Ex-Employees of O.C. Use Revolving Door : Government: A survey of former staffers found more than 20 who returned to do business with the county.

Patti Gorcyzca quit her job as a financial analyst in the Orange County administrative office 11 months ago to work for a financial consulting firm based in Minneapolis.

Three weeks ago she was back, visiting county supervisors and their staffs on behalf of the firm, Evansen Dodge Inc. The company was competing with San Francisco and Irvine firms for a $60,000 county contract to serve as a financial adviser for the $1-billion Santa Ana River Flood Control Project.

The San Francisco firm, Bartle Wells Associates, scored higher than Evansen Dodge in a staff evaluation done by the County Environmental Management Agency, agency director Ernie Schneider said in a confidential memo to the Board of Supervisors.

The Board of Supervisors nevertheless voted 5-0 to contract with Gorcyzca’s firm.

“She’s familiar with the project,” said Scott Morgan, top aide to Supervisor Roger R. Stanton.

“Evansen Dodge has an office in Orange County and Bartle Wells doesn’t,” added Tom Matthews, aide to Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley.

Officials at Bartle Wells were not pleased. “We thought we had a good chance to get the contract,” said Lora Stovall, who handled the firm’s discussions with the Environmental Management Agency staff. “But you just know what’s going to happen, knowing that Evansen Dodge had Patti Gorcyzca there.”

Gorcyzca, whose pitch for her company was above-board and violated no laws, did nothing different from what many former county employees have done through the years--go through the revolving door of government.

Some critics, however, say such activities raise the specter of influence peddling among companies that hire away county employees--often for much higher salaries--to win government business or more favorable decisions. The activities are a concern because, according to some political activists, county government may not get the best value for its tax dollars and because even the appearance of a conflict of interest leads to greater public distrust of government.

A recent survey of former county employees by the Times Orange County Edition found more than 20 who later returned wearing different hats.

Sharon Greene, for example, is a former Orange County Transportation Commission employee who has received more than $160,000 in consulting fees from that agency since beginning her own transportation consulting business in 1986. Her husband, Michael Schneider, works for Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas, an engineering and consulting firm that has received more than $2.9 million in contracts from the transportation agency since 1986. According to transportation commission Executive Director Stanley T. Oftelie, Parsons has subcontracted some of its transportation commission work to Greene.

Parsons also employs Tom Jenkins, Oftelie’s predecessor, who was the commission’s executive director until 1984. The firm also has received more than $1 million in contracts from the Orange County Transit District, where Jenkins served as chief planner in the 1970s.

Members of the county supervisors’ staffs also pass through local government’s revolving door. Brian May, formerly of Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder’s office, recently lobbied the supervisors, including Wieder, on behalf of a civil engineering firm that won a county contract.

County employees are hired by firms that “expect you to have an in with county government. . . . It’s one of the things they pay you for,” said Loretta Sanchez, a former Orange County Transportation Commission employee. Sanchez now works for the Irvine firm that competed unsuccessfully for the contract won by Evansen Dodge Inc.

Even former county supervisors have returned to lobby on various issues.

Just last week, for example, former Supervisor Philip L. Anthony submitted the papers needed to register as an “influence broker” under the county’s so-called TIN CUP (Time Is Now, Clean up Politics) regulations adopted in 1977 after a citizens’ petition drive.

Anthony, defeated in the wake of a campaign money-laundering scandal in 1980, has been a lobbyist for years. Under current county rules, he did not have to register unless he gave more than $452 in campaign contributions to county supervisors in a single 12-month period. Anthony said he inadvertently became subject to the registration requirement with a $500 donation to Supervisor Don R. Roth.

Anthony represents a varied clientele that includes churches and developers.

The federal government prohibits such contact with a former government employer for a period of one year; if the matter pending is one that the ex-official dealt with while working for Uncle Sam, that person is prohibited from such contact for the rest of his or her life. The state of California has a similar lifetime rule in regard to matters that a former official handled while in government service.

Few local governments, however, limit such contacts once an official or employee leaves.

However, the Pentagon procurement scandal and influence-peddling charges against former White House aides have led to a renewed scrutiny of the ties between local governments and their former employees.

The city of Los Angeles, for example, is considering a one-year ban on these kinds of contacts.

“This has been a problem at every level of government,” said Mark Haarer, acting executive director for Southern California Common Cause. “Restrictions are needed, or else these people will continue to have influence and access that other people will never have,” Haarer said. “There has to be a level playing field.”

