Mayor Tried to Buy Vote, Says Ex-Moorpark Councilman

A former Moorpark councilman who pleaded guilty this week to embezzling $5,500 from a post office accused the city’s mayor Thursday of attempting to influence his council vote by loaning him $20,000 to $30,000 over the last two years.

Former City Councilman Danny Allen Woolard, who admitted in federal court that he used money from the post office where he worked to buy cocaine, said he never paid back any of the cash loans from Moorpark Mayor Thomas C. (Bud) Ferguson.

Woolard, 39, said he spent Ferguson’s money on “drugs, card-playing and partying,” and that he was occasionally high on cocaine during council meetings.

“I think we both took advantage of each other,” Woolard said. “I knew he was a good source of cash and he took advantage of what he perceived as having a great influence over me on the council.”

Ferguson acknowledged Thursday that he had loaned Woolard about $10,000 since 1985, believing that the money was used to pay off gambling debts. But the mayor called the vote-influence allegation “a damn lie.”

“I never talked to Danny about voting any way and he knows it,” Ferguson, 67, said in a telephone interview. Ferguson said he was only trying to help his fellow official.

Method of Choosing Replacement

The issue of the financial relationship between the two men first was raised at a Wednesday press conference called by Ferguson to discuss alternative ways of replacing Woolard, who resigned this week.

At the press conference, Ferguson said he arranged a loan of $7,500 cash to Woolard in late September, thinking he again was helping with a gambling debt.

Woolard said, however, that he used most of that money in a botched attempt to cover up his post office thefts.

In an interview Thursday, Woolard would not say which votes before the City Council had been affected by Ferguson’s loans, but said the money had a definite influence on his vote.

After one vote, Woolard said, Ferguson tore up a $5,000 promissory note. “He considered the debt paid because the council action had pleased him,” Woolard said.

Both men said they have been questioned by the Ventura County district attorney’s office. Deputy Dist. Atty. William Allen, head of the office’s special investigations unit, would not confirm or deny an investigation of the Moorpark City Council.

Woolard said he welcomes an investigation of his allegations because, until then, “It’s going to come down to who are you going to believe, the mayor or a convicted felon?”

Woolard pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles to stealing $5,500 over several months from the Moorpark post office window where he worked as a clerk. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 23 and faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The case stemmed from a surprise audit of Woolard’s post office work station on Sept. 23, which found a $5,500 shortage.

Woolard said that, after Moorpark Postmaster Monte Preston asked him about the shortage, he called Ferguson during lunch and told him, “I need the money, like now.”

Checks for Cash

The following day, Woolard said, he met Ferguson at a local restaurant and the mayor gave him $7,500. In return, he gave the mayor three checks for $2,500 each, he said. They were to be cashed 30 days later, allowing him time to raise the money, Woolard said.

Woolard said he told Ferguson he had stolen from his postal drawer “to pay off my gambling,” and that he needed the cash to cover up the crime. His plan was to purchase $5,500 in stamps and return them to the post office to balance the shortage there, Woolard said.

“I knew that Bud didn’t want me off the City Council,” Woolard said, “so I leveled with him and told him what I needed the money for.

“God is my witness that he knew what the money was for.”

But the stamp ploy did not work. Postmaster Preston called postal authorities and Woolard confessed the thefts and the cover-up scheme on Sept. 25. He resigned from the post office the following day and was indicted by a federal grand jury Nov. 21.

Mayor Denies Knowledge

Ferguson, retired owner of a machine shop, said that, although he arranged to get Woolard the cash, “I had no idea what the money was used for . . . . He said it was for a gambling debt.”

The mayor said he personally had loaned Woolard about $7,500 in cash before September. Woolard paid back $290 on the debt last year and then stopped making payments, he said.

At the press conference Wednesday, Ferguson said he raised the cash in September with the help of two friends, Stephen R. Anderson, president of A-C Construction Corp. of Moorpark, and Ace Bowen of Moorpark.

Bowen could not be reached for comment.

Anderson confirmed in an interview Thursday that he gave the mayor $2,500 in cash for Woolard, but said, “I didn’t find out what the money was being used for until after he pleaded guilty.”

Anderson’s firm is embroiled in a contract dispute with the city over a road repair project. Despite Anderson’s loan, Woolard on Dec. 5 voted to pay the company only $57,000 for a road repair job for which it requested $79,800.

Ferguson voted against the motion to pay the lower amount, which passed by a 3-2 vote.

Claim Against City

Anderson has since filed a $2-million claim against the city for failure to pay what he said was the true cost of the road work.

Anderson said that, later in December, he alerted the Ventura County district attorney’s office to possible misuse of the money he had loaned Woolard.

He said Woolard’s vote against his firm was not why he went to authorities. He was angry, he said, because the check Woolard wrote him to pay back the loan had bounced.

Ferguson similarly said he contacted the district attorney to warn authorities that the money given Woolard in September might have been used in a cover-up scheme.

Woolard, who was elected to City Council in 1983, is a 30-year resident of the east Ventura County city.

Woolard said he had been using marijuana several years and became addicted to cocaine in the last year. He said he occasionally used cocaine before City Council meetings and sometimes used the drug in the bathroom during breaks in meetings.

Woolard went to work for the post office in 1973 and was a window clerk in Moorpark for the past five years.

The City Council is expected to decide next week whether it will appoint someone to serve the two years remaining on Woolard’s term or to call a special election to fill the vacancy.