Grand Jury Indicts Vista Official in Voucher Case

The San Diego County Grand Jury on Tuesday indicted Vista Councilman Ed Neal on three felony counts of falsifying city travel vouchers in connection with a trip he took to Washington with his girlfriend in June.

District attorney spokesman Steve Casey said that Neal, a councilman since 1982, was charged with grand theft, unlawful appropriation of public funds and submitting a fraudulent claim. If convicted of the charges, the councilman could be disqualified from public office and face a maximum of four years in state prison, Casey said.

Neal is to be arraigned in San Diego Superior Court on Friday.

The three-count indictment follows a district attorney’s investigation into allegations that Neal submitted a travel voucher that included a claim for his girlfriend’s airline ticket to the nation’s capital, where Neal attended a luncheon hosted by President Reagan for former Democrats who have switched to the Republican Party.

Initially, Neal denied that Judy Anderson’s ticket was included in the $900 credit card receipt he provided the city for reimbursement for an airline ticket. But last week, the councilman’s attorney, Richard Muir, said that the city paid for both tickets and that there was a “rational explanation” for it.

The attorney said that Neal, who eventually repaid the city for all his expenses after a public outcry over the trip, made a mistake about the cost of the airline tickets. Neal later said that a travel agent had told him that two, round-trip coach tickets to Washington cost $1,800, so he submitted a claim for $900 to cover his flight.

Despite the indictment, the sandy-haired Neal appeared as usual at Tuesday night’s council meeting. Dressed in his standard blue suit and tie, Neal sat stiffly, stared straight ahead and spoke little during the council proceedings.

During a break, Neal defended his actions, saying he has “done nothing wrong.” The councilman added that, while he is “disappointed” by the indictment, he is not surprised.

“I knew this would happen a week ago,” Neal said. “This is this new grand jury’s first case and they haven’t heard the whole story yet.”

He declined to elaborate, on the advice of his attorney, but vowed that the truth would come out. When asked whether he would be cleared in court, Neal said, “Who knows?”

He did, however, apologize to the citizens of Vista for “what they are going through because of my problems.”

Neal’s council colleagues expressed mixed reaction to news of the indictment. Fighting back tears, Councilwoman Gloria McClellan described it as “the saddest day and the worst thing that has ever happened in the City of Vista” and called on Neal to resign.

“The sooner he just goes away the better off we’ll all be,” McClellan said. “How can people have confidence in us when these kinds of things are happening? When one person’s integrity isn’t what it should be, it causes the whole council to come under suspicion.”

But Mayor Mike Flick, a frequent ally of Neal’s on council issues, said that the councilman is “innocent until proven guilty.”

“This is damaging for our community, and certainly for Mr. Neal, but the due process of law must take place,” Flick said. “Until we have a verdict, we’ll have to deal with it and press forward with programs that are under way.”

Council members Nancy Wade and Lloyd von Haden agreed. But Von Haden, who sounded the initial alarm over city funding of the trip, said that he hopes that council travel expenses will “come under closer scrutiny from now on.”

Patsy Filo, a Vista resident who led pickets and other forms of protest over Neal’s use of city money for the trip, said the indictment has “thrown a terrible shadow” over Vista.

“He’s innocent until proven guilty, but the man definitely has no political future in Vista,” Filo said. “This whole thing has really hurt the people of the city and it will take a while for us to get over this.”

Allan Preckel, chief of the district attorney’s special operations division and prosecutor on the case, was unavailable for comment.

Controversy over the June 9 trip erupted when Von Haden protested Neal’s request for city funding for his own travel expenses, which totaled $1,136. Von Haden argued that the luncheon was a personal and politically partisan activity of no benefit to the city.

Neal, however, maintained that he took the trip as a city official and “conducted city business” while in Washington, making contacts and attempting to line up private financing for a new city hall.

But it soon became evident that the public objected to the city-funded trip, so Neal reimbursed the city. The district attorney’s investigation, however, was already under way.

Seven people--including Neal --testified before the grand jury.