Shirley Grindle, co-author of the county’s TIN CUP ordinance, agreed.

“I think we need such a rule,” she says. “It’s just common sense.”

But former employees and county officials strongly dispute the need for such regulations, saying that county government already operates in a fishbowl, that even an appearance of a conflict of interest is noted by the news media and watchdog activists such as Grindle.

Still, some county officials and political activists expressed concern, and one county supervisor said he favors restrictions.

“I just don’t like this revolving-door stuff,” said Sherry Meddick, president of the Rural Canyon Homeowners Assn., which tangles frequently with county government over development plans in the eastern foothills of the county.

“Obviously there is an inherent conflict in processing the planning (for a development project) and then working for the company that submitted the plan. Who knows when the job offer was first made? Who knows if a job offer made it way easier for that company to get its projects approved?”

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez says he would have an “adverse reaction” to a former aide’s lobbying him on a matter pending before county government and that he would “welcome” a one-year ban on such contacts. None of Vasquez’s aides has gone on to become a lobbyist, although one, Joan Gladstone, recently started a public relations firm.

Retiring Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks was unavailable for comment, but his second-in-command, Michael R. Capizzi, one of at least two candidates seeking Hicks’ job, said Orange County should consider a policy on the matter.

“There’s certainly a closeness or an insider’s awareness” on the part of a former employee “of what’s going on inside an agency, and this probably should be looked at for some regulation.”

“Other jurisdictions have felt it necessary to impose some restrictions, including the state, so I think we should examine it and determine what is appropriate for Orange County.”

In response to a grand jury recommendation, the Board of Supervisors in 1987 adopted a policy that requires county department chiefs to notify the board before any contract is given to a former county employee or family member within two years of separation from the county. The policy is merely a guideline, not an ordinance, and it says nothing about lobbying by former county workers or by the firms that hire them.

John Erskine, a former aide to Supervisor Wieder, is executive director of the Orange County Building Industry Assn., and he helped bring about the demise of affordable-housing quotas in the county. Erskine said that a one-year ban on contacts with government officials such as the one in force for the federal government “would have killed “ him in the first 12 months in his job at the BIA.

Anthony, the former supervisor, agreed.

Erskine, now a Huntington Beach City Councilman, works in the Costa Mesa office of the influential Los Angeles-based law firm of Nossaman, Guthner & Elliott.

However, lobbyist Lyle Overby, who was an aide to former Supervisor Ralph A. Diedrich, said his business took about a year to establish and that it therefore would not have been much affected by a 12-month ban. He has represented developers, building contractors and airport concessionaires before county supervisors.

Former county public works director Carl Nelson said he had identified the firm he wanted to work for even while public works director because Aram Keith, his current employer, had been a personal friend of his for many years. Nelson had also been passed over twice as a candidate for chief of the Environmental Management Agency. The Keith Cos. hired him in January.

The Keith Cos. has county contracts, some of which involve projects such as the planned Irvine Coast development that Nelson handled while he was a county official. The firm has contracts totaling $1.9 million with the County Environmental Management Agency, according to county contract lists.

Nelson helped complete work on a special taxing district for the Irvine Coast area during his first month with the Keith Cos., but company officials say that after the first month, he switched away from such projects, partly to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

“Everything I knew and did in county government benefits the private sector,” Nelson acknowledged, “but they don’t exactly use me as bait to get more business. We present our proposals. I don’t see any insider connection. For every time I’ve contacted somebody at the county, we’ve (the firm) contacted 50 other agencies.”

Nelson added that, despite his friendship with Keith, whose engineering firm has done business with the county for years, he never let any prospects for future employment influence his decisions as county public works director. “I never looked at it that way,” he said.

Keith said he hired Nelson for his expertise in organizing public works projects, not for any ability to get county contracts.

“We have as many as 30 to 40 positions at our firm open at one time,” Keith said. “Competition for good people is fierce. Carl is very, very good.” Far from having special access to former bosses and co-workers, Keith said, Nelson may run into resistance at his former agency because it tends to dislike people who leave.

“Contrary to public opinion, it hurts us,” Keith said. “Most of our work with the county is based on qualifying in advance for certain types of work, along with other companies, and then it’s just awarded on a rotation basis. The county likes to spread its business around. It’s awarded based on competence, not favoritism.”

