Montijo’s Once-Admired Aggressive Style Led to Fall

When San Diego politicians and civic leaders were looking around for someone to lead the city’s new housing agency in 1979, they didn’t want to settle for a passive, gutless administrator.

No, the people who created the San Diego Housing Commission were hunting for an executive daring enough to resist building the kind of crime-ridden public housing projects like those in St. Louis, New York and Chicago.

Their choice would have to be a daredevil, a maverick who wouldn’t be afraid to put down the government rule book and wade into San Diego’s country club circuit to cut a few deals with developers and get things done.

Their man was Benjamin Montijo.

“He was results oriented,” said Herbert J. Solomon, the commission’s first chairman who led the move to hire Montijo eight years ago. “He had his eye on the doughnut, rather than the hole.

“He motivated his staff in terms of getting results, not getting bogged down in bureaucracy and red tape and delays, but finding ways similar to what a private developer would do to accomplish the maximum result with the maximum utilization of resources,” said Solomon. “Not always taking the safest course or the least controversial course, but doing things that were in the best interest of the community . . . “

For years, Montijo’s style, masked by the relative obscurity of the housing agency, served him well. A public servant acting like a private businessman, he and his staff put together complicated transactions that won over a suspicious building industry and helped shape the notion of a “public-private partnership.”

Yet, say those who have worked with Montijo, it was also his style that eventually made the executive director look careless, landing him in trouble.

“Ben’s weaknesses perhaps came to the forefront,” said Mac Strobl, a former housing commissioner. “He is not a good communicator . . . Ben is not a good detail individual. Things slip through the cracks, in the sense of all the legal requirements of dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s.”

Bothered by those tendencies, the Housing Commission and City Council this week voted to oust Montijo by allowing the contract to his $79,500-a-year job expire on April 30. The final vote came Friday, one day before Montijo’s 47th birthday.

Montijo staged a public and tenacious battle for his job, a rare showdown by his choice in open sessions over two days. During his rambling, sometimes incoherent defense, Montijo alternately boasted of his accomplishments and pleaded to be kept on.

But the damage had been done: The latest in a string of controversies--how Montijo and his staff committed several irregularities in a deal to renovate the Island Gardens Apartment--was enough to irreparably harm his credibility with commissioners.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with the FBI, is investigating the deal for criminal fraud. And the commission’s internal investigation showed the staff gave “extraordinary assistance” to the developers and that Montijo had failed to bring the complicated, $4-million deal to his bosses for final approval.

“I think the controversy is a measure of effectiveness,” Councilwoman Judy McCarty said Thursday during a hearing.

“I can’t argue with these figures here, I can’t argue with these at all,” she said, referring to statistics showing the housing created during Montijo’s tenure. “But I can say this, that when I spend most of my time dealing with housing commission controversies, I’m not doing the right job for San Diego . . . I’ve got to be working on other things, and I’ve got to be working on housing, not on firestorms.”

While it was a firestorm of controversy that chased Montijo out of his job this week, it was controversy that brought him to San Diego eight years ago.

Conservative San Diego has always been wary of low-income housing. Although a city department distributed federal subsidies so the poor could rent private apartments, elected officials consistently spurned HUD programs that would require the city to own and operate public housing.

The city’s one project--Del Sol in South San Diego--was a constant headache because of the concentration of tenants, noise, neighborhood antagonism and damage to the property, recalled City Manager John Lockwood. The projects-turned-slums of the Midwest and Northern cities stood as an ugly warning that government should not be a landlord, officials argued at the time.

The city, however, was criticized by federal officials, and then-Mayor Pete Wilson responded by proposing the idea of a Housing Commission. He pushed through his plan in a week and it was approved in November, 1978.

The commission served two purposes, said Strobl, now president of TCS Financial Governmental Services, a lobbying firm. It put arms-length distance between City Hall and the potentially explosive public housing issue, but it allowed the elected officials to retain a form of political control, he said.

“Although everyone (council members) said they didn’t want to deal with it, they didn’t want to give up the political prerogative,” Strobl said.

The new agency was to have a new approach. And the new commissioners, Strobl and Solomon among them, were looking for a new kind of administrator to lead the agency.

“When we hired Ben eight years ago, the purpose was to find somebody who was willing to be creative and innovative in wanting to establish a housing commission whose scope of activities were substantially different, and I think better, than the classic housing activity.

“He doesn’t have an engaging personality, but what he had was a level of commitment and interest that matched what we wanted to do,” Strobl said.

In Montijo, the commissioners had a man who didn’t back down from a challenge.

