Zoo May Be Forced to Forfeit State Funds

The state review of a $621,600 retraining contract at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park has already revealed major questions that could lead to the zoo forfeiting nearly half of that amount, a state official said Friday.

Peter DeMauro, general counsel for the Employment Training Panel, said the agency has doubts about how zoo administrators supervised on-the-job exercises required as part of a retraining course for 168 animal keepers.

“There is probably going to be a question if the training was delivered in the fashion we contracted for,” DeMauro said. “We wouldn’t pay for that. . . . It could be a big difference in dollars.”

That difference, he said, could amount to more than $300,000, since the on-the-job exercises accounted for more than half of the zoo contract.

Meanwhile, the state’s investigation stalled in one respect Friday after Teamsters Union officers representing animal keepers issued an abrupt warning to the employees not to cooperate, even if they are given immunity from criminal prosecution.

“Our union attorney has advised us not to talk any more because we may be held criminally liable for testifying,” said Michael Nester, president of Teamsters Local 481 and a 17-year veteran keeper. “We’re going to ask for immunity, but even then, she (the attorney) feels that may not help us because we could be considered accessories to fraud.”

The union’s advice could prove to be a major stumbling block. On Friday, DeMauro met in Los Angeles with officials from the zoo, and two monitors from the ETP visited the zoo in San Diego to query supervisors and keepers involved in the retraining.

The ETP, a state agency charged with reducing joblessness, announced the inquiry earlier this week in response to inquiries from The Times about allegations that zoo officials knew--and in some cases encouraged--keepers to falsify their on-the-job exercises so the zoo could receive the state money.

In August, 1989, the ETP agreed to pay the zoo and two subcontractors $3,700 for every keeper it put through a training course consisting of 142 hours of classroom instruction and 332 hours of on-the-job exercises. The classes ended in November, and the zoo has yet to collect its final $132,275 payment from the state.

Earlier this week, however, the agency announced it would suspend that payment pending its administrative probe. Zoo officials, who are cooperating with the investigation, say they have no indication of falsified exercises and blame the charges on disgruntled employees.

The zoo said the retraining program was necessary to prepare its entire keeper force for a change from traditional, single-animal exhibits to the era of “bioclimatic zones,” where several species of animals coexist. Without the training, the zoo contended in its 1989 application, the entire keeper force was “likely to be displaced and claiming unemployment benefits.”

More than a dozen keepers interviewed by The Times, however, said the course was only marginally useful and that they were instructed to falsify work sheets on their on-the-job exercises. The tasks were to be supervised and documented to prove that the keepers were applying the new skills they learned in the classroom. In a September, 1990, memo, a zoo administrator instructed the keepers that thinking and planning to do an exercise could count toward their timed assignments.

DeMauro said Friday he went over the guidelines for the exercises in a Los Angeles meeting with officials from the zoo and the Southern California Training Council, a nonprofit consortium that hired to administer the keeper contract. He said zoo officials acknowledged that they allowed employees to count thought as part of the exercises--an interpretation the ETP refuses to accept.

He also said administrators told him five supervisors were in charge of the on-the-job exercises performed by 168 employees. The ratio would not be nearly enough to provide the kind of close supervision required under the zoo contract, DeMauro said.

“Our regulations talk to individualized, supervised training,” said DeMauro. “That means you’re somewhat close at hand and can observe what I’m doing. . . . That’s why we pay for it.”

DeMauro also said zoo administrators blamed the accusations of fraud on “a few folks.”

But DeMauro acknowledged that getting to the bottom of those charges may be more difficult now that the Teamsters Union is advising its keepers not to talk. He said the ETP lacks the power to grant immunity for any criminal fraud charges that arise later from the probe.

“If it comes to the point that we can’t talk to anybody, then I will turn it over . . . to an enforcement agency that may have the powers to grant what these people want,” DeMauro said.

It is just that possibility, Nester said, that is making the Teamsters and their attorneys nervous. “I have no idea how they’re going to question us, if we can take the Fifth Amendment or what,” Nester said.

Byron Georgiou, whose law firm advises the Teamster local, added: “Obviously, people want to cooperate with the state investigation but in such a way they don’t place themselves in personal jeopardy. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”