Researchers Seeking Grants Asked to Donate to Bane

The fund-raising operation of Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana) has repeatedly pressed for contributions from scientists who had applied for research grants from the state Lupus Appropriations Board, of which Bane’s wife is an influential member.

Most of the more than a dozen scientists interviewed by The Times said they had no contact with Bane’s fund-raisers before applying for the grants. Several said they were troubled by the practices.

“It’s disturbing because it raises questions whether our grant would be approved or rejected for reasons other than the quality of our research,” said Dr. Christy I. Sandborg of UC Irvine, who received a total of $70,000 in 1986 and 1987 research funds.

At least two university researchers said they were urged to buy tickets to Bane’s annual $500-a-person fund-raiser when their grant application was pending. Dr. Kevin Sullivan, a scientist at the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, said he was also later solicited to contribute to the campaign of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) for three successive years.

Wife Longtime Member of Board

Bane’s wife, Marlene, is a longtime member of the three-person Lupus Board, which has dispensed nearly $7 million in state funds for lupus research grants since 1978. She also directs a high-powered campaign operation that has raised millions of dollars for both her husband and Brown, who are close allies.

Lupus is a rheumatic disease related to arthritis that generally afflicts women. Marlene Bane, 55, has suffered from the ailment since childhood.

Speaking for his wife, Bane said Friday that her solicitors probably made the calls on behalf of his campaign although he did not know who was called. He said she was unsure that any such calls were made for Brown’s fund-raisers. He said nothing improper was done.

“If I called them, that would be one thing,” said Bane, chairman of the influential Assembly Rules Committee and one of the Legislature’s most prolific fund-raisers. “I don’t make any calls.”

Bane said any suggestion that a campaign contribution was prerequisite for research funding was “totally false.”

But several scientists disagreed.

“There’s a general feeling among people who get lupus grants that you have to give contributions to get state funding,” said Joan Klotz, a UCLA scientist who has received $316,800 in the last six years. She said she contributed several hundred dollars to Bane believing, “It certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

“It’s not clear that it’s going to be funded on the basis of merit alone,” said Sullivan, whose grant proposal was turned down by the Lupus Board but later funded by the National Institutes of Health. “At the time, I was concerned that my proposal had not been reviewed objectively. I still wonder.”

A review of minutes and other records of the little-known Lupus Board also showed that the board awarded at least $757,375 for research to Dr. Raymond L. Teplitz over a 10-year period even though board members strongly questioned Teplitz’s research proposal, laboratory problems and failure to publish significant results. Each year, Marlene Bane, the lone non-physician on the board, went to bat for Teplitz and urged higher funding levels than her colleagues.

Tom Bane called Teplitz a “good friend” of both himself and his wife. He noted that Teplitz has contributed to his campaign over the years but said he did so “on a personal basis, not a grant basis.” Campaign records show that Teplitz contributed just $100 to Bane in both 1987 and 1988.

Bane also said Teplitz has “given an education to me and Marlene” about lupus.

Teplitz received much of his research money when he was at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte. Tom Bane is on City of Hope’s board of directors and is chairman of the National Lupus Foundation, which was founded to raise money for grants to City of Hope scientists. Teplitz, who left the City of Hope to join the UC Davis faculty in 1985, could not be reached Friday.