Others such as Nancy Coss-Fitzwater, a former specialist in government relations for the County Transportation Commission, and Dan Miller, a former supervisor’s aide and county employee who now works for a management consulting firm, said they should be seen differently from lobbyists because they do consulting work.

“I don’t go out there to solicit business per se,” said Miller, whose firm specializes in government management studies and audits. “We’ve usually replied to the county’s request for a proposal, and I’m just there in case there are any questions. . . . A lobbyist represents someone else. I’m there” meeting with county officials “because I’m the person who is actually going to do the work.” Miller acknowledged, however, that his company does expect him to generate business, not merely write reports for clients.

Greene and May were unavailable for comment. Gorcyzca said her company instructed her not to answer The Times’ questions unless they related to the company’s work in general and not hers in particular.

In general, county supervisors and officials who have been lobbied by former employees said they viewed such lobbying efforts as only raising the appearance of impropriety and thus not justifying adoption of a restrictive ordinance.

“It would be taking a sledgehammer to the problem,” said Tom Matthews, an aide to Riley. Mathews did acknowledge that contacts with former county employees “look bad” to the public.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, also is a county transportation commissioner and chairman of the Orange County Transit District, said he does not sense that former county employees succeed much in taking advantage of their connections, except in gaining access to officials.

“They would have an easier time picking up the phone and getting through” to supervisors and county officials, he says, “but I have no sense or feeling that they (county officials) are bending over backwards for anybody.”

Added Wieder: “I’d have to think about it. The number of former aides or employees coming around doesn’t seem significant, but I’d be really interested in getting more data.”

Former County Supervisor Bruce Nestande, now a vice president of a development firm and a member of the state Transportation Commission, argued that a one-year ban on contacts between former county employees and their agencies would only give the public a “false sense of security.” Each case should be scrutinized separately for its potential to harm the public good, he said, because if all firms competing for a county contract are qualified to do the work, then it’s “only natural” to want to deal with the people already known and trusted.

“I can go either way on these types of restrictions,” Nestande said, “but what really counts are those situations where the county may not be getting the product or services it’s paying for.”

Larry Parrish, who recently announced he has resigned as county administrative officer to work as a lobbyist in Sacramento, will be employed by the firm currently representing the county there. In fact, Parrish, in his capacity as a county official, dealt with the firm’s annual contract renewals and approved its requests for higher pay. If he was to return to the board seeking renewal of the lobbying firm’s contract next year or requesting an increase in the contract fees, he would be passing through the revolving door.

“I guess it’s for others to say if that would be a conflict of interest,” Parrish said.

As for others who leave county government to work for developers and consulting firms, Parrish said: “Why not? They spend their time in county government regulating and harassing the developers, robbing them on the public’s behalf through extractions (concessions) they win from them. I don’t like regulators, even when I’m working with them. My own eyebrows have been raised by the private sector’s willingness to hire some of them.”

As for competitors who complain about losing county contracts to firms that have a former county employee with access, Parrish said, they “think that the structure of the universe was created to frustrate their immediate interests.”

Gorcyzca, meanwhile, has been making the rounds of county agencies. Within the past few weeks, she has been to the County Transportation Commission to meet with Oftelie, hoping that her firm will get some bond financing business with Measure M, the half-cent sales tax for transportation projects on the Nov. 7 ballot countywide.

The measure, if voters approve it, would raise $3.1 billion over 20 years for highway, road and transit improvements to be financed through bond sales backed by expected sales tax revenue.

“Measure M hasn’t even passed yet, but Patti’s anticipating that it will,” Oftelie said. “That’s just smart business.”

The Revolving Door For County Employees County Government 1 County employees who have technical experience and political savvy are frequently hired away by private firms, often for their expertise and contacts in county government. 2 Some former county employees continue to have dealings with county agencies or the Board of Supervisors on behalf of their new employees. Bond Underwriters, Financial Consultants: Sarah C. Walker, Patti Gorcyzca, John Gibson, Dan Miller Lobbyists: Lyle Overby, Frank Michelena, Brian May, Philip L. Anthony, Ralph Clark, Bruce Nestande Building Industry Assn.: John Erskine, Tom Daly Devlopers, Engineering Firms: Carl Nelson, Brian Speegle, Peter Herman, Tom Jenkins, Nancy-Coss-Fitzwater