Brea Mayor Was Dealing With Firm Seeking Project : Probe: Contract fell through after state investigator called city attorney to question arrangement.

At the same time he was taking actions last year that boosted an Orange County engineering firm’s chance to win a city contract, the mayor of this community was teaming with the company in a separate business deal, records and interviews show.

The actions of Brea Mayor Wayne D. Wedin came despite California law that prohibits officials from participating in any governmental decision that stands to financially affect a source of their income.

Wedin, a former city manager of Brea, was elected to the City Council in 1988 and became mayor in December. He is a well-known consultant in the field of municipal finance and development.

During the last six months of 1990, Wedin took several actions in Brea affecting efforts of the Keith Cos., a Costa Mesa-based planning, engineering and architectural firm, to win an important city contract. At stake was the North Brea Sphere of Influence study, a project intended to evaluate the best ways to develop roughly 6 square miles in and around Tonner Canyon, abutting the Orange-Los Angeles county border.

The Keith Cos. and a firm that it affiliated with for the project at first were rejected by the city planning staff, in part because of the cost of their proposed work. However, with the active support of Wedin, Keith and its partner eventually were recommended by the City Council for a $320,000 contract.

But The Times has learned that the arrangement fell apart on Dec. 27, after the Brea city attorney was called by an investigator from the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The FPPC had received an anonymous complaint questioning Wedin’s relationship with the Keith Cos.

After the call from the FPPC, Wedin said that he and the city attorney decided not to enter into any contract with the Keith Cos.

Interviews and records reviewed by The Times show that during four of the same months that Wedin was actively participating in meetings in Brea involving the Keith Cos., he was working with Keith on a project in San Diego. Wedin said that he received $41,000 on that project, from October, 1989, to September, 1990, and that all of his billings were routed through the Keith Cos.

Wedin said that in his view he did nothing wrong and noted that the city of Brea distanced itself from the Keith Cos. the moment questions were raised by the FPPC.

After the December call from the FPPC to Brea City Atty. James L. Markman, the FPPC on Jan. 23 closed its case without taking any action. However, a Times review of the FPPC’s file shows the agency was unaware that Wedin in 1989 and 1990 had been a subcontractor with the Keith Cos. on the separate San Diego project.

That venture paired Wedin, who owns his own consulting firm, and the Keith Cos. in a project to redevelop a downtown neighborhood. Officials with the San Diego Redevelopment Agency described Wedin as a subcontractor of the Keith Cos.

Kurt Chilcott, deputy director of the San Diego Redevelopment Agency, said Wedin “was part of the package proposed by the Keith Cos.”

“The city’s contractual relationship was with the Keith Cos. And they were the ones that had the relationship with Wedin,” said Chilcott.

Said Sara N. Isgur, the San Diego agency’s administrator who continues to directly supervise the project: “The Keith Cos. was the prime (contractor) to the city of San Diego. They brought on Wayne Wedin. . . . He came in right from the start with the Keith Cos.”

A Sept. 22, 1989, cover letter accompanying the Keith Cos.’ formal written proposal seeking the San Diego contract was written on Keith Cos. stationery and was signed by company Vice President Roger M. Mobley and by Wedin, identified as president of Wedin Enterprises Inc. Wedin’s role was described in detail in the proposal, along with a copy of his resume.

Larry Mandell, a senior vice president for the Keith Cos., said the firm decided to work with Wedin in San Diego not to gain any advantage in Brea but rather because “he’s probably one of the best people in his field when it comes to redevelopment and economic-development consulting.”

Wedin, 51, acknowledged that, from the outset, he was a part of Keith’s proposal to obtain the San Diego redevelopment contract.

“If I could go back and redo it today,” Wedin said, “I wish I hadn’t done it that way because it’s caused an appearance of impropriety, I suppose.”

Wedin said he did not think of himself as a team member with Keith in San Diego.

“To me,” Wedin said, “teaming means that you and I get together, we say we’re going to go after this project together. And we jointly work on putting a proposal together. And we intermingle our resumes. And we talk about how we work together, and how our skills complement each other. And how it’s going to be billed singly. And we’re basically going to put together a business venture. To me, that’s teaming.”

But after speaking with San Diego officials by telephone, Wedin told The Times: “The San Diego folks do consider me as a subcontractor (of the Keith Cos.). I don’t dispute that, if that’s their feeling. . . . What we’ve got here is, my client felt that I was a subcontractor. And they considered it a teaming relationship. I considered it a coordinating relationship.”

Still, Wedin said that in his view the San Diego Redevelopment Agency--not the Keith Cos.--was his source of income for the San Diego project. The distinction is important because if it were established that Wedin’s income source was the Keith Cos., he could be found in violation of the law, according to an interpretation provided by Jay Greenwood, a spokesman for the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Asked which such entity would be considered a public official’s source of income, Greenwood said: “We treat the primary contractor, not the ultimate recipient of the services, as the source of income, in this case to the public official.” As a matter of policy, Greenwood would not comment on Wedin, specifically.

