Blaszcak Asks D.A. to Probe ‘Pattern of Irregularities’

Vice Mayor Frank Blaszcak, facing a recall election on Tuesday, has asked the Los Angeles district attorney to investigate what he calls “a pattern of apparent irregularities” in city government, including employees working for developers.

In a seven-page statement he has sent to the district attorney, Blaszcak said the city’s one-time public works director and a city traffic engineer worked for the developer of a proposed shopping mall while they were on the city payroll.

Blaszcak also alleged that two former members of the city’s Planning Commission used their positions to gain support for their own development projects and that the current public works director has a “paving contract” with the city.

All of those accused by Blaszcak of irregularities said they had not violated any laws or did not comment.

City Administrator Robert Clute, shown a copy of Blaszcak’s charges, dismissed them as “last-minute political rhetoric,” which are “not factual.”

City Councilman Sabino Cici, a frequent critic of Blaszcak, called the vice mayor’s charges “garbage.”

Blaszcak called upon the district attorney to investigate those and other alleged “conflicts of interest” and violations of state law by city officials.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James Hickey said his office, which received Blaszcak’s statement in January, is “in the process of evaluating the material.”

Link With Suit

Blaszcak said he released the material last week because of developments in his libel suit against 11 current and former city officials. He said that his statement to the district attorney became part of the public domain last week, after lawyers for the defendants requested and received copies.

In the libel suit, Blaszcak charged various city officials, including a city councilman and a former mayor, with lying about, among other things, drug charges by police against Blaszcak 10 years ago that prosecutors declined to take to court because of insufficient evidence.

Blaszcak’s opponents in the recall election charged that the timing of the release was political.

The vice mayor released copies of documents and memorandums that purport to show that traffic consultant Hui Lai and former Public Works Director Frank Forbes, while working for the city, were employed by Dr. Alethea Hsu. At the time, she owned the 220,000-square-foot Edwards Drive-In Theater site, for which a 220,000-square-foot shopping center was proposed.

The drive-in project on Valley Boulevard has been delayed for more than two years as competing factions in the city have debated what should be built there. Hsu sold the property to developer Roger Chen in January, 1988.

Lai also was alleged to have worked for the developer of a proposed office and shopping center at the same time he was working for the city. That effort, the so-called Valley Center Project, was abandoned last year, after Lai performed traffic studies for the developer in 1987.

Lai Denies Conflict

The traffic engineer, who heads the Orange County-based firm, Traffic Safety Engineers, said he had never engaged in a conflict of interest. Forbes could not be reached for comment.

Lai said he had never worked for San Gabriel as the city traffic engineer and was never a city employee. “Basically, I was hired by the city to do an independent study,” he said. “I do a lot of consulting work for the city.”

He would not confirm or deny his connections with developers of the drive-in site.

Clute said the only work that Lai had done for the city was a state- and federally funded signalization study, which did not directly bear on either the Valley Center or the Edwards Drive-In projects. “He may in fact have worked for the developers, but I don’t think it was at the same time (as he worked for the city),” said Clute.

Support for Blaszcak

Former City Planner Dennis MacKay, who left the city in January to go to work for Detroit as a senior planner, this week confirmed Blaszcak’s account of the city’s employment of Forbes and Lai. The documents Blaszcak gave the district attorney included a memo from MacKay listing a series of “unethical” acts by some city officials.

In an interview, MacKay described going to a luncheon meeting in November, 1987, shortly after he was hired by San Gabriel, at which city officials huddled with principals of a company that was seeking to build a hotel on the drive-in site. “I was surprised to see, sitting on the side of the table with all of their (the developer’s) people, a fellow who had been introduced to me the previous week as the city’s traffic engineer,” MacKay said, referring to Lai.

The former city planner added that Forbes, who was serving the city as acting public works director, acknowledged having ties to the development company. “Forbes made no bones about the fact that he was working for them,” MacKay said. “He called himself a liaison for them.”

