San Marcos Mayor’s Election Fund Questioned : Politics: Chief opponent of proposed trash-burning plant says city leader accepted campaign contributions from employees of firm scheduled to build facility.

Charges that San Marcos Mayor Lee Thibadeau violated city rules in accepting campaign contributions from employees of the Boston-based firm scheduled to build the proposed $325-million trash-burning plant have been filed with the city by one of the plant’s major opponents.

Tom Erwin, a Carlsbad city planning commissioner and opponent of the proposed trash-to-energy facility in San Marcos, said that he filed the investigation request with the city Friday, and that San Marcos City Atty. Dan Hentschke agreed that any investigation of the mayor’s campaign financing should be conducted by an independent agency.

Thibadeau, a staunch proponent of the trash incinerator, agreed that any probe should be conducted by an outside investigator, not a city employee, but called it “a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Thibadeau claimed that, if Erwin had anything solid, he would have taken his information to the San Diego County district attorney or the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

Erwin, who has fought the county’s plans to build an energy-generating plant for nearly a decade, said he filed the request with the San Marcos city attorney, asking for an independent investigation of Thibadeau’s campaign contributions in last November’s mayoral race.

Erwin said Thibadeau received $2,250 from employees of Thermo Electron, which has a contract to build and operate the trash-burning plant designed to eliminate a large amount of North County trash, now buried in the county’s San Marcos landfill.

Nine Thermo Electron employees gave $250 each to Thibadeau’s campaign, campaign statements show. Most of the contributors were Massachusetts residents.

San Marcos campaign financing regulations limit campaign contributions to $250 per contributor, and Thibadeau said that “there was no violation because Thermo Electron did not reimburse their employees who contributed to my campaign.”

The two adversaries have been exchanging allegations of wrong-doing over the trash-burning plant for years, but the charges have never escalated to the point of a possible investigation.

Erwin said Monday that Thibadeau had also accepted $795 in “in-kind contributions” from Larry O’Donnell, local spokesman for Thermo Electron--”a clear violation of the city’s campaign financing laws.”

Thibadeau said that O’Donnell, who has been his friend for more than 10 years, “simply helped me out when my own campaign manager was ill, helped me put together a mailer just before the (November) election,” at which Thibadeau was handily reelected.

Thibadeau said that the $795 in services donated by O’Donnell did not violate city ordinances because non-cash contributions are not governed by the $250 contributions limit.

Of Erwin’s accusations, Thibadeau said: “He is simply bringing this up because he has been unsuccessful in his efforts to discredit the trash-to-energy plant through financial or economic analysis and has dredged up these charges against me.”

Erwin, in a letter to the San Marcos city attorney, also charged that Thibadeau has accepted additional campaign donations from employees of North County Resource Recovery Associates, a local company wholly owned by Thermo Electron; billed the city of San Marcos $1,600 for a trip to the East Coast to confer with Thermo Electron officials without first obtaining permission from fellow council members and allowed trash-to-energy plant promotional material to be mailed out over his name.

Thibadeau said that none of the charges involved wrongdoing on his part. He said he expected the matter to be discussed by the San Marcos City Council at some future meeting.