O.C. Official Investigated for Alleged Impropriety : Government: Planner says he has not been influenced by myriad gifts from Mission Viejo Co.

The Orange County district attorney’s office is examining whether Planning Commissioner C. Douglas Leavenworth violated state conflict-of-interest law by voting on matters affecting the Mission Viejo Co. after he accepted gifts from the firm, officials said Monday.

The review of Leavenworth’s conduct means that the district attorney is now weighing separate conflict-of-interest allegations against three of the commission’s five members, who regulate Orange County’s powerful building and development industry.

Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Maurice L. Evans said his office began its review of Leavenworth last Friday after receiving a written request from an Orange County resident whom Evans declined to identify.

“We received a letter from a concerned citizen,” Evans said. “Based on that request, we’re going to review the matter.”

Leavenworth has denied any wrongdoing but acknowledged in a letter to Evans that he had been “careless and inattentive” in following state conflict-of-interest requirements.

The Times reported on Aug. 10 that Leavenworth may have violated California’s conflict-of-interest law in 1987 and 1988 by voting on matters affecting the Mission Viejo Co. within a year after he accepted $365 worth of gifts from the firm.

The law prohibits officials from participating in decisions affecting a company within 12 months after a company has provided that official with gifts worth $250 or more. Planning Commission records show that Leavenworth voted 22 times in 1987 and 1988 on items affecting the Mission Viejo Co., each time favoring the positions urged by company officials.

For his part, Leavenworth on Monday said that he was not aware of the $250 limit but was not influenced by any of the gifts.

Leavenworth also acknowledged that he has filed a new economic-disclosure statement with the county and the California Fair Political Practices Commission, revising downward by 34% the value of the gifts he received from the company in 1987.

In addition, Leavenworth released a copy of a two-page letter he mailed last Friday to Evans, of the district attorney’s office.

“There is no escaping the fact that I have been careless and inattentive with respect to some very significant and reasonable rules governing my position as a planning commissioner,” Leavenworth wrote. “It has been a very trying way to learn a lesson which should have been so easy. I am determined to, as Supervisor (Don R.) Roth says, ‘get my act together,’ and, hopefully, be the kind of planning commissioner of whom Orange County can be proud, both inside and outside the hearing room.”

Although he said the gifts from developers have not influenced his decision-making, Leavenworth--a retired aerospace engineer--indicated that he is reassessing whether he will continue to accept them.

“I like to play golf, I appreciate those invitations” from developers, Leavenworth said. “ . . . There’s no way I’d be able to play at the Mission Viejo Country Club, otherwise. But I’m willing to give that up, if . . . the public’s perception of it” is negative.

Roth, the supervisor who reappointed Leavenworth to the Planning Commission in 1987, had urged him to talk with the district attorney and, if warranted, to file the new disclosure form, downscaling the value of the Mission Viejo Co.’s gifts.

Prosecutor Evans said that two other planning commissioners, Chairman Steven A. Nordeck and Roger Slates, remain under investigation amid reports that they solicited contributions for former Assembly candidate Peter von Elten at a dinner with development representatives in May. Both Nordeck and Slates have denied soliciting contributions or actively participating in the dinner.

According to Leavenworth’s revised economic disclosure statement, the golf privileges, meals, ballet and sports tickets given him in 1987 by the Mission Viejo Co. were worth $242.50--$7.50 short of the $250 limit.

“I determined that I had made some errors in filing my (original) report in 1987,” Leavenworth said in an interview. “I always tried to put as high a figure on it as possible.

” . . . The values that are in there now are the best that I could come up with,” Leavenworth said, adding that he did not base his updating on actual receipts.

“I’m told that the (state) FPPC is interested in a fair estimate,” Leavenworth said. “They’re not interested in total accuracy.”

Leavenworth reduced the value of two days of golf and cart fees and a related dinner from $125 to $86 and changed eight other meals downward, from $100 to $91.50.

Leavenworth left unchanged the value of golfing privileges, meals and wine he received from three other developers in 1987. He did, however, revise from $100 to $50 the value of free golf and cart fees he got from the firm that developed Coto de Caza.

The most sizable change in his new disclosure statement is the value reduction, from $140 to $65, of ballet and sports event gifts from the Mission Viejo Co. Leavenworth said the reason for the difference is that he had reported gifts used on those occasions by his wife, as well as himself. Citing a regulation approved four years ago by the state FPPC, Leavenworth said the law did not require him to report the gifts used by his wife.

On both occasions, a ballet performance and an Angels baseball game, Leavenworth said the Mission Viejo Co. invited both him and his wife.

In addition to consulting a lawyer with the county counsel’s office, Leavenworth said he also was assured by colleagues on the Planning Commission that they do not disclose gifts used by their spouses.

Sandra Michioku, a spokeswoman for the FPPC, the agency with primary responsibility for interpreting and enforcing California’s conflict-of-interest law, said Monday that the regulation cited by Leavenworth is “self-explanatory.”

The regulation offers this guidance:

“Gifts given directly to members of an official’s immediate family are not gifts to the official unless used or disposed of by the official or given by the recipient member of the official’s immediate family to the official for disposition or use at the official’s discretion.”

The regulation also says:

“A gift given to the official, but designated for the official and spouse or family, is a gift to the official if the official exercises discretion and control over who will actually use the gifts.”

In the case of the Angels game, Leavenworth said he was contacted by David A. Celestin, the Mission Viejo Co.’s executive vice president for planning and government relations. Celestin asked Leavenworth if he and his wife would join Celestin and his wife for that evening, Leavenworth said.

Regarding the ballet, Leavenworth said he was contacted by phone by a representative of the Mission Viejo Co.’s parent firm, inquiring if the commissioner and his wife would be interested in attending. Leavenworth said that, after an hors d’oeuvres reception, he obtained the two tickets at the door of the event.