Born in San Jose and reared in Lindsay, Montijo grew up in a family that became an important Latino force in the fundamentalist Church of God of Prophecy, based in Cleveland, Tenn. Today, Montijo’s mother is a minister in Lindsay and his brother, Gabriel, is an “overseer” of the Spanish-speaking congregations in California, said an employee at the church’s headquarters.

Montijo’s “ministry” was different, however, said former wife Patricia Bright. After the family relocated to Scottsdale, Ariz., Montijo answered the social challenge of the 1960s by helping farm workers find housing.

“His ministry was not like his family, but basically his role in life was to help those who were less fortunate than himself,” said Bright, now remarried and living in the Chicago area. “He really believed he had a place in life to help those less fortunate than himself.”

Montijo declined a request for an interview, but in previously published articles he talked about being a former activist in the 1960s who took part in the freedom bus rides and demonstrations of the time. He was a one-time devotee of Saul Alinsky, who taught would-be radicals how to fight the institutions of the day.

But Montijo eventually decided to switch rather than fight, and in the early 1970s he won a National Urban Fellowship, which called for study at Yale University and Occidental College, and an internship with a governmental “mentor.”

Montijo interned in Scottsdale, where he was later hired as an assistant city manager. He left in 1976 to work at the Fresno housing authority, where he soon found himself embroiled in controversy.

According to Tim Sciacqua, the Fresno agency’s former director of operations, Montijo took the job with the understanding he would not be reimbursed for moving expenses.

Yet soon after Montijo arrived, he began demanding payment anyway, said Sciacqua, now the assistant executive director of the Tulare County Housing Authority.

When the director refused, Montijo defied his boss and took his request directly to the housing board, “which of course shocked us because it had never been done in the history of the agency,” he said.

Montijo won his case, although the agency’s controller didn’t want to pay him because of inadequate documentation. Sciacqua said Montijo submitted his expense form with figures based on “recollections and hand-written” statements.

Then, Montijo was fired.

“I had hired him and I was just not getting the performance that I wanted,” said Bruce Moore, former Fresno housing director.

Once again, Montijo challenged his boss in an administrative hearing. This time, the board, which originally supported Moore’s decision, reversed itself and reinstated Montijo.

Moore soon left the agency for another job, and Montijo was appointed to take his place. The new director solidified his position by hiring as assistants one of the board members and the negotiator for the local union.

Three years later, Montijo was picked for the San Diego job.

His task was to woo a suspicious building industry, which eyed the commission as a potential competitor. Montijo’s orders were to help forge an alliance with developers--known as a “public-private partnership.”

The results would be what elected officials often call a “win-win situation.” In one scenario, developers would promise to set aside 20% of the apartments in a new project for moderate- to low-income tenants, and in return the commission would reward them with low-interest loans, special bond issues and other financial incentives.

“Every time you talk about the Housing Commission building a project, the BIA (Building Industry Assn.) would come unglued,” said Uvaldo Martinez, former city councilman who represented an area with a high concentration of subsidized housing. “But joint venture they don’t mind, because the private sector wants to have government subsidies like everyone else.”

In 1985, commission officials say, the agency’s financing and development projects have translated into $264 million in wages paid in the residential construction industry.

Meanwhile, income to the housing commission has gone from $282,000 in 1982 to $3.2 million in 1986, giving the agency a surplus where other housing authorities show deficits.

But this year, statistics and finance are not the most pressing concerns for the housing agency. The attention was turned to Montijo himself.

For years, Montijo had operated with a virtual free hand. Strobl said that housing commissioners, active during their first four years, eventually “sat back and became complacent.”

At the council level, where approval was needed for the agency’s budget and important housing decisions, there was just as much benign neglect. With housing matters put at the end of a busy Tuesday agenda, council members would routinely approve them without serious scrutiny.

When there was discussion about housing matters, some council members became suspicious of Montijo.

One former council member, who asked not to be identified, said “there was always some unexplained item that would turn up” each year when it was time to approve the agency’s budget.

“We all had the feeling that he was not putting all of his cards on the table with us,” said the former council member. “While the agency appeared to be, overall, doing a decent job, we were never able to figure out the details of how he was doing it. So we always had this level of distrust in Montijo himself and other staff members, that they were hiding the ball.”

The former council member said there were previous discussions about getting rid of Montijo, but he was too “insulated” by the appointed board that included such civic leaders as Chamber of Commerce President Lee Grissom and land-use attorney Paul Robinson.

The slippage of Montijo’s credibility with the council would become more severe with the controversies to follow. Fueled by research by housing watchdogs Mel Shapiro and Hans Jovishoff, newspapers and television stations began running stories questioning the judgment of the executive director.

