Panel Accelerated Action on Farm Contract : Labor: An Oxnard member played a big role in improving the priority of the $2-million proposal to train farm workers, which critics call a sham.

A $2-million state contract to train Ventura County farm workers to pick crops was moved from 335th place on a waiting list to first when approved in August amid criticism that it is a subsidy for local farmers, state documents show.

The contract with the Ventura County Agricultural Assn. to “cross-train” field hands to pick more than one crop was given fast-track treatment by the obscure state Employment Training Panel after member Robert Munoz of Oxnard persuaded the panel in May to make farm projects a top priority.

At the panel’s next meeting, in June, Munoz declared incorrectly that the only agricultural applicant was the Ventura County farm association. And, citing immediate seasonal demands in farming, Munoz urged quick approval of a training contract.

Two months later, despite serious concerns by its staff and strenuous, unprecedented objections by the state Employment Development Department, the job-training agency approved the Ventura project 5 to 2.

Since then, both competing growers and farm-worker advocates have said the Ventura program is a sham that benefits growers and consultants who are paid to implement it but does little for the workers themselves.

Critics have also said the basis for the contract’s special consideration was flawed. They said there was no need to move quickly on the contract because of the onset of harvests, since Ventura County farming is year-round and most of the seven participating companies primarily grow winter crops. Indeed, one is an egg factory not affected by seasonal labor demands.

The rush to approve the contract apparently had another effect. Three Oxnard vegetable farmers scheduled to train nearly three-fourths of the 800 workers in the contract dropped out this month, saying they could not possibly train enough employees to meet the demands of the contract.

The Ventura agricultural association has argued that the contract will enable farmers to train laborers to pick or tend many crops and to operate machinery, helping them to secure stable, year-round employment in the county. The proposal also includes 80 hours of English-language training for each trainee.

Robert Roy, president of the 110-member Ventura agricultural association, said the association’s program has been criticized because it involves farming.

“Because it’s agriculture, it’s a subsidy,” Roy said. “These people are being trained and cross-trained to make them more valuable employees and to avoid them going on the unemployment rolls. There’s going to be that English-as-second-language element. Are you going to tell me that’s not good?

“Every step of the way,” Roy added, “this has probably been the most scrutinized proposal ever put before the Employment Training Panel. There have been so many changes required, so many hoops to jump through, it’s just incredible.”

The Ventura contract was pared to less than a third of its original size by the employment panel’s professional administrators, who say it is modeled after a disappointing $2.7-million agreement approved last year with Camarillo-based Boskovich Farms, a large vegetable grower.

The Boskovich program, state analysts reported in August, had trained only 113 of the 939 workers promised. And in dozens of cases where training was completed, it had failed to meet the panel’s basic goal of providing long-term jobs.

“When this came up again, we knew it was going to be a mirror of Boskovich,” said Rhonda English Johnson, panel assistant director in charge of contracts. “All we had to base it on was . . . one contract that was not as successful as we would want it to be. So we posed as many questions as we could to stimulate the panel members, and it was still a 5-2 vote.”

Despite staff reservations, the Ventura contract moved quickly to the top of the employment panel’s waiting list this summer. And, Johnson said, she “couldn’t begin to guess” how many times Munoz contacted her staff about it.

Munoz, whom Gov. George Deukmejian replaced last month along with two other panel members whose terms expired in January, declined requests for interviews to discuss his support for the Ventura project.

But state records show that in voting for the contract, Munoz also helped approve a $592,000 subcontract for a company partly owned by a longtime Munoz associate who leased office space from Munoz in 1988 and 1989.

It is not known whether Munoz was still the landlord of associate Larry Owens when he voted on the Ventura contract Aug. 24, because Munoz did not file the required statement of economic interest after leaving office last month.

Records show that Owens is president and part-owner of Golden State School, which is to provide 64,000 hours of English-language training under the Ventura contract. Owens is also the principal owner of Golden State Employer Services, which rented an office from Munoz at least through 1989.

Owens and Munoz worked together as members of the Private Industry Council of Ventura County, a federal worker-training program, during the early 1980s and from 1988 until last month, when Owens resigned, according to the agency.

Owens, in a recent interview, said his landlord is Ventura County National Bank, not Munoz.

Court records show that Ventura County National Bank began to collect rents owed to Munoz in 1988 and to distribute the money to his creditors as part of an $850,000 settlement of a lawsuit filed by Blue Shield of California, which contended that Munoz’s Oxnard insurance agency had kept fees it collected for Blue Shield.

State law generally prohibits members of state boards from participating in decisions that would affect a source of their income. And James Bratt, executive director of the Employment Training Panel, said last week that he will ask the state Fair Political Practices Commission whether Munoz’s August vote would have been a violation of law if the panel member was Owens’ landlord at the time.

Bratt said the employment panel already has referred to the FPPC and the state attorney general’s office allegations that Munoz attempted this year to sell an insurance policy to Home Club, which has held a $5.8-million panel contract since 1989.

Munoz allegedly called a consultant involved in the Home Club contract and asked him to solicit the policy for Munoz, according to a panel memo. After a Home Club executive angrily rejected the overture, the consultant called panel administrator Johnson in late May to tell her what had occurred, the memo says.

Peter G. DeMauro, attorney for the panel, confirmed that he confronted Munoz in August about the alleged insurance solicitation and gave him a “strong admonition” not to seek work from companies doing business with the panel.

