Aide to Anderson Resigns Over Links to Irvine Co.

A top aide to a senior Long Beach-area congressman is resigning because, he said, his past association with a giant Orange County land developer “has cast a cloud” on his work on Capitol Hill.

James W. Barich, 33, a special assistant to Rep. Glenn M. Anderson (D-San Pedro) and former senior director of government relations for the Irvine Co., said controversy that erupted over the location of a new federal courthouse in Orange County prompted his decision.

At a congressional hearing in Washington last month, Anderson suggested that the new courthouse be built in Irvine instead of Santa Ana or Laguna Niguel--the two cities that had been identified as potential courthouse sites by the General Services Administration. The only available land for a courthouse in Irvine is in Irvine Spectrum, a large office and industrial park owned by the Irvine Co.

Santa Ana officials, who had long sought the courthouse for their civic center area, were incensed by what they saw as intervention by Anderson and Barich on behalf of the city of Irvine, and perhaps the Irvine Co.