Challenge Doesn’t Halt Wieder Votes on Irvine Co. Items

Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder voted on two matters involving the Irvine Co. on Tuesday, one day after the district attorney was asked to look into the legality of her casting such votes.

Wieder said later that her decision to vote was guided by County Counsel Adrian Kuyper’s opinion that the Irvine Co. did not become one of her major contributors March 10 when an employees political action committee it sponsors gave $2,500 to her congressional campaign.

The county’s 10-year-old campaign finance-reform ordinance, known as TIN CUP, which stands for Time Is Now, Clean Up Politics, prohibits supervisors from voting on matters that affect their major campaign contributors. The ordinance currently defines a major campaign contributor as one that gave a supervisor more than $1,739 during a four-year period.

“I will follow the rule of the county counsel,” Wieder said after Tuesday’s board meeting. “There is no controversy in our minds.”

She said her opponents in the race for the 42nd Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Daniel Lungren (R-Long Beach) dredged up the TIN CUP issue to “discredit me and destroy my campaign.”

The challenge to Wieder’s votes on Irvine Co. matters came Monday when Shirley Grindle, author of the TIN CUP ordinance, filed a complaint with the district attorney over the $2,500 contribution from the Irvine Co. Employees Political Action Committee, or ICEPAC.

On Tuesday, Irvine Co. senior vice president Gary H. Hunt said he did not contact Grindle and ask her to meet with him before she filed that complaint, as reported in The Times.

Grindle said her comments about a proposed meeting with Hunt had been misunderstood. She said the request for a meeting with Hunt was relayed through Assistant Dist. Atty. Maurice L. Evans.

Evans said, however, that he, not Hunt, had suggested the meeting because “I thought it might help.” Grindle declined the invitation.

Grindle contends that the Irvine Co. should be considered a major contributor to Wieder because it is indistinguishable from ICEPAC. Top Irvine Co. officials make most of the contributions to the PAC and decide which campaigns get the money, she said. She also argued that Irvine Co. officials would benefit “materially and financially” from approval of any Irvine Co. project.

Grindle is asking that the Irvine Co. be designated a major campaign contributor to Wieder; that Wieder’s April 27 vote in favor of the Irvine Co.’s Laguna Laurel development agreement be voided, and that ICEPAC be prosecuted for not reporting the contribution to the county registrar of voters within 30 days, as Grindle contends the TIN CUP ordinance requires.

Irvine Co. officials say ICEPAC, as a federal political action committee, is not subject to county laws. Under federal law, they say, ICEPAC is separate and independent from the Irvine Co.

Grindle, a retired aerospace engineer and former county planning commissioner, has monitored compliance with the TIN CUP ordinance since it became law in 1978.

Told of Wieder’s votes Tuesday, Grindle repeated her contention that Wieder should refrain from voting on all Irvine Co. matters.

Grindle said she is not asking for the voiding of an April 20 vote by Wieder for the Irvine Coast development agreement, which covers another Irvine Co. project, because such an action would make no difference in whether the agreement was approved.

The Irvine Coast agreement was approved by the board on a 4-1 vote and would still stand on a 3-1 vote if Wieder’s vote were voided. The Laguna Laurel agreement, which covers a controversial project in Laguna Canyon, was approved 3 to 2, with Wieder providing the swing vote.

If Wieder’s vote were voided, the future of the agreement would be thrown into doubt.

Grindle said Tuesday that the Irvine Co. “is missing the boat” in its argument that ICEPAC is a creature of federal law.

“I’m not addressing the federal law. I’m addressing the provisions of TIN CUP. I’m asking that the D.A. make the issue clear,” she said.

Meanwhile, a leader of an environmental group that strenuously opposed approval of the Laguna Laurel agreement said he hopes Wieder’s vote is overturned.

In view of the ICEPAC contribution, said Richard Thomas, co-chairman of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, “propriety would seem to suggest that Mrs. Wieder should have invalidated” her Laguna Laurel vote.

One of the Irvine Co.-related matters on the Board of Supervisors agenda Tuesday involved a request from Supervisors Gaddi. H. Vasquez and Thomas F. Riley for a public hearing on the Irvine Co.’s offer to dedicate about 350 acres of parkland to the county for its regional park system. The planned dedication has been in the works for several years, Vasquez said.

The other was a proposal for a right-of-way agreement between the county and the Irvine Co. during construction work at John Wayne Airport.

Both items were approved 4 to 0, with Supervisor Roger R. Stanton absent.