Board to Consider Members’ Legal Costs

The Orange Unified School District Board of Trustees announced Wednesday that it will hold a special meeting next week to decide whether to pay the legal costs of defending three board members.

Trustees Joe C. Cherry, Ruth Evans and Robert James Elliott are scheduled to appear Aug. 21 in Orange County Superior Court to face an accusation of “willful misconduct” in office. The accusation pertains to a contract bid rigging scandal involving allegations of kickbacks to school district employees.

The Orange County Grand Jury handed down the action against the board members in June after a lengthy investigation of allegations of rigging of bids on $3 million worth of school-repair contracts. The questionable contracts, which were let by the seven-member school board in 1980-84, involved kickbacks to a former school district maintenance supervisor, according to the court documents.

4 Face Criminal Charges

The former supervisor, Steven Presson, his wife, Elizabeth Presson, and two former Orange contractors, William A. Gustafson and Ronald Brock, were indicted by the same grand jury in March on charges of misappropriation of public funds.

By coincidence, those four are also scheduled to be in Superior Court on Aug. 21 to be arraigned on the criminal charges.

The action against the board members, however, is civil rather than criminal. The grand jury’s accusation of willful misconduct means that the trustees must face a jury trial. If jurors were to find them guilty there would be no fines or jail sentences, but the officials would be removed from public office.

A fourth trustee, Eleanore Pleines, who was also accused of willful misconduct by the grand jury, resigned her board seat last month. Her resignation means that she no longer faces trial on the civil charges, Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin G. Engquist said.

No Estimate on Costs

The remaining three board members who still face court action so far have no legal counsel, school district officials have said. Last Friday, the cooperative that insures Orange Unified rejected the district’s plea for insurance payment of the costs of defending the three.

The issue is fiscally painful for Orange Unified, administrators have conceded, because the school district has suffered severe budget-shortage problems for the last few years. Budgets have been tight because school enrollment has been dropping for the last 10 consecutive years.

District officials said Wednesday that no dollar estimate has been made on how much the legal defense would cost. But in the plea to the insurance cooperative last week, the district indicated that costs could reach $50,000.

School district officials said Wednesday that an attorney will be at Monday’s meeting to advise the board on how members may vote without violating state law against conflict of interest.

“It’s very complicated,” one district official said. It will take at least four votes of the six-member board to pass a motion.

The special board meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. at the district’s headquarters, 370 N. Glassell St. in Orange.