Irwindale Blocks State Fiscal Audit : Officials Want to See if Payment to Raiders Tops Spending Limits

The City of Irwindale won a temporary court order Thursday, blocking the state auditor general from obtaining city records to see if Irwindale exceeded voter-imposed spending limits in advancing $10 million to the Los Angeles Raiders in the deal to bring the team to the city.

It marked at least a small victory for Irwindale in the complicated legal and political maneuvering that has surrounded the Raiders’ proposed move out of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Nuss ordered a hearing in his Pomona courtroom Feb. 8 to determine whether to extend the order. In the meantime, he ordered the auditor general to cease all efforts to audit Irwindale’s books.

Chief Deputy Auditor Kurt Sjoberg expressed surprise that state authority to look at a city’s books was being challenged. He said the auditor general’s office will suspend its efforts to secure Irwindale records for the time being but will send its attorneys to the Feb. 8 hearing to argue for permission to resume its inquiry.

Just a day before, on Wednesday, Irwindale city spokesman Xavier Hermosillo had declared, both in press statements and in testimony to a legislative subcommittee, that Irwindale was willing to comply with the requests from the state auditor general.

But Hermosillo said Thursday that attorneys for Irwindale had filed papers with the judge, charging that the auditor general’s office had made itself party to an effort by Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles) to “harass” the city. He said that the state had never tried to audit a municipality to check its compliance with the 1979 spending limits authored by tax foe Paul Gann and approved by voters that year.

It was Roos who requested the auditor general to look at the Irwindale records. Roos was a strong opponent of Irwindale’s $115-million deal with the Raiders, calling it an alleged misuse of taxpayers’ funds.

Hermosillo said: “One of our main pleadings was that this action by the state auditor general was unprecedented in California law. . . . We contended it is political harassment and an abuse of both taxpayer dollars and the legislative process, and the judge issued a temporary restraining order.”

Judge Nuss, 55, a former mayor of San Dimas who was appointed to the Pomona Municipal Court by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1974 and was elevated to the Superior Court by Gov. George Deukmejian in 1984, had no comment on the arguments beyond the direct order he issued.

Sjoberg, speaking for the auditor general’s office, said the chief counsel of that office, Ed Graf, had been in the Irwindale City Hall Thursday afternoon, engaged in negotiations to obtain the city records that the auditor general wanted, when he was suddenly handed the court order. Graf had a subpoena in his pocket to serve Irwindale officials if necessary, but the court order stopped him from issuing it.

Sjoberg said that his office believes the state code is extremely clear on the authority the auditor general has in the matter.

He quoted section 10527 of the California Government Code, Section A, as saying: “The auditor general during regular business hours shall have access to, and authority to examine and reproduce, any and all books, accounts, reports, vouchers, correspondence files and other records, bank accounts and money and other property of any . . . public entity, including any city, county and special district which receives state funds.”

Roos, informed of the temporary restraining order, declared:

“I don’t understand this latest move by the City of Irwindale. Mr. Hermosillo told the members of my subcommittee just yesterday morning that city officials had nothing to hide and they would cooperate fully with the auditor general.

“If that is the case, and the city truly has nothing to hide, then why are they trying to restrict access to city financial records, records that should be available to any citizen under the public records act. It raises real questions in my mind about how far they are over their limit and how bad a deal this really is for the taxpayers.” Hermosillo, however, said the city had become alarmed when auditor general representatives on Wednesday went far beyond the terms of their original written request for information and began demanding financial records going back 10 years.

The city spokesman said that if the city had exceeded the Gann limit in paying the money to the Raiders, that action could be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the electorate at an ensuing election. Irwindale, however, does not concede that it has exceeded the limit, he said.