Judge Says Baker Told of Signing His Name to Check

An Orange County Superior Court judge who is chairman of a nonprofit foundation from which congressional candidate C. David Baker was forced to resign said Friday that Baker admitted signing the judge’s name on a $48,000 foundation check.

“He told me my signature was put on the check,” said David G. Sills, chairman of the board of the Irvine Health Foundation.

District Attorney Investigating

At the request of the foundation, the Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating Baker’s involvement in “some possible improprieties” concerning the foundation, Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi said. Capizzi would not elaborate but said Friday that the investigation should be completed within 30 days.

Sources have said the district attorney’s office was told that Baker, as executive director of the foundation, wrote the $48,000 check to himself while waiting for a loan to come through in the final days of his failed bid for the Republican nomination in the 40th Congressional District.

Baker, an Irvine city councilman, narrowly lost the race on Tuesday.

Baker’s attorney, Paul S. Meyer, said that his client placed a stop-payment order on the check within 12 hours after it was written, before any money was transferred from the foundation’s checking account and before the check was discovered by board members.

The account requires two signatures on all checks, and only three foundation board members were authorized to sign them: Baker, Sills and Timothy L. Strader, chairman of Legacy Cos., an Irvine developer.

Sources said Friday that, in addition to writing the $48,000 check, Baker transferred $75,000 from an interest-bearing foundation account to the foundation’s checking account and then transferred it back within 24 hours. That transfer was discovered by a part-time secretary for the foundation and reported to Sills on June 2, the sources said.

Baker also took a blank foundation check that was returned unused, sources said.

At the board’s request, Baker resigned June 3 as executive director and a member of the board of the foundation, according to Sills.

Meyer declined to comment on specifics of his client’s case, but he did criticize Sills.

“I would think that the judge would be satisfied to let the D.A. go about his business before making any statements,” Meyer said.

Meyer said Baker, 35, was out of town with his family Friday and that he has told Baker not to comment.

Baker, who lost the election Tuesday to Newport Beach lawyer C. Christopher Cox, needed money to mail campaign literature in the closing days of the race, according to Baker political consultant Frank Caterinicchio. But a loan that Baker was getting through a second mortgage on his Woodbridge house had not yet been finally approved, campaign manager John Nakaoka said.

Baker eventually wrote checks totaling $105,000 out of his personal checking account to cover campaign costs, including printing and mailing in the last week before the election, sources close to the campaign said.

Baker’s campaign committee is estimated to be $175,000 in debt after spending about $500,000, according to Caterinicchio.

Baker ran the Irvine Health Foundation out of his Costa Mesa law office. He was paid $37,200 last year as executive director, Baker reported in federal campaign-disclosure statements. So far this year, he has been paid $20,000 by the foundation, the statements showed.

After reporting the $75,000 transfer, the foundation secretary also found that two blank checks were missing and reported that to Sills, sources said.

On June 3, with the election only a few days off, board members Sills, Strader and Irvine Co. Senior Vice President Gary H. Hunt confronted Baker, according to John Miltner, a vice chancellor at UC Irvine and another member of the foundation’s seven-member board of directors.

Miltner said he was out of town at the time but that Strader, who was chairman of Baker’s congressional campaign, called him at a university retreat and confirmed Baker’s dismissal.

“I felt from our standpoint as directors we had no choice,” Miltner said.

It was at the June 3 meeting that Baker admitted signing Sills’ signature, the judge said.

“My understanding is it was mine that was used,” said Sills, who added that he had not seen the check because it has not yet been returned by the bank.

Sills said he went to the district attorney’s office last Saturday with information about the checks.

The foundation board, which is scheduled to meet Wednesday, is calling in an outside accounting firm to go over the foundation’s books.

“The directors are very mindful of their legal fiduciary duty, as well as their responsibility to the community,” said Douglas Mancino of Los Angeles, the foundation’s attorney.

Mancino said he has told the board members not to comment on personnel matters, and they have declined to do so.

The Irvine Health Foundation, formerly the Irvine Community Foundation, was established in 1985 as part of a deal with American Medical International in which AMI would operate a $90-million hospital and a 110,000-square-foot medical center. Both are now under construction near Sand Canyon Avenue, just off the San Diego Freeway. They are due to open in the summer of 1989. The land was donated by the Irvine Co.

The foundation was started with $15 million from AMI and has made a number of grants to health-care organizations. Its assets now total more than $16 million.

Baker became involved with the hospital project in the early 1980s, first as a private citizen and then as a member of the City Council after his election in 1984.

Baker has been considered instrumental in bringing the hospital to the city. He and others--including philanthropist Arnold Beckman--lobbied hard to have the hospital built in east Irvine rather than on the UC Irvine campus, a location urged by university officials.

Baker said often during his congressional campaign that the hospital was one of his proudest achievements.

Sills and Baker have been political allies since 1980, when Baker ran unsuccessfully for the Irvine City Council.

Sills, then an Irvine councilman himself, helped Baker get elected in 1984. A year later, Sills was appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to the Orange County Superior Court.

Both Sills and Baker are Republicans, and the two often lined up against Mayor Larry Agran and attempts to slow growth in Irvine.

Baker’s congressional campaign manager, Nakaoka, said Sills did not endorse Baker’s congressional candidacy because of his position on the bench. But Nakaoka said Sills’ campaign committee, Friends of David Sills, contributed $500 to Baker’s campaign in mid-May.