City Employee Who Inspects Building Plans Investigated

The Huntington Beach employee responsible for checking developers’ plans before city building permits are issued is under investigation by the district attorney’s office after authorities received a tip that he allegedly solicited money from a developer and drafted building plans for other developers, which he then approved.

City Administrator Paul E. Cook said the incident was investigated by the Huntington Beach Police Department before he asked the district attorney to pursue the matter.

Sergio Martinez, a 15-year city employee, has been on paid suspension since last Thursday from his $40,000-a-year job as the Planning Department’s only plan checker, while two district attorney’s investigators interview his co-workers and others in city hall, Martinez and other sources said.

Denies Wrongdoing

Martinez, in an interview, denied any wrongdoing.

Sources close to the case said allegations against Martinez include claims that he duped a builder unfamiliar with Huntington Beach into giving him money at a time when the builder’s plans were subject to approval by Martinez. The incident allegedly took place a few years ago.

Further details of the alleged wrongdoings were still sketchy Thursday. Wallace J. Wade, the deputy district attorney whose investigators have questioned several employees in Huntington Beach city hall, would not confirm that his office was even probing the matter.

But sources said investigators are also trying to determine whether Martinez--a government architect in Cuba before he fled that country in 1963--or his wife, who operates a drafting business out of their home, ever were paid to draft plans for developers, plans that Martinez later checked and approved.

That, Cook said, would constitute a conflict of interest and violations of city personnel rules. Martinez and his wife, Doris, both studied architecture in Cuba but neither has an architectural license in this country.

As the city’s only Planning Department checker, Martinez is one of the people responsible for making sure buildings are built to meet Huntington Beach codes, officials said. Cook said Martinez’s “plan checking was strictly for non-structural work, making sure a plan had correct parking spaces, setbacks from property lines. He had nothing to do with requirements for structural things that could have resulted in an unsafe building. That’s not a concern of ours.”

Conforming to city codes often can be time-consuming and expensive for big developers and small property owners alike. City officials said Martinez’s job is to check plans for building everything from a high-rise hotel to a residential patio cover to ensure that all land-use building codes are met. Only then are building permits issued.

As such, Planning Director Mike Adams said, Martinez’s job is “critical to the planning process.”

The alleged incident involving Martinez and the builder occurred eight to 10 years ago, sources said, so colleagues of Martinez since 1980 will have to be questioned by investigators.

In an interview at his home Wednesday, Martinez said he has not been questioned by authorities but trusts the investigation will be “fair . . . because this is America.” He declined to talk about specific allegations, saying he believed doing so might interfere with the ongoing investigation--which is expected to continue several more weeks.

“I have a clear conscience,” Martinez added, “so I can only wait.”

Cook said that while he does not believe other city employees were involved with Martinez’s alleged wrongdoings, “that is what we will be trying to find out. . . . If there is some smelly air down there, I want it cleaned up, if it involves other employees, which I dont think it does. . . . We will be trying to find out not only what other employees but what, if any, developers, contractors or expediters (lobbyists, consultants) are involved.”

Cook confirmed some details of the investigation but he would not identify the developer or developers who have allegedly been involved with Martinez, other than to say that they are not involved with the city’s massive, multimillion-dollar redevelopment projects.

“These were apparently little guys,” Cook said.

According to several sources involved in the case, allegations that Martinez “may be mishandling the law and personnel rules over a period of time” were brought to the police department by a police department employee there several weeks ago.

Although the sources would not identify the police employee or how the worker learned of Martinez’s alleged wrongdoings, Cook said the employee doesn’t live in Huntington Beach, “went to the cops as a righteous thing” and stated that “several employees knew about (the alleged wrongdoing) for some time, and were openly” whispering about it among themselves.

Cook would not elaborate.

Detectives in the Police Department’s vice and special enforcement unit investigated the allegations for “a couple of weeks,” Cook said, then briefed the city manager when they concluded that “the charges had some substance.”

Cook called in the district attorney’s office to pursue the investigation “a couple of weeks ago.”

Adams, who is acting community development director and, as planning director, is Martinez’s immediate boss, was interviewed Thursday morning by the investigators and said he was surprised to learn of the probe.

“When I was his (immediate) supervisor, he would tell me if his wife did a plan,” Adams said. This was four or five years ago, he added.

Martinez, who lives with his wife and 25-year-old daughter in Huntington Beach, talked only briefly about the pending investigation but spoke openly of his own past, beginning with his flight from Cuba 25 years ago.

“I was, like everybody else, a political refugee,” he said. “Everything was nationalized in Cuba, and I was working for the government. I was an architect under Che Guevara.”

His wife and daughter, who at the time was a year old, traveled from Havana to Miami in an American Red Cross boat, while he remained behind and sought political asylum in Spain. He eventually traveled from Spain to New York, where he reunited with his family.

Seven years later, they moved to Huntington Beach, and Martinez was hired by the Planning Department. He said that only after they put their daughter through Cal State Long Beach did they buy their first new car. That, he said, was six months ago.

“I believe this will all work out for us,” he said.