Lawndale Agency Loses Youth Funds Over Asbestos Flap

The administrator of a federally funded youth employment program has decided not to place student workers with the Lawndale Public Works Department this summer in the wake of an asbestos-exposure controversy involving the city.

The decision came two weeks after Joe Maradiaga, a former part-time city employee, told the City Council that he and other youths working for the Public Works Department were unknowingly exposed to asbestos last summer while cleaning up rubble left from the demolition of three city-owned buildings.

Public Works Director James Sanders pleaded not guilty to criminal charges for his role in razing the buildings in violation of state and federal regulations covering the handling of asbestos. City Manager James Arnold, who was ousted from his post this week, also pleaded not guilty in the case.

“There’s a lot going on with the Public Works Department and allegations, and it did not seem to me (to be) the best environment for youth to be working in,” said Gardena Assistant City Manager Mitch Lansdell, who administers the federal program for Gardena and Lawndale. “When there are other work sites available that provide good work experiences for youth, it doesn’t seem appropriate to place them” with Lawndale’s Public Works Department.

Lansdell said Friday he decided in June not to place summer employees with the Lawndale agency after reading newspaper accounts concerning the asbestos-exposure case and discussing the charges with Lawndale’s youth employment coordinator.

The program is still paying for 35 Lawndale youth workers. About half of them have taken jobs with other city departments and the remainder are working with the schools and in businesses.

In a memo to the City Council, Sanders criticized Lansdell’s decision, saying the work the youths did in his department should not be lost because of complaints from one disgruntled teen-ager.

Maradiaga was employed with the summer youth program in June, 1989, when he was asked to help clean up the demolition site. He said recently that he and the other youths were never told there was asbestos at the site and were not ordered to wear any special clothing, as required by federal health and safety regulations.

Maradiaga, who was hired as a regular part-time employee a few months after the summer program ended, said he didn’t learn that the razed buildings contained asbestos until this April. He said in an interview that he was fired by Sanders for making copies of a city-commissioned lab report on the asbestos case.

Maradiaga’s allegations are under investigation by the district attorney’s office, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Anthony Patchett, who is prosecuting Sanders and Arnold for the alleged asbestos disposal violations.

Sanders declined to be interviewed about Maradiaga’s allegations.

Arnold’s attorney, Patricia Friedel, has said there were legitimate reasons for Maradiaga’s firing that are “unrelated to the copying incident.”

In Sanders’ memo to the City Council, which was made public Thursday night, Sanders said Maradiaga “is trying to get even by making trouble.”

Maradiaga had worked on the demolition site 10 days after asbestos “was first observed” there, and youth workers were used “in the final stage of the project to pick up small chunks of concrete and black top which were too small or scattered to be picked up mechanically,” according to the memo.

Sanders also wrote that Lansdell should have consulted with the city manager before making his decision to bar youth workers from taking jobs with the Public Works Department. He also recommended that the council consider administering its own program.

“It seems irresponsible to make such an important decision on a significant benefit to Lawndale based on misinformation from a disgruntled, former, part-time, 19-year-old employee,” Sanders wrote.

Mayor Harold Hofmann said Thursday that Lansdell had “an obligation to let us know they were going to cut us off” and that the program’s administrator “just overstepped (his) bounds a little bit.”

Councilwoman Carol Norman disagreed, saying, “When you have the welfare of younger people to consider, are you going to allow these people to . . . perhaps be in danger? I can fully understand why there would be a cessation of the program” in the Public Works Department, she said.

A decline in federal funding has forced the program to cut back by 10 the number of student workers in both Gardena and Lawndale, Lansdell said.

This summer, 17 of the 35 student workers assigned to Lawndale are working for the city.

The program pays the salaries of low-income students seeking employment and takes applications from employers who want to provide the jobs.