A spokeswoman for the political practices commission, speaking in general, said that if a solicitation by a public official comes after the official votes on a contract, state conflict-of-interest laws would not apply. Bratt said the employment panel is seeking an opinion from the attorney general about other provisions in state law.

Current and former panel administrators said the Home Club allegations last summer followed years of intervention by Munoz on behalf of companies seeking employment panel contracts.

In fact, rules that require disclosure of contacts between members of the state panel and companies soliciting contracts were enacted in March partly because of Munoz’s history of behind-the-scenes lobbying, panel officials said. Munoz refused to comply with the new rules, lawyer DeMauro said.

State documents show that Munoz’s involvement with contractors dates back almost to his appointment in mid-1986.

Within months, Munoz’s intervention for companies became so persistent that the employment panel’s former executive director, Steven Duscha, said he directed his staff to write memos each time Munoz circumvented the agency’s chain of command and made contact with them about contracts.

“He would call up and say, ‘Why can’t this contract be heard tomorrow?’ ” Duscha recalled. “I would explain to him that the process was geared to having some standard and if someone wanted a large amount of government money they had to go through a process. He was often impatient with that process.”

Contracts administrator Johnson said Munoz continued to intervene on behalf of companies during the last 18 months, especially on the Ventura farm association and Boskovich contracts.

The two contracts have almost identical on-the-job curricula, which includes 59 hours of field training on how to harvest each crop.

Both companies also used the same consultant, Steven D. Myers of Oxnard. Myers, personnel manager for Oxnard Frozen Foods Co. until it closed in 1988, told a panel manager in early 1988 that he knew Munoz well and was going to ask him about available jobs, a panel memo says.

Myers’ consulting firm was named principal administrator of the Boskovich and Ventura farmers’ contracts, and the employment panel has approved maximum payments of $230,000 and $138,700 to him. Myers could not be reached for comment.

Roy, the Ventura farm association president, said that while the two contracts offer the same training, except for the Ventura contract’s additional language instruction, his proposal should work better because employees would be trained in smaller groups, resulting in participating companies having a relatively low turnover rate.

As for Munoz’s help, Roy said he had never spoken with him, but that Munoz is “a very well-known businessman in the community. And I don’t think it’s unusual for someone in that position to want to be responsive to business in his community.”

The prospect of a multimillion-dollar contract for the Ventura farm association seemed a long shot early this year, because 100 companies were lined up by the end of 1989 seeking panel training funds. And when the Ventura association made its first official contact with the panel in March, its representatives received little encouragement.

“I informed them that I would forward their proposal to you for acknowledgment,” contracts chief Johnson wrote to a manager in the panel’s Southern California office.

But at the panel’s meeting in April, the Ventura proposal was indirectly given a boost when Munoz asked the board to grant priority status to farm proposals “to avoid delays that Mother Nature cannot wait for,” says a summary of that meeting.

At its May meeting, the employment panel made farm proposals “a priority,” saying in an amendment to its annual spending plan that “due to the unique seasonality of the agricultural industry, the panel must be able to respond quickly to changing employment and training needs.” It said it would expedite contracts designed to “meet an immediate seasonal need.”

In June, Munoz--apparently unaware of a proposal from the Western Growers Assn. that predated the Ventura one by a week--declared the Ventura project the only farm proposal before the panel. He asked that an agreement with the farmers be considered at the next panel meeting. And he argued that “this is the type of industry that cannot afford to wait only because of Mother Nature.”

But one member balked. Panelist James Quillan, a machinist union executive, said: “So now what is it you’re trying to do, Munoz?”

Quillan warned that moving a proposal apparently sponsored by a panel member so quickly to the top of the waiting list might set “some kind of precedent that might be harmful.”

Before the Ventura agreement was approved at the panel’s August meeting, two other members, Elinor Glenn and Steve Mack, expressed strong reservations.

And the state employment department’s migrant worker specialist, Juan Chacon, blasted the proposal as a subsidy to growers that would help train workers for low-paying jobs. He emphasized that there was already an oversupply of farm laborers and that it takes minutes or hours to adequately train workers to pick most crops, not several days. Farmers already routinely train workers to pick crops when they need the labor, he said.

But the panel majority decided that agriculture had not received its share of training contracts over the years.

“These people pay into the unemployment insurance system and they should access the system,” member Pat Williams said in a recent interview. “It’s giving the workers the type of training that I assumed they needed based on what was in the proposal. What more information could you have?”

She said she was impressed that each farm laborer would get English-language training and that the contractor had agreed to provide the lessons during work hours.

Quillan said that despite his early concerns about Munoz’s involvement, he finally voted for the contract “because we have not been particularly good at serving agriculture. We haven’t been able to find the proposals.”

Warnings about problems with the Boskovich contract never really sunk in, Quillan said.

“We handle a lot of proposals at our meetings,” he said. “We approve them on the basis of information before us and our experience, then we move on.”

Times staff writer Carl Ingram, in Sacramento, contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND

Created in 1983 to retrain workers displaced by technological change, the part-time state Employment Training Panel is funded by company unemployment contributions. It has awarded $565 million in contracts over the last six years and is expected to distribute another $160 million this year. The employment panel has seven members, four appointed by the Legislature and three by the governor. The panel usually meets once a month.