‘Pressure’ Described on Funds : City Worker Says Bradley’s Office, Task Force Made Calls

An employee in the Los Angeles city clerk’s office told auditors she “felt pressure” to approve the release of tax funds to a controversial Africa trade group linked to the investigation of Mayor Tom Bradley, despite the group’s failure to account for earlier expenditures, it was disclosed Thursday.

In sworn testimony made public at part of a city controller’s audit, the employee, Holly Wolcott, recounted getting “quite a few phone calls” from Bradley’s office and the head of the Task Force for Africa/Los Angeles Relations, Juanita St. John, regarding the group’s funding.

Calls From Secretaries

Wolcott, who oversees contracts that fund a variety of community groups, told auditors that she had received calls from the secretaries of Anton Calleia, Bradley’s longtime chief administrative assistant, but that she could not recall what was said. She did not identify who she felt pressure from, although she found St. John “intimidating.”

Bradley, Calleia and the secretaries, in separate testimony taken by the controller, said they could not recall whether they contacted the city clerk’s office on behalf of the task force.

A partial transcript of Bradley’s sworn interview provided the first inside glimpse of closed-door interrogations of the mayor last week by city investigators and auditors. It shows Bradley’s four lawyers aggressively attempting to control the situation, setting ground rules, interrupting to clarify questions and reserving the right to challenge the controller’s authority to take the mayor’s statement under oath.

No Recollection of Calls

Between his lawyers’ comments, Bradley did acknowledge that he often inquires about grants to community groups that “get hung up” in the city clerk’s office. But he said he could not recall whether he contacted anyone regarding task force funding and was not aware whether he had been told of problems the city was having in obtaining documentation.

City Controller Rick Tuttle said that due to the conflicting testimony his office reached “no conclusion” on the role Bradley or his staff played in securing the release of task force funds. “We were not able to determine because people were not able to remember,” he said.

The task force, which has received $400,000 from the city since 1985, largely at the behest of Bradley, is being investigated by the controller, the city attorney and the state attorney general’s office for possible misuse of funds. More than $180,000 is unaccounted for and was withdrawn by St. John as cash or personal checks, auditors have said.

Ties to Bradley

The group figures in the city attorney’s conflict-of-interest investigation of Bradley because St. John is his business partner and Bradley’s daughter once worked for the task force.

The audit released Thursday, as well as a study released by City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie, focused on the city clerk’s office and found major weaknesses on how officials there keep track of millions of dollars in funding for community groups and pet projects of elected officials, such as the Africa task force. A complete controller’s audit of the task force’s expenditures is still in progress.

Both reports were critical of management by the clerk’s office of the $40-million catch-all General City Purposes Fund, which includes city financing for an assortment of projects and events. They include such diverse purposes as the annual El Sereno Fourth of July parade, the Los Angeles Chinese New Year’s celebration and assistance to museums, veterans groups, AIDS projects and anti-gang violence efforts.

Management Controls

According to both the controller and the CAO, the clerk’s office needs to seriously improve its management of contracts for these kinds of expenditures to ensure that invoices are properly received before payments are made, that projects are in compliance with contract terms and that a host of other business procedures are being followed to guarantee that money is properly spent. In addition, the CAO recommended changing the format of many contracts to make it easier to enforce compliance.

Both audits emphasized the need for tighter contract management, which, as the CAO’s report noted, can be “an early warning” signal of developing problems.

City Clerk Elias Martinez said his office is preparing an official response to the contract management recommendations. But, he noted, the general purposes fund has been an unwanted burden that the CAO’s office used to manage but shifted to the clerk’s office a number of years ago.

“I simply administer the funds,” Martinez said.

“The CAO used to do it. They got tired of it. They know what a headache it was.”

Martinez said that in 1987 he sent a letter to the controller’s office urging that audits of the general purposes fund be conducted. A similar letter was sent last year to the CAO, Martinez said. Neither the controller nor the CAO performed the requested audits, he said.

‘Mayor’s Puppy’

Wolcott, an administrative worker in the city clerk’s office, described the Africa task force as a “mayor’s puppy” in one internal memo.

She told auditors it was unusual among the community service groups funded by the city because “I did not know and I still do not know what the (task force) does.”

Wolcott is on vacation till next month and cannot be reached for comment, her office said.

The transcripts released Thursday also show that Matt Callahan, a supervisor in the city clerk’s office, notified Bradley’s office last year that the task force was not properly accounting for expenditures.

That was before Bradley sought $121,000 for the task force for this fiscal year--a 23% increase in funds. Bradley dropped the request in April as questions surfaced publicly about the group.

Callahan told auditors he sent Calleia copies of letters to St. John requesting documentation of expenditures “to put them on notice that the (task force) was being asked to do something they haven’t done and they are supposed to do.”

In an interview with The Times on Thursday, Callahan said he “never felt pressure” from the mayor’s office over the funding.

Times staff writer Glenn F. Bunting contributed to this story.