Political Actions Raise Questions : Marital Rift Creates Special Situation for Wolfsheimer

When land-use attorney Louis M. Wolfsheimer appears before the San Diego City Council to tout projects for developers, one of the public officials sitting in judgment of his clients’ proposals will be his estranged wife, Abbe, who will take office Dec. 2.

But Abbe Wolfsheimer, who will hold the District 1 council seat, is more to the prominent attorney than just a spouse on bad terms. She is a business partner who owns and manages millions of dollars in real estate holdings with him that include commercial buildings in San Diego, valuable North County property and a senior-citizen apartment complex in Oregon, according to interviews, court filings and land records.

The Wolfsheimers own an 888-acre cattle ranch called Rancho Lilac in North County. They also own a 35-unit senior citizen apartment complex in Eugene, Ore., as well as restaurants and other commercial buildings in San Diego, El Cajon, Amarillo, Tex., and other locations. The property gives the couple rental income, which they say is split evenly.

And by virtue of their 27-year marriage, Abbe Wolfsheimer also owns a stake in Wolfsheimer Milch & Wagner, her husband’s law firm. The firm makes a portion of its money from lobbying public bodies such as the City Council on behalf of developers and others. If Abbe Wolfsheimer were to file for divorce, she could sue her husband for 17% of the partnership’s value.

In addition, Louis Wolfsheimer manages large apartment complexes in Tustin and Chula Vista owned by his mother-in-law.

State and local officials contend, however, that the web of financial connections will not be enough to prevent Councilwoman Wolfsheimer from voting on projects in which her lobbyist husband has an interest, unless the projects deal with the landholdings the Wolfsheimers’ own in the city.

Since they have been separated for three years and own their property through individual trusts, Abbe Wolfsheimer, 47, does not stand to gain financially if she votes in favor of her 53-year-old husband’s clients, say officials of the San Diego city attorney’s office and the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission.

Questions about the personal and financial connections between the Wolfsheimers have become more pointed since Abbe Wolfsheimer, an underdog, beat incumbent Bill Mitchell in the District 1 election Nov. 5.

During the same election, San Diego voters approved the Proposition A initiative, which seeks to retard urban growth by forcing developers in the city’s urban reserve area to submit their projects to a public vote for approval. The urban reserve--52,000 acres of land in the outer reaches of the city--is designated by the 1979 Growth Management Plan for development after 1995.

The proposition’s formulation was the direct result of a September, 1984, City Council decision to allow immediate development of a Christian university and industrial park in the city’s northern reaches. Louis Wolfsheimer and his partner, James Milch, were the attorneys who helped win that council decision. Representing Campus Crusade for Christ, they engineered a hard-fought lobbying effort that culminated in an emotional 5-4 vote to permit the development, called La Jolla Valley.

The firm could be in line to sue the city to overturn Proposition A. And Abbe Wolfsheimer, as a council member, would be responsible for implementing the measure and conferring with the city attorney on legal strategy to fight any possible legal challenge from her husband.

“I’m sure she’s not going to tell me what the strategy is, and I’m not going to tell her what the strategy is,” Louis Wolfsheimer said. “We have separate lives. I talk to her once a week or once every two weeks to see if there is any mail for me . . . .

“If anybody should be complaining, it should be me,” said Wolfsheimer, a former city planning commissioner and now a member of the San Diego Unified Port District Board. “Here I am. I have to appear before a woman that obviously I’m not on the greatest of terms with or else we would be living together.”

Asked this week how she thought it would look if she voted on a development project being shepherded by her husband, Abbe Wolfsheimer said:

“It doesn’t look like anything.”

While it may not be a legal conflict, the Wolfsheimers’ story is a paradigm for the kind of close relationships that may exist between key players in any city’s political arena, where the public’s business is transacted by a small circle of public officials, government employees, lobbyists and developers who know each other socially as well as professionally.

There is no way that laws guarding against possible conflicts or undue influence can be “stretched” to include these kind of relationships, which may have the potential of coloring official decisions, said Walter Zelman, executive director of California Common Cause.

“In a way, you can’t tell people they can’t have personal lives,” he said.

“There are probably all sorts of relationships people have--economic relationships, political relationships, friendship relationships--and we just can’t write restrictions against them in law,” Zelman said. “What are you going to do when a friend calls you up and says ‘You owe me one, see if you can get this bill introduced for me.’ Is it unethical? Maybe . . . There’s no way to legislate against that.”

