Councilman Says Votes Were Wrong : Lancaster: William Pursley said he had not been aware of any legal restrictions. He received money from a major home developer.

Lancaster Councilman William Pursley repeatedly voted to aid one of the state’s largest developers with its plan to build more than 550 houses just months after the builder agreed to pay Pursley and his partners millions of dollars in a separate real estate deal, public records show.

State law requires politicians to avoid voting on issues affecting entities that have provided them income in the previous year.

But Pursley, a millionaire real estate agent, voted three separate times to endorse planning proposals in late 1989 and early 1990 for Kaufman & Broad’s California Horizon tract in west Lancaster, according to city records. The Los Angeles-based developer’s project is now under construction.

In an interview over the weekend, the councilman acknowledged that he should not have cast the votes but said he was not aware at the time of the legal restrictions. “Yes, I did vote. Yes, it was wrong,” said Pursley, who was Lancaster’s mayor for the year ending in March.

Pursley is already the subject of two other ethics investigations: his admitted failure to disclose many of his financial interests as required by law and his vote on a parcel of land on which he later earned a sales commission.

The councilman’s votes on the 559-house California Horizon tract came shortly after the developer bought 320 acres of land in east Lancaster in June, 1989, for about $6.7 million from two Pursley partnerships. The developer also paid Pursley a $109,146 real estate agent commission on the sale.

In addition, Pursley led the council in January, 1990, in authorizing a city lawsuit aimed at blocking a planned 2,200-bed state prison across the street from the California Horizon project. Days earlier, Kaufman & Broad had complained to city officials that the prison would devalue its property.

The state’s conflict of interest law is intended to prevent politicians from taking official actions affecting their own income, investments or real estate holdings, or the interests of any source of income or gifts to them totaling $250 or more in the preceding 12-month period.

In the interview, the councilman maintained that he knew in 1989 and 1990 that he could not legally vote on issues affecting the land his partnerships had sold to Kaufman & Broad. But, Pursley said, he only later learned that his income from Kaufman & Broad prohibited him from voting on any of the developer’s projects in the city.

After he gained that knowledge, Pursley said, he twice cited the conflict of interest to avoid voting on the California Horizon project, in February and early March of last year. However, the councilman acknowledged that he then made another mistake by voting on the project’s final planning approval on March 19, 1990.

Duane Betty, president of Kaufman & Broad’s Antelope Valley Division, said his company did not attempt to curry political favor by purchasing land from Pursley’s partnerships. “There was absolutely no connection” between the two, he said.

Betty added that the developer began negotiations with Pursley in 1987 and opened escrow on the property in January, 1988, more than a year before Pursley was elevated to the City Council in a special election after the sudden death of a council member. “I hardly see how we could have foreseen that,” Betty said.

Officials with the state Fair Political Practices Commission and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the two agencies that have had Pursley under investigation for months, said they were unaware of the councilman’s votes involving the California Horizon project.

Since December, the district attorney has been reviewing possible criminal charges against Pursley for voting in June, 1990, to reduce a city road easement on land from which he later earned a $9,780 sales commission. The seller, who was his client, said the council vote helped clinch the sale.

The seller of that one-acre parcel in east Lancaster was Antelope Valley insurance executive Clyde Golding. He also was part of one of the two Pursley groups that sold the 320 acres to Kaufman & Broad, along with engineer Lawrence Cushman and two Pursley relatives.

Since mid-1990, the FPPC has been reviewing Pursley’s easement vote and his admitted failure to fully disclose his extensive financial interests on his 1989 and 1990 conflict of interest filings. For 1989 alone, he failed to report nearly $240,000 in commissions, including the $109,146 Kaufman & Broad payment.

The actions by Pursley and the Lancaster council on California Horizon gave the developer permission to proceed with its plan to build 559 houses on a remote 154-acre site, at the southwest corner of Avenue J and 60th Street West, that had been zoned to allow only about 60 houses.

According to city records, Pursley cast three substantive votes on the California Horizon project:

In December, 1989, on the developer’s request for a General Plan amendment permitting vastly increased development on the land; in January, 1990, to give city staff instructions on the developer’s request for a zone change, and in March, 1990, on the final vote for the change.

(In addition, on Feb. 19, 1991, Pursley also voted to add the first phase of the project to the city’s landscape and drainage districts, according to city records.)

During the California Horizon votes in late 1989 and early 1990, the full extent of Pursley’s ties to the developer was not publicly known, including his commission on the land sale and income he received from nearly $3.3 million in mortgages the developer had with Pursley’s partnerships.

Under state law, Pursley was only required to disclose that income in an annual financial interest statement for the prior year, which he had to file by April, 1990. But Pursley’s statement, filed with the city on March 29, 1990, less than two weeks after the council’s final action, gave at best a muddled account.

The FPPC, which typically investigates conflict-of-interest allegations, can fine politicians up to $2,000 for each improper vote or other violation. The district attorney can file misdemeanor criminal charges, but has not won a conflict conviction against a politician that prosecutors could remember.

Kaufman & Broad, which bills itself the largest single-family home builder in the state, recently opened a sales office at the California Horizon tract, where houses will be offered from the low $100,000s. The developer has nearly finished several models, but has yet to build the bulk of the houses.

State officials, meanwhile, are well into construction of the more than $200-million Mira Loma prison several hundred feet away, near the northeast corner of Avenue J and 60th Street West. The city recently gave up its $170,000 legal campaign against the prison after losing a series of court battles.

Since Kaufman & Broad was not the direct subject of the council’s legal fight--even though the value of its project clearly stood to be affected by the outcome--FPPC regulations spell out a different test for whether Pursley should have abstained on that issue.

The councilman said he had never been told or had any idea that voting on the prison issue might be construed as a conflict because of his dealings with Kaufman & Broad. “That’s something that has never entered my mind,” he said.

Because Kaufman & Broad is a large corporation traded on the New York Stock Exchange, FPPC regulations say Pursley should have abstained if the lawsuit decision stood to affect the developer’s expenses for a year by $100,000 or more, or the value of its assets by $250,000 or more.

Under FPPC regulations, the issue would be whether the council’s decision to file a lawsuit against the prison had the potential to affect the value of the Kaufman & Broad site by about 10%, enough to meet the state’s threshold of $250,000.

In a December, 1989, letter to city officials on its project, the developer noted that it had “vigorously joined the city” in fighting the prison “because of our certainty that a prison will undermine property values and erode the market for high-quality housing in its immediate vicinity.”