July 1982. Rogers gives a lengthy description of what happened on his website.
Candidate Response:
There is simply no defense for this episode that took place almost exactly 35 years ago, well before the 10 year “background check” to which all other candidates are subject. It’s known and disclosed here because I have repeatedly publicly disclosed it and taken responsibility for my actions. I’ve done this in published reports, in conversations with office holders, and twice even from public stages as part of one-man shows produced as fundraisers for a local charity. All that is without noting my employers were informed from the start, and that, technically and officially, the charges against me were reduced and dismissed more than two decades ago, the records theoretically expunged. Indeed, the fullest accounting to date was published in August on my own campaign web site, and it remains there today at www.Rogers4Council.com.
For any noting that occasionally over the years I’ve written at length about the records of some candidates and office holders, there has always been a distinction between those who, even in the face of ample records and evidence of arrest, deny any such event ever took place, and those who have themselves brought up their records in the distant past. To cite two examples, one candidate prosecuted for a then-recent, relatively minor charge in a well-documented case initially responded to a query by denying any knowledge of the case, and claimed to be the victim of political enemies. That became a prominent report. In another election a short time later, a candidate with a drunk driving arrest many years earlier was the first to publicly report the incident, and even offered documentation. That arrest record barely left a ripple.
I’ve been consistent in applying this standard, and hold myself to the same.
Public Records Lawsuit: Will Rogers vs. City of Burbank et al. – Los Angeles Superior Court – BC058589
2nd District Court of Appeal – B073586
Filed: June 26, 1992
Case Type: State civil
Status: Judgment for Defendants
Summary: As part of an investigation into a taxpayer-funded trip to Las Vegas, Rogers requested expense reports from City Council members and other high-ranking city employees. City officials denied the records existed, and Rogers filed suit. Rogers has an account of this on his campaign website.
After the suit was filed, the city provided Rogers a portion of the documents requested. However, one type– hotel and telephone bills –had the telephone numbers the officials called or received redacted. Rogers claimed the numbers should have been included. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge disagreed, however.
Rogers appealed the case, but he was ultimately unsuccessful. An effort by city attorneys to have the case deemed frivolous – and to force Rogers to pay its legal expenses for the case – was denied.
Candidate Response:
I’m proud to be associated with this case, and believe it stands as an example of an unyielding commitment to public access and standing up for what is right, even at the risk of great personal cost.
I personally filed suit to see bills incurred by council members and paid for by taxpayers. Days later the City released some of those records, this after insisting for months those records did not exist. But I eventually lost the rest of the case thanks to a then-recent California Supreme Court decision that let the city keep cell phone records secret, even as taxpayers paid for official phones, some of which billed as much as $400 per month. But abuses of the secrecy privilege, including the discovery of an official using my case to hide his support for a child molester - a molester also involved in Burbank council election campaign, led the state legislature to change the law, opening many of those records to the public.
The city tried to have my case declared “frivolous,” compelling me to pay the city’s legal costs. That motion was rejected by the court, which noted the records that were released after I filed suit, and the reasonableness of the legal question about releasing phone records.
As a direct result of my stories and this case, Burbank City Council members began identifying and paying for personal use of their city-paid phones. In addition, the Council established policies for travel and other expenses incurred by elected officials, requiring conventional, reliable documentation, and automatically making the records public. Spousal travel and other excesses were also prohibited.
I’m hopeful voters will notice that, among then-council members still active in Burbank who once incurred these excessive charges and battled in court to keep them secret, they are unanimous in who they are supporting in this election, and it’s not me. Rather, they’ve presumably found someone whose views as to what council members are entitled to spend and keep secret are more closely aligned with their own.
Anticipating this case could prompt legitimate questions, since the instant my campaign web site first went live it has included a page providing more detail on Rogers vs. Burbank, and I suggest you review that page a www.Rogers4Council.com
Personal Injury Lawsuit: Susan Spanos vs Will Rogers et al. – Los Angeles Superior Court – BC058589
Filed: July 10, 1996
Case Type: State civil
Status: Settled
Summary: Spanos, at the time a member of the Burbank City Council, claimed that Rogers, who was at the time a columnist for the Burbank Leader, sexually assaulted her following a January 1996 council meeting. She reported the alleged incident in April of that year, and filed suit against Rogers and the Leader after the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office declined to press charges.
Prosecutors said at that Spanos had a history of threatening to ruin people who got in her way politically, and they were concerned about her honesty regarding the matter.
Specifically, they noted that Barbara Golonski, the wife of then-Mayor Dave Golonski, reported Spanos told her on April 6, 1996 that Rogers was “going to get his.” That date coincided with the publication of a Rogers column critical of Spanos, and the date she reported the supposed incident to the police.
“This, together with the negative character evidence regarding victim’s vindictiveness will undermine her credibility before a jury,” prosecutors stated.
Spanos agreed to dismiss the suit in July 1997, after Rogers agreed not to countersue. Rogers, according to his attorney, paid no money to Spanos.
In the midst of the suit, Spanos checked herself into an Anaheim medical facility, where she was treated for depression as well as cocaine and methamphetamine abuse. This belied a statement from her husband at the time, Ted Spanos, who said that his wife was being treated for depression after going off her prescribed medication.
Her medical records, revealed as part of the suit, state she went on a drug binge in January 1997 at a hotel, “and has been smoking and inhaling speed and cocaine, doing one to one and a half grams of cocaine every day. She states that she become extremely paranoid and unable to take care of self. Apparently, her husband found her and hence this admission.”
Spanos served a single term, from 1993 to 1997.
Candidate Response:
It never occurred to me this would be perceived by anyone as being a “legal issue” for me, inasmuch as two years of criminal and civil investigation demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that this was, is and shall remain a skeleton in the closet of the former city official who filed a false report.
As the claimed victim’s own husband told police, they made the accusation in hopes it would convince her council colleagues to name her mayor in a few weeks, a figurehead promotion that most of her colleagues were opposed to due to her bizarre behavior over the prior year.
Police and District Attorney investigators subsequently learned and reported the councilwoman had, prior to filing her accusations, announced to multiple individuals that she would punish me for critical columns I’d written about her, as well as punishing one of her council colleagues for failing to support her. She specifically said she’d accomplish this by leveling accusations that would destroy our careers, our families and our lives, all while garnering her “national coverage.” In declining to file charges, the District Attorney’s office also noted that, on the day she went to police, after reading a column critical of her published that same day, the accuser told a witness interviewed by police she was going to “get” Will Rogers.
Investigation stemming from the subsequent civil case uncovered the accuser’s decade-long struggles with drugs, including abuse of prescribed medications, as well as cocaine and amphetamines, personal involvement with certain local players that constituted a pattern of conflicted interests in the conduct of city business, and documenting countless examples of bizarre behavior and poor judgment taking place well before the multiple dates covering a period of several weeks provided at various times for the supposed attack that allegedly prompted the accuser’s dubious behavior.
The “settlement” ending the civil case consisted ONLY of the accuser withdrawing her fraudulent case with prejudice (the charges cannot be leveled again), and my agreement not to countersue. For anyone who has been victimized via two years of an entirely fraudulent criminal and civil case, one wherein the accuser has been repeatedly and thoroughly discredited and the subject of heavy fines for repeatedly disregarding court orders, my agreeing to have nothing more to do with attorneys, hearings or litigation expenses for the foreseeable future was not viewed as a concession, but as a gift to me.
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CAMPAIGN MAILERS/LITERATURE
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If any information here is incorrect, inaccurate or incomplete, please contact Editor Dan Evans at (818) 637-3234 or dan.evans@latimes.com.