In the case of the Wolfsheimers, Zelman said, “you’re left with a difficult situation, one that has gray areas, but one that they have to live with and the public has to live with. You can’t expect her to say ‘I can’t vote on anything because this guy is an ex-husband and we had some business dealings.’ ”

Abbe Salomon met Louis Wolfsheimer in the summer of 1958 at a party in Baltimore, where she was attending Goucher College. They were married in December, and moved to San Diego in 1962. He obtained his law degree from Cal Western University.

Wolfsheimer married into a family of substantial wealth and public service. His wife’s great-grandfather was appointed by President Chester A. Arthur as U.S. consul to Ghent, Belgium, he said.

Her father, Irving Salomon, became a noted local and national philanthropist. He made his fortune manufacturing metal furniture in Chicago, and then moved to San Diego County in 1945. In the late 1950s, he was named the country’s delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and before that played an important part in persuading Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president.

At home, Irving Salomon left a considerable mark on local organizations such as the Boy Scouts and the YMCA, according to his obituary in a local newspaper. Salomon bought playground equipment for Balboa Park and another play area in Southeast San Diego.

When he died in January, 1979, at age 81, he left an estate worth $10.1 million, probate records show.

Salomon’s estate included thousands of shares in U.S. Treasury bonds, and thousands of shares of blue-chip stocks such as General Motors Corp., Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.; Gulf Oil Corp.; Mobil Corp.; Standard Oil Co.; CBS Inc.; Dow Chemical; Texaco Inc.; IBM; Caterpillar Tractor Co., and Xerox Corp.

It also included land, apartments and commercial buildings in San Diego, North County, Huntington Beach, El Cajon, Rialto, Modesto, Pasadena and Tustin. His will forgave $153,000 in loans Salomon had made to his daughter and her husband to buy their La Jolla house and purchase cattle for Rancho Lilac.

More than $2 million in state and federal inheritance taxes were paid on the estate. The rest was divided: more than $3 million went to Salomon’s widow, Cecile; $1.6 million to Abbe; and $1.7 million to son-in-law Louis Wolfsheimer.

Half of Rancho Lilac, located 10 miles from Valley Center, went to Abbe and half went to Louis, a valuable chunk of real estate valued by an inheritance tax referee in 1981 at $1.5 million, far less than what it would fetch on the market today.

In addition, the Wolfsheimers split other cash, properties and stocks from the Salomon estate worth $1.6 million.

Salomon’s will also appointed Louis Wolfsheimer the trustee over much of the wealth, which was distributed into two trusts. He served as co-trustee over the money left to his mother-in-law, and was the sole trustee controlling Abbe’s share of the wealth, as well.

That changed in 1982, when the couple said they separated.

Abbe Wolfsheimer said she insisted at that point that her father’s inheritance be placed into three separate trusts--one for her mother, one for Wolfsheimer and one for herself. She was appointed sole trustee over her share, Wolfsheimer was made trustee of his, and her mother assumed sole control over her part of the estate, both Wolfsheimers said.

“I didn’t want my mother or my separated husband managing my money for me, so I insisted on becoming the trustee of my own trust,” Abbe Wolfsheimer said.

When asked to supply documents proving the separate trust arrangement, both Wolfsheimers declined.

Yet the new trust arrangement didn’t distribute the property any differently. Abbe Wolfsheimer and her husband continued to have interlocking professional and financial dealings. These include:

- An occasion last year when, at Wolfsheimer’s request, his wife appeared before the city’s zoning appeals board for one of his clients, who was seeking a variance for a triplex in South Mission Beach. Wolfsheimer said his wife, who had just resigned from the appeals board, didn’t receive “one cent” for taking over his case. Instead, he pocketed the fee.

After she resigned from the zoning appeals board in February, 1984, Abbe Wolfsheimer reported on a financial disclosure form that she was an “occasional affiliate” of her husband’s firm.

Wolfsheimer told The Times his wife has worked only on that one appeals case and has had no further connection with his law practice. He did say that, about three or four years ago, he carried Abbe Wolfsheimer on his firm’s malpractice insurance policy, but she was dropped.

- Abbe Wolfsheimer’s community property claim to half of her husband’s share of the law firm, Wolfsheimer, Milch & Wagner. On a financial disclosure form she filed while running for council, she said her claim would be 16.66% in the three-partner firm.

