Lobbyist for Vegas Train Project Chosen : Government: The contract will go to Orange County’s influential and controversial Frank Michelena.

A bistate commission overseeing plans for 300-m.p.h. train service between Anaheim and Las Vegas is scheduled to award a no-bid consulting contract today to Frank Michelena, one of Orange County’s most influential and controversial lobbyists.

Paul Taylor, executive director of the 16-member California-Nevada Super Speed Ground Transportation Commission, said he personally recommended Michelena to panel members, who are scheduled to vote on several consulting contracts today at a meeting in Ontario.

Michelena has proposed raising money from private sources to help fund some of the commission’s activities.

Michelena has given gifts to members of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, including board Chairman Don R. Roth, and has helped raise campaign funds for them as well while lobbying on behalf of companies that have matters pending before county government.

Roth is vice chairman of the commission, which is scheduled to receive bids in July from firms interested in building and operating a high-speed train system between Anaheim and Las Vegas. Three companies have indicated that they will bid on the project and will propose either magnetically levitated or wheel-on-track rail systems.

The final project must be approved by both state legislatures, which have mandated that construction and operation of the rail system be at private expense.

Commission officials said Michelena is scheduled to be hired under a $5,000-a-month contract that is to be shared with Sacramento lobbyist Paula Treat. She shepherded the bill that created the bistate panel in 1987.

Until now, the commission’s expenses--totaling several hundred thousand dollars--have been paid out of donations of tax money from the cities of Las Vegas and Anaheim, on the premise that administration is separate from construction or operation of the planned rail service.

“We’re involved with a nonprofit corporation to finance studies and also, probably, to make grants to the commission,” Michelena said Thursday. The SST Super Speed Foundation, he said, will be led by Dave Boren of Huntington Beach, who is retired from the bowling alley business.

“We have not raised any money at this point,” Michelena said. “We have a lot of heavy selling to do.”

Michelena said he believes that most commission members want to make all of the panel’s funding private so that no additional money will be needed from Las Vegas, Anaheim or other cities along the proposed route.

Taylor and Roth said Thursday that the commission does not have to seek competitive bidding for the contract.

California Deputy Atty. Gen. Jack Winkler said some public agencies are authorized to award no-bid contracts for professional services, but he declined to comment specifically on the Treat-Michelena contract.

“I don’t think there is any hokeypokey going on,” Roth said of the the proposed contract. “We have to have money to keep this commission afloat, and we can’t do it on osmosis.”

Roth acknowledged Michelena’s extensive political ties to elected officials but pointed out that recently Michelena was unsuccessful in attempting to persuade the Board of Supervisors to renew the county’s contract with a traffic school.

Treat donated $350 to Roth’s reelection campaign Nov. 29, 1989, according to mandatory political finance reports filed with the county registrar of voters.

Roth listed $140 worth of gifts from Michelena--lunches and a candy basket--on his mandatory statement of economic interests for 1989-90.

Michelena, a former supervisor’s aide, has been questioned by law enforcement authorities in a variety of political corruption cases over the years, including the successful prosecution of former Anaheim fireworks magnate W. Patrick Moriarty. Michelena lobbied for Moriarty both locally and in Sacramento. But Michelena has never been charged with wrongdoing.

Also scheduled to be awarded a contract today is Anaheim-based Willdan Associates, an engineering firm that contributed $250 to Roth’s reelection campaign on June 14, 1989. Between 1988 and 1989, the company contributed $2,000 combined to two other bistate commission members: state Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Redlands) and Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda).

The proposed Willdan contract was competitively bid, Taylor said.