Political Waters in San Gabriel Back to a Rolling Boil

After an unusually vitriolic election campaign last spring, in which three challengers swept into the City Council on a wave of slow-growth sentiment, things seemed to settle down to low-grade feelings of repugnance between opposing political groups.

There was even an occasional gesture of amicability between slow-growth newcomers and the old guard, such as Councilman Sabino Cici nominating Ted Anderson last May to fill a vacancy on the council. Anderson was a member of Citizens for Responsible Development, the grass-roots group that had supported the slow-growth candidates, while Cici was the last remaining incumbent from the old City Council and a leading spokesman for the losing slate.

But in the past week hostilities have come bubbling rapidly to the surface. Charges of blackmail, deceit, conspiracy and irresponsibility appear suddenly to have brought the city’s political life to a rolling boil again.

“It’s getting to be the happy farm around here,” said one shellshocked city official this week, responding to the rapid series of developments.

It apparently was all triggered by the announcement last week by longtime resident Dorothy Schneider that she had begun a recall campaign against Vice Mayor Frank Blaszcak. The controversial councilman fired back that the drive was being orchestrated by “quick-buck” developers who were stunned by recent slow-growth policies passed by the City Council.

“The Joe Isuzu fan club is out in force,” Blaszcak scoffed.

Next came the revelation in a local newspaper last week that the accounting firm of Mayor John Tapp had been suspended from federal housing jobs until March, 1990, by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because of problems with a pair of audits performed by the firm. That information, Cici charged, had been used by two disgruntled would-be city contractors to try to “blackmail” the mayor.

Cici has also kicked in with the charge, now being looked into by the Los Angeles district attorney, that recently elected councilmen have been meeting “clandestinely” with leaders of Citizens for Responsible Development to decide on the direction of the city government.

“There are two agendas at work here,” Cici said. “There’s the council’s agenda and there’s the hidden agenda.”

One item on the “hidden agenda,” Cici charged, is a plan to fire City Administrator Robert Clute, a fixture in the city for 15 years.

Besides the more publicized disputes, there is also talk among slow-growth activists of a recall campaign against Cici. Also, Blaszcak is talking about initiating a libel suit against several people, including Cici, concerning things said about him in last spring’s campaign, and several residents are calling for further investigations.

The only one who talks philosophically about all of this is Greg O’Sullivan, chairman of Citizens for Responsible Development. “Things get personality-oriented even in presidential debates,” O’Sullivan said. “I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised at what’s happening here.”

Most political rivalries in this diminutive city of 33,000 go back to the spring of 1987, when large numbers of disgruntled residents began attending City Council meetings, complaining loudly about what they perceived as an unruly proliferation of condominiums and apartments in the city.

Organized as Citizens for Responsible Development, the residents fought a hotel project planned for a former drive-in theater site on Valley Boulevard, ran a successful initiative campaign for a 1-year moratorium on most development in the city and, ultimately, elected slow-growth candidates Blaszcak, Tapp and James Castaneda to the City Council.

Hard to Implement

Slow-growth has been hard to implement, though the new councilmen boast that they have already addressed many of the slow-growth issues on which they campaigned. But the new-look City Council has had to contend with a $640,000 budget deficit. Mayor Tapp has had an openly rancorous falling out with his former CFRD supporters. And the complex task of rewriting the city’s General Plan to conform to slow-growth principals is, after some frustrating maneuvering, just getting started.

“It’s not like you wave a magic wand and things happen,” Tapp said in July.

A closer look at recent brouhahas indicates that, to a great measure, the principals are re-fighting old battles. These are some of the fast-moving developments that observers were trying to keep up with this week:

The Blaszcak recall. In five months on the council, Blaszcak has been guilty of “failure to provide responsible, accurate and open representation” and “irresponsible spending of tax dollars,” says resident Schneider, for years an unobtrusive member of the audience at City Council meetings. Last week she began a drive to collect 3,100 voters’ signatures to place the recall on the ballot next spring.

Citizens for Responsible Development quickly closed ranks behind the councilman. “The leadership gave Frank more than just a vote of confidence but actually voted last week to thank him for the leadership he has provided,” O’Sullivan said.

Blaszcak, who has been at the center of controversy since he bought a $2,100 portable telephone at city expense, said the charges listed by Schneider are so lacking in specifics that “it’s impossible to respond.” But he suggested ulterior motives. “The action is being motivated by a few people who have ties to the good old boys, who have had a stranglehold on the city for the past 30 years,” said the councilman, who returned his telephone in July after a storm of protest.

Schneider could not be reached for comment.

