Who’s on the County Connection? : Officials Try to Get a Line on Dial-A-Porn Phone Bills

Telephone calls from the offices of three Orange County supervisors to pornographic tape recording services cost taxpayers a total of $221.50 during the first half of 1986--and Supervisor Bruce Nestande wants to know who did it.

According to records, 182 of the calls to sexually-explicit numbers during the six months ending June 16 were made from his office--many of them on his private line.

Nestande, who is the Republican nominee for secretary of state, denied making them and called for an investigation.

“Are you kidding me?” he said last week when told what the county billing records showed. “I know it wasn’t me. You know what you should do . . . you should call the district attorney’s office right now and tell them what you just told me, because I want to get to the bottom of this.”

Supervisor Roger Stanton was angry, too. Six such calls were billed to his office in February. He denied making any of them and, like Nestande, called for an investigation.

Supervisors Chairman Ralph Clark was away on vacation and unavailable for comment. But Clark aide Dan Wooldridge said he was sure neither Clark nor anyone else on the staff made the four sex-line calls billed to the supervisor’s office for the month of June.

Other officials speculated that many current and former county employees have access to supervisors’ telephone lines, and pointed out that many of the calls were made between 5 p.m. and midnight, when most offices would be empty and unguarded.

But Orange County General Services Director R.A. (Bert) Scott was sure of one thing:

“Clearly,” he said, “these calls were not an authorized use of the county’s telephone system.”