Mojonnier Will Pay Fine for Double-Billing

Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier (R-Encinitas) has agreed to pay a $13,200 fine for double-billing the state and her campaign fund for business trips, as well as using political donations to pay for fashion and beauty treatments for her staff, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp said Friday.

The fine, which Mojonnier must pay to the state out of her personal account, is “a substantial amount of money” and one of the largest extracted from an officeholder for misusing campaign funds, said attorney general spokesman Alan Ashby. In December, Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) agreed to pay $21,075 to the state for using campaign funds for personal travel and expenses, such as a graduation party.

Despite the stiff penalty--double the $6,618 in disputed charges--Mojonnier said Friday that she was “delighted” with the outcome of the attorney general’s probe because she claimed it showed the financial irregularities were a result of inadvertent bookkeeping errors. Her office issued a press release entitled “Mojonnier Cleared of Intentional Wrongdoing.”

“The attorney general found that nothing was done intentionally, that there were errors made,” said Mojonnier, who also blamed the mistakes on the emotional distress caused by her bitter divorce. “I’m delighted. I felt that was very clear.”

But the two-page agreement released by the attorney general’s office Friday makes no mention of Mojonnier’s intentions, except to say that the Republican lawmaker signed the settlement without admitting wrongdoing. Ashby said, “It’s hard not to appreciate that double-dipping is wrong.

“If you spent money on travel, reimburse yourself from your campaign fund and then the state reimburses you for the same travel, and you pocket the money, I find it difficult to believe that any intelligent person in our society would not perceive that as wrong.”

The attorney general’s office initiated the investigation after newspaper stories last summer revealed the apparent double-dipping on trips and the misuse of political funds on beauty and fashion services for five employees in Mojonnier’s San Diego-district office.

In all, the investigation found that Mojonnier double-billed the state and her campaign fund on three trips for $5,773.

The major part of that--$4,371--came from a three-week trip in 1988 to Spain as the state’s representative from the Legislature’s Quincentennial Committee, a panel of legislators planning the 1992 celebration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America.

She was also cited for two other 1988 trips: $1,115.54 for expenses on a trip to Washington to meet with members of the California congressional delegation, and $286 for a National Conference of State Legislators in Nevada.

The attorney general’s office also found that Mojonnier improperly spent $845 in campaign funds to improve the appearance of her office staff in April, 1989.

She used $440 in campaign funds to pay a fashion consultant from La Mesa’s Reflection of Success to spend two days meeting individually with staff members to discuss what kind of clothes they should wear. She also paid $405 for the same staffers to visit Beau Monde, a Mission Valley salon, where they received 2 1/2- to three-hour beauty make-overs.

The attorney general concluded that the expenditures were an “unauthorized personal use” of campaign funds. Distinct from the public monies legislators receive to run their state offices, campaign funds are to be utilized for anything related to political, legislative or governmental purposes.

Mojonnier and her Sacramento attorney, Michael Rothschild, said Friday that the lawmaker decided to pay the fine related to the beauty and fashion expenditures rather than dispute the attorney general’s interpretation of campaign law in court.

The North County lawmaker--a member of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, a powerful panel that helps shape the state budget--said she overlooked nearly $6,000 in double billings for a variety of reasons.

Both Mojonnier and Rothschild emphasized that the double billings were “inadvertent” and blamed them on the fact that the Encinitas lawmaker was making a switch from one accountant to another last year. They said that, during the transition, the accountants apparently became confused and billed her campaign account for the state-paid travel.

Asked why she didn’t catch the errors, Mojonnier said: “They (the wrong charges) were all a bunch of little things, is what they were.”

“I wasn’t paying attention at all to my personal stuff,” she said. “I was trying to do the business of the people. It wasn’t like anybody was overcharged.

“The other thing is that, when you are paying a person to handle things for you, you are expecting that person to be watching out for those kind of things,” said Mojonnier. “That’s like when you are paying an attorney to advise you, you take that person’s advice and do what they suggest.”

She also said it was “beyond the shadow of a doubt” that she didn’t catch the errors because of the personal turmoil she was in last year after filing for divorce from North County flower grower Erwin Mojonnier.

“Going through a divorce was a very tough thing, and ours was not an amicable one,” she said, adding that her divorce is nearly final. “My husband had been handling all the personal affairs when I was in office, and, because of the divorce situation, that no longer occurred.”

Mojonnier had agreed in principle to the $13,200 fine more than a week ago, but the settlement became hung up on how the written agreement “would characterize the payments by her,” said Ashby. In particular, he said, the lawmaker wanted to avoid words like “fine” and “penalty” in the agreement, which will not be filed in court, he said.

“In our view, it’s a fine,” Ashby said.

The settlement allows Mojonnier to pay the $13,200 to the state in three installments that begin in September and end a year later. The agreement deducts $4,371 that Mojonnier already paid to the state after the newspaper stories were published.

The settlement bars the state from pursuing any criminal action against Mojonnier in connection with those expenditures.

Friday’s agreement also details that Mojonnier has already returned a computer system, purchased with 1985 political funds, to her campaign office. The equipment had been used in her estranged husband’s flower-growing business, according to divorce records.