The Tapp audits. A spokesman for HUD’s Los Angeles office said Tuesday that Tapp’s firm had been suspended from further HUD work for 18 months after an investigation of two audits the firm had performed on Riverside projects showed a lack of “professional care.” “Working papers did not show sufficient auditing evidence was obtained to support the opinions (reached),” HUD examiners said.

Tapp said the difficulties were technical, having to do with HUD procedures rather than “generally accepted auditing standards as established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.” Nevertheless, Tapp has been called to a hearing by the California Board of Accountancy, which enforces professional standards in the state. The HUD spokesman said the federal agency had initially pressed for a two-year suspension, but settled for 18 months.

Though not directly related to city business, the Tapp audits became an issue during the early days of the new council, after the newly sworn-in councilmen introduced a “transition team” of attorney R. Zaiden Corrado and consultant Xavier Hermosillo, both with ties to development-minded Irwindale. Tapp said he told the two about his HUD difficulties during the days when they were doing work for the city.

After many residents, including CFRD members, expressed repugnance for the Corrado-Hermosillo duo, who had begun an investigation of the city’s Police Department, the council forced their resignation. But Tapp expressed anxiety about their knowledge of his business affairs. “I do not want to get Corrado mad,” the mayor said in a letter to City Atty. J. Kenneth Brown, “since he has confidential information about me that I feel would be damaging to the efforts of this council.”

Charge of Blackmail

Cici says the two were “blackmailing” Tapp to extract a contested $7,000 payment from the city for their services. Tapp said Corrado was guilty of a “breach of confidentiality” with a client by allowing Hermosillo to divulge the details of his HUD difficulties to the San Gabriel Valley Daily Tribune.

Corrado could not be reached for comment, but Hermosillo responded angrily. He said Tapp himself had revealed the investigation to a group of people, including his fellow councilmen, Corrado and Hermosillo. “He said it was bothering him,” Hermosillo said. “He said, ‘You’ll find out about it eventually, so I might as well tell you.’ ”

The “secret agenda.” Cici has called on the Los Angeles district attorney to investigate “secret” meetings between public officials and leaders of Citizens for Responsible Development. He mentioned specifically a Sept. 1 meeting at O’Sullivan’s house attended by Councilmen Blaszcak and Anderson, City Treasurer John Janosik and Planning Commissioner Guy Denechaud.

“A lot of things are happening in those closed meetings,” Cici said. “They say they’re not talking about city business, but they are.”

O’Sullivan said the public officials had attended the combined CFRD leadership meeting and housewarming party at his invitation. He said that all elected officials had been asked to resign from Citizens for Responsible Development, but that some occasionally attended meetings to “listen to what the community is saying.”

“We meet routinely every other week,” O’Sullivan said of the CFRD leadership, comparing his organization to the Chamber of Commerce board of directors. “Council people come on an invitational basis only. They’re not there to take orders but to listen. There’s nothing secret or conspiring about it. There’s no secret agenda.” He said that care is exercised not to invite more than two council members at a time. Three council members constitute a quorum of the council, which under the state’s Brown Act may not meet except at a regularly scheduled public meeting.

Deputy District Atty. Edward Feldman said he was reviewing correspondence from Cici and that he hoped to decide by the end of this week whether to investigate.

The Clute issue. Blaszcak last week called for an emergency closed-door session of the council to discuss unspecified “personnel issues.” Cici said Blaszcak was trying to fire City Administrator Clute. “That’s the only thing it can be,” Cici said, ticking off all the allowable reasons for a closed council meeting.

“There are no suits pending against the city. There are no contract negotiations going on. The only other reason is a matter of hiring and firing. And the only person the council can hire and fire is the city administrator.”

Blaszcak would not specify his reasons for calling the meeting. Asked if the proposed meeting had to do with Clute, he said, “Everything has something to do with Clute.”

Reluctant to Follow Lead

Blaszcak is known to have spoken of a desire to fire Clute because of the city administrator’s close associations with the city’s old guard. But other councilmen were reportedly reluctant to follow Blaszcak’s lead. The meeting, scheduled for last Thursday, was never held, and it has not been rescheduled.

No one knows what will happen next in this controversy-torn city. The rumor mill continues to grind out new stories.

O’Sullivan said his group, which has leaped back into the fray, had actually considered disbanding after the April election.

“We felt that we had the council there listening to people,” O’Sullivan said. “Obviously, we had hoped the council would be working much better together. There’s a whole lot less solidarity there than we had hoped for.

“I feel we were a little politically naive. We never expected things to be as controversial or chaotic as this.”