MacKay said that Lai had performed the traffic studies as part of the city’s environmental impact report on the drive-in project.

MacKay said that he had been surprised at the “flagrant” nature of the “underhanded things” that went on in San Gabriel. He said that, before last year’s City Council election, Clute had directed him to try to “dig up any dirt on Frank (Blaszcak).” MacKay said that such experiences ultimately led him to leave the city.

‘Blaszcak’s Man’

Clute said he did not recall giving MacKay such instructions. He said, however, that during MacKay’s 15 months in San Gabriel, the planner was closely associated with Blaszcak. “He was known here as Blaszcak’s man at City Hall,” Clute said. “All the staff knew that.”

Last December, Blaszcak asked City Atty. J. Kenneth Brown to give an opinion on Lai’s status as both city contractor and a consultant for developers. “The city does not have a policy,” Brown said, in a letter to the vice mayor, “which prohibits a consultant . . . from working on behalf of the city in one project while also working on a totally unrelated project for a private developer. . . .”

In the material submitted to the district attorney, Blaszcak resurrected longstanding allegations of improprieties against former Planning Commissioners Fred Paine and James Dickson.

The criticisms were first made more than a year ago, by leaders of the slow-growth group Citizens for Responsible Development, which was involved in a campaign for three seats on the City Council. A three-man slate of slow-growth candidates, including Blaszcak, was elected to the City Council in April, 1988.

Former Commissioners

Blaszcak said that Paine, as one of his last actions as a commissioner, voted to approve the division of a former nursery on San Gabriel Boulevard into six separate lots, which were to be developed as single-family homes and then improperly bought the property.

Paine acknowledged that, in March, 1988, three months after leaving the commission, he went into escrow on the property, completing the purchase last June.

But Paine said there was no connection between his actions as a commissioner and his role as a developer. “I was not even aware it was for sale (when he was a commissioner),” Paine said.

A spokeswoman for the state Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento said Wednesday that it would be difficult to charge a public official in Paine’s situation with a conflict of interest, unless it was established that there was “some sort of prearrangement or agreement that he was going to acquire an interest as a result of his decision.”

Financial Interest

“The question would be whether he had a financial interest in his decision, such as income or anything else that might have been promised to him at the time,” she said.

Dickson, the other former planning commissioner, said he had not acted improperly when his parents requested a “lot split” on a large lot at Broadway and Agostino Road, while Dickson sat on the commission. Half the lot was eventually developed as a 16-unit apartment building and half was used for Paine’s gas station and towing company.

“The lot split was the only action (on this project) ever taken while I was on the Planning Commission,” Dickson said, “and I excused myself from the room” while it was being considered.

Blaszcak also charged that Dwight French, the city’s part-time public works director, has a “paving contract” with the city, though “he has never filed an economic interest statement with the city.”

Design Contract

French said that, before he started to work for San Gabriel, his firm, Dwight French & Associates, had contracted with the city to do design work on Valley Boulevard, which is now being repaved. But French said that he had since sold his interest in the engineering firm to another company.

He said that he personally had neither done the design work nor reviewed the plans for the city. He added that he was not technically a city employee. “I work for a private engineering firm, and my time is billed by the firm,” said French, who said he still works for his old firm.

In a related development this week, Police Chief Don Tutich endorsed the recall drive against Blaszcak, whom he said was in league with rank-and-file police officers and firefighters to have the city’s public safety departments turned over to the county.

“Essential first steps in getting the city back on the road to recovery,” said Tutich in a statement, “are the recall of Frank Blaszcak and replacing him with a responsible council member . . . (who is) representative of the whole community and not one special interest group.”

Blaszcak has been endorsed by the Police Officers Assn. and the Firefighters Assn., whose members would earn higher salaries as county employees. But the vice mayor denied that he has ever advocated subsuming the city’s independent Fire Department and Police Department into county departments.