Sierra Club Rigged Report, Member Says : Politics: Voting records of San Diego council members were allegedly ‘modified’ to aid Linda Bernhardt in her battle against recall drive.

The Sierra Club manipulated its recent environmental report card to give San Diego City Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt the top rank and aid her effort to defeat a campaign to recall her from office, a member of the Sierra Club’s top leadership charged Wednesday.

Mark Zerbe, a member of the environmental organization’s executive committee and treasurer of its political arm, charged that the study’s author and members of its political committee “modified” an early draft of the study to ensure Bernhardt the best score. The final version was released Monday.

“This particular report card was modified strictly, in my opinion, to support Linda Bernhardt,” Zerbe said. “I’m embarrassed by it, and it should not have happened.”

The report card’s author and other Sierra Club officials involved in its preparation vehemently denied Zerbe’s accusations, maintaining that the study’s credibility was paramount.

“There is nothing in the world I would do to jeopardize the credibility of this voting record,” said Barbara Bamberger, the Sierra Club’s conservation coordinator, who prepared the report. “And I wouldn’t go out of my way for any council member if it meant jeopardizing the credibility of this report.”

“It’s just not true,” added Ron Ottinger, chairman of the Sierra Club’s political committee. Even if the report card had been published in the fashion that Zerbe preferred, Bernhardt would have ranked second, with a score just two points lower than the one she was given, he said.

Five members of the Sierra Club’s nine-member executive committee, meeting Wednesday night on a personnel matter, issued a statement saying that the committee “stands behind the validity of the research and methodology of our environmental report card.”

Zerbe’s charges could seriously harm the credibility of the 17,000-member local chapter of the Sierra Club, which has carefully cultivated a reputation for impartiality in its support of the environment.

Critics of the two report cards issued by the group, primarily council members who fared poorly, have charged, however, that their methodology is tainted by political favoritism. One high-scoring council member, Abbe Wolfsheimer, who placed second in the Sierra Club’s 1989 report card, has used that designation in political campaigns.

Told of Zerbe’s accusations, Councilwoman Judy McCarty said Wednesday that “I look on (the report card) as a political document, and what he’s doing is confirming it.” McCarty placed last in the report card released Monday, the second published by the Sierra Club.

Zerbe’s charges also could take some of the luster off a ranking that Bernhardt said Monday would show voters “the facts” about the recall effort against her. Bernhardt supporters, who include some leading environmentalists, have charged that the campaign is orchestrated by powerful interests opposed to her strong pro-environment stance.

In the study released Monday, Bernhardt placed first with a score of 85%. That figure was derived by crediting her for agreeing with the Sierra Club position on issues 90% of the time and subtracting a percentage for three votes for which Bernhardt was absent.

According to Zerbe, the club’s conservation and political committees agreed at a joint meeting Nov. 8 to use just the raw score of environmental votes, keeping the absences separate. That would have resulted in Bernhardt placing second.

He said that Bamberger, Ottinger and political committee chairman Bob Hartman--all of whom had a hand in preparing the report--defied that decision by including the absences in the score when preparing the report. When a draft was presented to the club’s executive committee Nov. 15, that panel voted to order the use of only the raw score.

But Ottinger lobbied each executive committee member by telephone to change the procedure and use the method that put Bernhardt on top, Zerbe claimed. Ottinger said he conducted a telephone poll of the membership, and only Zerbe objected to the change in methodology.

“For months, there has been a battle going on in the Sierra Club as to the extent it would support Linda Bernhardt (in an expected recall election),” said Zerbe, former coordinator of San Diego’s defunct Common Cause chapter. “And the camp supporting Linda Bernhardt is composed of Ron Ottinger, Barbara Bamberger, Linda Michael, Jay Powell and Bob Hartman.”

Michael is the club’s city land-use chairman, and Powell is both an aide to Bernhardt and a member of the Sierra Club’s political committee.

Powell said he was purposely kept out of discussions on the report card and had nothing to do with its preparation. Bernhardt could not be reached for comment.

Zerbe also claimed that the timing of the release of the report--just three days after the recall campaign turned in its final batch of signatures demanding a recall of Bernhardt--was set to aid Bernhardt. And he charged that the decision to cut off the study in August was designed to protect Bernhardt from damaging votes she made subsequently.

But Ottinger rejected both assertions. “If we had wanted to make a difference and really manipulate the thing to help Linda, we would have released it two or three months ago in the middle of the signature campaign to prevent them from getting enough signatures for the ballot.”

The Sierra Club did, however, send its members a mailer urging them not to sign recall petitions.

Ottinger also said the decision to include votes between February, 1989, and August, 1990, was arbitrary.

Ottinger and Bamberger said that the media--not the Sierra Club--made the link between Bernhardt’s recall and her top ranking. And they said that the reason they included the absences in the score this year was because of criticism--some of it from the press--that the first report card did not penalize council members for their absences.

Both questioned Zerbe’s motives for the criticism.

Zerbe, who was treasurer of an organization founded to defeat Bernhardt’s opponent, Ed Struiksma, in the 1989 election, said there is no political motive behind his criticism.

“I wanted to distance myself from the study, and I didn’t see that the Sierra Club was in a position to solve its problems internally,” he said.