Nestande’s Airport Vote Sparks Dispute Over Conflict Law

An Orange County supervisor’s vote three weeks ago on the number of flights allowed to airlines at John Wayne Airport has rekindled a dispute over a county law that prohibits supervisors from voting on issues affecting their major campaign contributors.

Supervisor Bruce Nestande became the first and only board member to take advantage of a much-debated clause in the law that allows major campaign contributors to declare in sworn affidavits that their donations are not related to their business interests.

Nestande cast the dissenting vote in the 4-1 decision to award more flights to competitors of AirCal, which is based at John Wayne. George L. Argyros, a majority shareholder in AirCal, contributed $5,000 last December to Nestande’s current campaign for secretary of state.

Gentlemen’s Agreement

Although Nestande said he did nothing wrong, Shirley Grindle, who authored the special county law, and Ellen Wilcox, foreman of the 1983-84 Orange County Grand Jury, said Nestande’s vote was “improper” and violated a “gentlemen’s agreement” by county supervisors not to “take advantage of loopholes” to circumvent the law’s intent. And they said that Nestande’s vote is just the kind of legislative action the law is supposed to prevent.

Grindle and Wilcox said the 1978 law would be rendered useless if every supervisor used the sworn affidavits to avoid abstaining on votes affecting their donors.

The special ordinance, nicknamed TIN CUP (Time is Now, Clean Up Politics), specifically prohibits a member of the Board of Supervisors from voting on or influencing a decision that “will have a material financial effect . . . on a major campaign contributor of that member.”

Mailed Letters to Donors

The law defines a major contributor as any person or company donating a total of more than $1,622 to a supervisor over a 48-month period.

Another section of the ordinance allows individual contributors to file affidavits declaring that their donations are unrelated to their business interests.

Earlier this year, Nestande mailed letters suggesting that prospective donors take advantage of the affidavits to contribute more than the $1,622 limit set by the ordinance. Nestande’s letter was accompanied by a legal opinion drafted by a law firm retained by his own campaign committee.

Argyros, who also owns an Orange County development firm and the Seattle Mariners baseball team, is one of 19 Nestande supporters to file such declarations.

Argyros’ office said he was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Grindle said the letters Nestande mailed to donors were a “blatant attempt to get around” TIN CUP.

“Nestande was very transparent in what he did on that (airline) vote,” Grindle said. “He obviously did it to help AirCal. The affidavits get the company off the hook. . . . But there’s still a section in the ordinance that says you can’t vote on something that affects the finances of a major individual donor, so in my opinion anything that affects Argyros’ personal income still requires an abstention on Nestande’s part.”

Friends for Years

But Nestande disagreed recently, saying he was not “legally, morally or ethically required to abstain from voting” on the airline flights. The supervisor said Argyros has been a friend for years and has contributed to his political efforts since Nestande first ran for the state Assembly nearly 20 years ago. Nestande said his dissenting vote had nothing to do with the $5,000 contribution.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Maurice Evans would not comment on Nestande’s vote in a recent interview. He said the legality of Nestande’s action was open to debate, and that it probably would take a court test to clarify the law. Evans said his office was not pressing the issue with the Board of Supervisors, hoping instead that the board will resolve the controversy on its own by removing ambiguities in the statute.

Contributions to Nestande from Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren raised a similar issue in 1984, when supervisors were considering the company’s proposal to operate several landfills on its extensive property holdings.

But the 1983-84 grand jury, headed by Wilcox, decided not to pursue the matter criminally in exchange for promises that Nestande and his fellow supervisors would tighten the law to count donations from officers, directors and shareholders of a company toward the firm’s TIN CUP limit.

The board has yet to take such action.

In her parting comments as grand jury foreman, Wilcox, in June, 1984, strongly attacked Nestande and the entire board for allegedly reneging on their commitment to amend the law.

Monitor Own Performances

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton said that board members trust each other to monitor their own performance under TIN CUP and refrain from actions that undermine public confidence in the board’s decisions. He declined to elaborate.

Aides to Supervisors Thomas F. Riley, Harriett Wieder and Ralph B. Clark said the supervisors worry whenever a board member receives funds from a single source in excess of the TIN CUP limit, as occasionally happens. They said such contributions raise questions about the ability of that board member to participate in important decisions.

Nestande said the problem has been exaggerated because few people can afford to donate more than $1,622, and most who can don’t want to comply with the law’s requirement that they detail all business partnerships and holdings.

The supervisor said he had not carried through on the pledge to Wilcox to amend the ordinance because “there aren’t enough votes on the board to do it.”

Grindle and Wilcox said they are watching the supervisors to see if votes similar to Nestande’s last week are repeated, and if more affidavits are filed declaring that campaign contributions are unrelated to business interests.

“I don’t know what’s next,” Grindle said. “But if we have to, we’ll ask the voters to approve a new ordinance that clears up the problem.”