Why did Montijo push through a deal with a prominent local real estate broker so the agency could relocate in its current offices at 1625 Newton Ave.? Why did the commission give the developer a $1.5-million low-interest loan to buy the former warehouse building that the agency would later lease? Why did the commission buy the land under the building and then lease it to the broker? Shouldn’t that $2.5 million in federal housing money be used for housing?

Other news stories followed: Why did Montijo use $6,000 in housing funds to stock a weight room and another $7,000 to buy a walnut desk and wall unit for his office?

An outside auditing firm examined the expenses of Montijo and his staff but concluded it was impossible to determine if they were improper because the agency’s travel guidelines were so vague. The federal General Account Office reviewed the Newton Avenue office deal and concluded it broke no laws, but said Montijo and his staff “engaged in a number of questionable practices” and exceeded their authority by not bringing the transaction to the City Council for approval.

Montijo’s crisis of credibility deepened last July, when council members, led by newly elected Mayor Maureen O’Connor, began studying the housing agency’s proposed $35-million budget.

That budget included a figure of $164,000 for a “discretionary” fund. But under questioning by O’Connor, Montijo said the fund was closer to $1 million. (Later study would reveal the fund as $5 million.)

“What we have here is $1 million in discretionary funds that doesn’t show up anywhere. How is this good budgetary practice?” O’Connor fumed.

The council voted to suspend the budget, and it sits in limbo today. Montijo’s oversight also provided the political momentum for council members to strip away the insulation from Montijo. On Sept. 23, the council voted to oust five members of the housing board--a majority--and appoint council members in their stead.

Three days later, it was reported that a federal grand jury in San Diego had subpoenaed commission documents pertaining to the Newton Avenue office deal.

Relations between Montijo and the new commission were cool at best, as council members knocked down one staff proposal after another. One of them was a $5,000 raise for Montijo and similar increases for his top deputies.

“In the middle of that, I wouldn’t have asked for a raise,” said a former adviser to Montijo, who asked not to be named. “That was a bonehead move.”

The controversy that did Montijo in broke in January. The Times reported that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was initiating an investigation into the way that Montijo and his staff handled a deal to renovate the Island Gardens Apartments in Southeast San Diego under a federal rehabilitation program.

The Times investigation also showed that Montijo’s staff ignored federal regulations by not advertising the federal program to other landlords.

Sources in the housing commission say that Montijo took a greater personal interest in the Island Gardens project than any other renovation deal, personally guiding it through the process.

In January, 1985, for instance, housing analyst Steve Mikelman told the developers--who included state Coastal Commission Gil Contreras--that only 40 of the 122 apartment units would be eligible for the federal rehabilitation program, since that was the number of units that were either vacant or holding low-income tenants.

But Montijo overruled that, and the next month wrote letters to a bond agency that all 122 units had qualified. The source said the change from 40 units to 122 units is jokingly referred to as “The Miracle” by housing commission employees.

The commission bought the apartments and held onto them for nine months so that the developers could line up financing. When the agency sold Island Gardens back, it gave Contreras and his partners a $709,000 loan as part of the deal.

Alarmed by the HUD investigation and newspaper revelations, commissioners ordered their own internal investigation of the Island Gardens deal. The findings, released last week, showed that Montijo and his staff committed several irregularities and gave “extraordinary assistance” to Contreras and his business partners.

It also found that, like the office deal, Montijo had overlooked one important detail: He had failed to bring the Island Gardens transaction to his bosses for final and binding approval.

By last week, council members had their minds made up that this would be Montijo’s last controversy while in their employ. The controversial style of the executive director was bringing the agency down.

“We’re spending too much time worrying about Ben Montijo and what he did or did not do, and not spending time on building housing, which is what we should be doing,” said Paul Downey, O’Connor’s press secretary.

In the end, Montijo’s trouble with details provided a sad coda to his departure. As a last-ditch procedural maneuver, Montijo calculated that O’Connor had goofed and not allowed enough time for a full meeting of the City Council before Sunday, the deadline when Montijo’s contract would have been automatically renewed.

Montijo figured it would take 72 hours to call a meeting of the council to decide not to renew the contract. That vote was necessary, he figured, because the council, sitting as the Hosing Authority, was called an “employer” in his contract.

But after the executive director disclosed his maneuver to a newspaper reporter, who printed it Thursday, O’Connor moved quickly and called Friday’s emergency session to seal the fate of Montijo.

The law allowed O’Connor to call the meeting within 24 hours--a detail Montijo didn’t know.