Bus Firm, Official Accused of Supplying Phony Data to DMV

A Southern California tour bus company and one of its officials have been charged with submitting false training records for five drivers to the state Department of Motor Vehicles after one of its buses crashed into an icy Sierra river last spring, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Wednesday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Giordano said the misdemeanor complaint filed in Whittier Municipal Court named Starline Sightseeing Tours Inc. and Bernardo Grunbaum, the firm’s quality control manager.

Giordano said the five drivers received Class II (commercial) operators’ licenses from the DMV on the strength of Grunbaum’s certification that each had been given 30 hours of training on 35-passenger buses. According to Giordano, blank documents were signed by Grunbaum and the names of the drivers were filled in before submission to the DMV between last July and September.

The five conduct tours of film stars’ homes in the Hollywood area, Giordano said, and the case is not directly related to the Walker River crash last May 30, when 21 elderly Southern Californians died.

Ernst August Klimeck, driver of the bus in that tragedy, had a valid Class II driver’s license. He has been charged with manslaughter and faces a preliminary hearing on March 21.

When federal and state investigators were looking into false training certification allegations against Starline last September, company attorney Terence Lyons acknowledged that some drivers had not been properly licensed early in the year, but he denied that state licensing procedures had been violated or that any test results had been falsely certified.

He said some drivers had failed to obtain Class II licenses immediately upon employment only because of “a breakdown in the Starline check system for ensuring that drivers were properly licensed.”

He said Wednesday he had not seen the complaint filed by the district attorney’s office, but that he understood it related simply to “inaccuracies on certain forms” signed by both Starline and the individual drivers relating to upgrading licenses from Class III (for passenger cars) to Class II.

“I do know that all the drivers involved were trained by Starline before they drove any vehicle for Starline,” Lyons said. “They were properly trained and only drove the size vehicle for which they received training. Whether or not there were any technical inaccuracies on forms or documents submitted is something the company will be investigating.”

Grunbaum referred requests for comment to his attorney, Michael Magasin, who was not immediately available. Last September, Grunbaum told The Times that he submitted the certifications on the advice of the company’s senior drivers, who, he said, actually conducted the tests.

Of 11 then-current and former Starline van drivers interviewed by The Times in September, only one said he had a Class II license prior to May 30, when the company’s tour bus plunged into the Walker River north of Bridgeport.

The others said that after the accident they were ordered to obtain Class II licenses. DMV records showed that at least five of those drivers were not issued Class II licenses until July or August.

If convicted, Grunbaum could be sentenced to a maximum of six months in jail and fined $1,000 on each of the five counts, Giordano said. The company could face an additional $1,000 fine on each count.