QUESTIONS OF CONFLICT

Newly appointed state Fair Political Practices Commission member Michael B. Montgomery has been assigned to help revise the state’s conflict-of-interest regulations. Montgomery himself has faced a number of conflict-of-interest questions in a variety of local government jobs he has held over the last 20 years.

Irwindale Between 1976-80, Montgomery set up the city’s redevelopment agency and served as director. Later, after the agency was established, he became agency legal counsel. In 1977, Montgomery arranged for a friend, Frederick P. Lyte, to get a contract to bring industries to the city’s redevelopment site. Lyte earned $3.5 million in commissions in only two years. After hiring Lyte as Irwindale’s economic consultant, Montgomery said, he invested $100,000 in a Lyte oil well project that made him a $200,000 to $300,000 profit when he swapped those oil interests for land in La Canada in a transaction arranged by Lyte. In 1977, Montgomery recommended employing his friend, independent appraiser Lawrence D. Brown, to do appraisals for Irwindale’s redevelopment agency. The agency paid Brown more than $50,000 in fees over the next few years. While Brown was doing appraisals for the agency, public records show that he and Montgomery owned property together. In 1980, Montgomery got a personal loan from a bank that handled the Irwindale Redevelopment Agency account. Records show that he borrowed $100,000 on land the county assessor valued at $5,915 and which Montgomery’s appraiser friend, Lawrence Brown, said was “unuseable” because it had no street frontage. At the time of the loan, Montgomery was in the midst of working out a program to give the bank other business in Huntington Park. Montgomery resigned as consultant to the Irwindaleagency in 1980, after announcing that he could not approve a financial agreement closing out the agency’s biggest project: the relocation of a Miller brewery from Azusa to Irwindale. Montgomery said he could not approve the agreement because he had retained Miller’s attorney, Michael A. McAndrews, to give him legal advice on a private land deal. Irwindale City Manager Charles R. Martin said Montgomery’s disclosure about the conflict came “about a week” after Montgomery had disclosed that he had bought land with a developer while representing Irwindale in the city’s dealings with the developer.

Huntington Park 1979-present: Montgomery has been the city’s redevelopment agency attorney. While working for the city, Montgomery said he offered a potentially lucrative city contract for a poker club to a member of a law firm with which Montgomery himself was associated. Montgomery said he helped the attorney and his brother land the poker club contract by introducing them to a developer who held rights to the site where the club eventually was built. The developer, David Mink Maxwell, was a business associate of Montgomery’s.