What is not in dispute is that Wedin, who also is one of two members of the council’s Development Committee, actively participated in Brea’s deliberations over how to proceed with the Tonner Canyon-area planning contract.

It was a role for which Wedin was well prepared. As Brea’s city manager from 1968 to 1981, he guided the city through one of Southern California’s most ambitious redevelopment efforts, capped by construction of the Brea Mall.

In 1990, as the city began compiling a list of companies that would be asked to bid for the planning study contract, Wedin asked that the Keith Cos. be included.

At a meeting on June 6 of the Development Committee, composed of Wedin and Councilwoman Clarice Blamer, “Wayne requested that both Keith Engineering and LPA (Keith’s affiliated firm) be added to the list,” according to minutes of the meeting.

LPA is Leason Pomeroy Associates Inc. of Irvine.

Wedin said he thought that the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team needed to be on the list because “my feeling is to get the most people competing as possible, to get the best firm, at the best price. . . . All I was doing was saying, ‘Here is someone who has an interest, send ‘em a note.’ ”

In all, 10 companies were invited by the city to submit bids for the work. And by July, five proposals had been received, ranging in cost from $377,259 to the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team’s $1,075,400. The Brea staff evaluation of the bids, composed by Senior Planner Jay M. Trevino, termed the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team’s proposed work hours and price tag “ very excessive.”

On Aug. 3, the staff endorsed as finalists two firms--P & D Technologies of Orange and Turrini & Brink of Santa Ana.

A month later, however, Wedin proposed at a meeting of the Council’s Development Committee that the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team be chosen as a finalist for the project.

“Wayne stated that (he and Councilwoman Blamer) are interested in dealing with the P & D Technologies and (Keith-Leason Pomeroy) teams,” minutes of the Sept. 6 meeting state.

Asked why he did not follow the staff recommendation, Wedin said, “It’s not uncommon that the council doesn’t accept the total staff recommendation. It occurs, and I think that’s what our responsibility is: To make independent judgments about things, firms, programs. And that’s what we’re elected to do.”

Wedin also noted that the city decided to scale back the project, rendering obsolete the original bids of $1 million from Keith-Leason Pomeroy and $489,872 from P & D Technologies.

The selection of those two firms as finalists was discussed by Wedin and the full City Council on Sept. 18, according to minutes of that meeting. Wedin acknowledges that he favored the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team.

But no decision was reached by that point, at least in part because Wedin and Blamer, the two members of the council’s Development Committee, could not agree.

“I wanted P & D and he wanted the other one,” said Blamer. “We really couldn’t make up our mind. He seemed to think that they (the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team) had merit over the other. And I thought that P & D had merit.”

Said Wedin: “I supported the (Keith-Leason Pomeroy) team. And now the question is why. The LPA team has a designer on that team by the name of Todd Stoutenborough . . . and I think he’s a very competent architect and planner.” Wedin also said that he had hoped that the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team could recommend innovative development designs for the Tonner Canyon area, including ideas that might minimize the need for severe grading.

To help resolve the difference of opinion, both finalists were invited to make a final presentation to the full City Council, on Oct. 30.

Blamer, who was not re-elected in November and left the council in December, told The Times that she ultimately dropped her preference for P & D and agreed, along with Wedin and their council colleagues, to authorize negotiations to hire the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team.

On Dec. 18, at a meeting of the Development Committee, now comprised of Wedin and Councilman Ron Isles, Brea Development Services Director Jim Cutts reported that the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team had agreed to perform the desired work for $320,000. “The team will be hired on a time and material basis,” the minutes state.

“We were officially selected by them,” said J. Todd Stoutenborough, the architect and senior planner with Leason Pomeroy, who led his company’s combined effort with the Keith Cos. “. . . They selected us for the exclusive right to negotiate with them for a contract.”

But nine days later, on Dec. 27, for reasons that were not divulged to the public, the arrangement fell apart. Records obtained from the state Fair Political Practices Commission show that it also was on Dec. 27 that agency investigator Don McCormick called Brea City Atty. Markman to ask about the anonymous, conflict-of-interest allegation.

Following the call from the FPPC, Wedin told The Times, he and Markman decided “out of a due measure of caution” to prohibit Keith from receiving the planning contract or “any business” from the city of Brea for a period of about one year. The Leason Pomeroy firm is not included in that prohibition and its planner, Stoutenborough, is now one of seven individual specialists who are to be paid by Brea for the project. City Atty. Markman was on vacation and unavailable for comment.

Said Wedin: “I took what I considered to be prudent action immediately following the (FPPC) inquiry. . . . The minute it became apparent that this may have caused a problem, I think action was taken, forthright action. All of my (council) colleagues were advised.”

As for the earlier steps taken to select the Keith-Leason Pomeroy team, Wedin said he did not think he influenced his council colleagues or did anything wrong.