Water Resources Chief Will Resign : Deukmejian’s Embattled Appointee Avoids Rejection

Gov. George Deukmejian’s embattled appointee to chair the state Water Resources Control Board said in a letter released Wednesday that he will resign from the $65,666-a-year post, citing the stress of fending off charges of conflict of interest, nepotism and racial insensitivity.

With a gentle prod by members of the governor’s staff, Raymond V. Stone, who has headed the panel for nearly a year, stepped down, avoiding a confirmation vote by the Senate Rules Committee in which he faced almost certain defeat.

At the suggestion of gubernatorial advisers, Stone met over the past several days with Rules Committee members in a last-ditch effort to save his appointment, according to Deukmejian’s deputy press secretary, Kevin Brett. Stone concluded that “a majority of that committee would vote to not recommend his confirmation by the full Senate,” Brett said.

Top-level gubernatorial appointees must win Senate confirmation within a year of being named to their posts or lose their jobs. Stone would not have been able to serve past March 20 without an affirmative vote.

Initially, Stone wanted to press ahead with the confirmation vote regardless of his prospects, said a Deukmejian adviser, who asked not to be identified. But after talking with the Rules Committee members, Stone “recognized that to press for confirmation would have diminished him,” the aide said.

The adviser added: “If you know you’re going to be creamed and know that you won’t be approved, you’re doing yourself and the governor a favor by withdrawing.”

Stone could not be reached for comment. But his letter of resignation, which reached Deukmejian late Tuesday, detailed the questions that have been raised about his fitness to chair the board responsible for enforcing state and federal clean-water laws.

“As I assumed my duties last year, I did so believing that as one of five board members we would set statewide policy for the control of our water resources,” Stone wrote. “Such policy would be based upon technical, legal and environmental principles free of politicizing. How naive I was.”

Problems Soon Began

Stone’s problems began within a few months of his appointment, when it was revealed that his private San Diego-based engineering firm had entered into a partnership with two top Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board officials to work on a U.S.-backed, $37-million fish-farming project in Egypt between 1979 and 1983.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office is investigating allegations that the two regional water board staff members may have committed fraud by falsifying time cards to permit one of them to work on their outside business interests.

Although Stone was not the target of the investigation, several legislators, including Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and later Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), began raising questions about the Deukmejian appointee’s judgment.

In his letter to Deukmejian, Stone denied that there was a conflict of interest in that business arrangement. He said the two state employees “assured us before, during and after our collaboration that they never worked (on the overseas project) on state time.”

Earlier this year, Stone sparked another controversy over remarks he made at a workshop on the treatment and disposal of toxic waste. At that session, he suggested that government agencies might consider sending the waste to Indian reservations in California for disposal.

The idea was prompted by a newspaper article on a proposal by a San Diego County tribe to use part of their reservation as a disposal site, Stone said in his letter to the governor. He noted that the same standards for disposal would apply in all cases and “there should be no preference given Indian land.”