Chief Deputy City Attorney Jack Katz said that in the event of a divorce, Abbe Wolfsheimer would only receive 16.66% of what the firm was worth when the couple separated three years ago. Therefore, any votes she cast on the council now to give Wolfsheimer business could not translate into a direct financial gain for her.

Yet the opinion may be open to question.

Two attorneys who asked not to be identified because they have consulted with the Wolfsheimers told The Times that it is “debatable” whether Abbe Wolfsheimer’s share in the firm would be based on the date she and her husband separated.

There is a likelihood, they said, that a divorce judge would set a value on Abbe Wolfsheimer’s share as of the date of an actual divorce proceeding, a decision that would put her in the position of benefiting directly from any votes she made to favor her estranged husband’s practice.

A spokeswoman for the state FPPC said the agency has no position on the matter.

“It’s not something we wrestled with before,” Susan Harrigan said. “We have no background on this . . . . This is one of the few remaining questions we have not looked at.”

- Co-ownership in the ranch plus several other commercial buildings. The Wolfsheimers are co-owners of a small building housing a small doughnut shop at 4427 Ingraham Ave. in Pacific Beach, and a Nappy’s restaurant at 5322 El Cajon Blvd. in the mid-city area. They also have an interest in a factory-warehouse at 203 N. Johnson St. in El Cajon, land and tax records show.

Other mutual holdings include a hearing aid shop in Amarillo, Tex., and the Eugene, Ore., seniors apartment complex. The couple recently sold a Denny’s restaurant in Arizona, and Louis Wolfsheimer told The Times they still own other property outside of California, although they each declined to elaborate.

The commercial buildings generate monthly income for the Wolfsheimers, which they say they split.

“His check comes in to him. He spends it as he sees fit,” Abbe Wolfsheimer said. “I don’t get a portion of the check. When my check comes in, I spend it as I see fit. It’s my separate property.

“If he were to appear before me, the fact that he gets a check (from their mutual investments) which doesn’t benefit me has no relevancy.”

The Wolfsheimers say that since they each own an undivided half-interest in the buildings and land through their trusts, they are “tenants in common.” This legal standing, they say, means that either of them is free to mortgage, encumber or sell his or her half without consulting with the other, a distinction that makes them financially independent.

Being tenants in common means that Abbe Wolfsheimer would not be financially beholden to her husband, whichever way she votes as a council member, said Lynn Montgomery, another FPPC spokeswoman. That means she would not have a conflict voting on a project advocated by her husband, Montgomery said.

Oddly enough, the Wolfsheimers didn’t file documents showing the division of their San Diego property into separate trusts until April or May, although they said it was agreed to soon after the separation. Abbe Wolfsheimer announced her candidacy for the City Council on April 24. They both say the division was coincidental and had nothing to do with her decision to run for the council seat.

- Wolfsheimer says he manages apartments for Mrs. Salomon. The apartments under his control are a 96-unit complex in Chula Vista and a 104-unit complex in Tustin. He said he also gives his mother-in-law informal legal advice on matters relating to two other apartment complexes she owns in the City of San Diego.

The fact that Wolfsheimer has an ongoing business relationship with Abbe Wolfsheimer’s mother does not pose a potential conflict, said FPPC spokeswoman Harrigan. A public official is not prohibited from deciding a public issue that would financially affect someone with business ties to members of his immediate family, she said.

Chamber President Grissom said he believed that despite the financial ties, Abbe Wolfsheimer would be able to make objective decisions if her estranged husband appeared before the council. “I feel her to be a person of integrity,” he said.

“But when you look at this situation, you do have questions about the image, how it looks. It appears as if there could be a situation where she had a conflict of interest” although in “reality” she does not, he said.

Abbe Wolfsheimer said the fact that she is separated and has an individual trust guarantees she has no financial obligations to Wolfsheimer.

“I don’t have to be . . . beholden,” she said. “There are lots of things in this world that make people feel beholden. It’s that old guilt bit people have and I’ve tried to avoid that all my life.

“I think guilt is a nasty thing,” she said.

Even if there is a potential problem, Louis Wolfsheimer said, he will not hesitate to ply his trade before the City Council. Aside from La Jolla Valley, he said, he has no other projects pending before the city.

“I don’t intend to go to the poorhouse and not have any clients,” Louis Wolfsheimer said. “I intend to represent my clients before any appropriate governmental bodies. With Abbe sitting on a governmental body, it’s up to her to disqualify herself.”