Watson Paid Out of Her Campaign Funds to Have Dissertation Typed

State Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) used campaign funds last year to pay a professional typist to prepare the final draft of her doctoral dissertation, interviews and state records show.

Watson listed a $625 payment to the Truly Yours Typing Service under the category of “professional, management and consulting services” on a 1987 campaign expense report. No further explanation was required on the form and Watson did not give a reason for the expenditure.

But Barbara Goldfus, owner of the typing service, said Monday that Watson paid her the money for a rush job late last May on the 186-page dissertation, titled “The Effects of the Desegregation Controversy on Trustee Governance in the Los Angeles Unified School District (1975-1980).” Watson, who serves on the Senate Education Committee, last spring submitted her dissertation to the Claremont Graduate School, which awarded her a Ph.D. in education.

Goldfus first saw the dissertation in late May when she was given a typed copy of it and asked to type it over as a “rush job.”

“It was my understanding that it had been all edited and typed on a computer before I ever saw it . . .,” said Goldfus, who charges $18 an hour. “The computer operator wasn’t good as a typist. There were too many mistakes and she (Watson) wanted someone to give it undivided attention.”

State law declares that campaign funds “shall not be used for personal use,” but allows for political donations to be spent on anything that has a “reasonable relationship to a political, legislative or governmental purpose.”

Assistant Atty. Gen. Eugene Hill said Monday he isn’t sure how the law might apply to the preparation of Watson’s dissertation.

“I think it is not one that we’ve dealt with before and it’s not one that, based on prior materials that we’ve written, we can say is acceptable under the statute,” said Hill. “That’s not to say we wouldn’t if we were asked by her to evaluate it.”

Watson could not be reached for comment Monday.

Her Sacramento attorney, Mel Coben, said Watson would answer all questions about her finances and the dissertation after April 4, when she returns from the Legislature’s spring break.

Last Friday, The Times reported that a former secretary to Watson said she was required to type the dissertation on a state computer as a condition of her employment. Another former top aide said that other staffers in Watson’s Capitol office also helped by proofreading the treatise during working hours.

Questions surrounding Watson’s dissertation have come on the heels of newspaper reports that she solicited but failed to report a $5,000 personal loan from a lobbyist to help pay for repairs on a rental home she owns in Sacramento.

Watson received the loan from lobbyist Willie Hausey in March, 1987, yet both failed to disclose the transaction until it surfaced in a Sacramento Municipal Court case two weeks ago. In the court case, Watson sued to evict the tenant, one of her former legislative aides, from the house.

In an interview last week, Hausey--who represents clients with occasional business before the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which Watson chairs--said that he called the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission before making the loan last March and was advised that the transaction did not have to be listed on 1987 financial disclosure forms.

But FPPC spokeswoman Sandra Michioku said Monday there was no record of such a call from Hausey’s office, and no one from the agency’s technical assistance division remembers talking to the lobbyist last year.

The first record of a call from Hausey, Michioku said, was just recently, about the time that the existence of the loan surfaced in court. The FPPC advised Hausey that the loan had to be disclosed, Michioku said.

Since then, both Hausey and Watson have filed amendments to their financial disclosure forms showing the $5,000 loan.