State Clears Mamaux of Politic Improprieties in Carlsbad : Government: Ex-councilman says 1990 conflict-of-interest allegations were politically motivated.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission has cleared former Carlsbad City Councilman John Mamaux, now the city manager of Oceanside, after an investigation into conflict-of-interest allegations.

Twenty months after the charges were filed, commission lawyer Elliot Block has concluded that 10 allegations were unfounded and two others merited a warning but no penalty.

“We have decided to close our file in this matter without formal enforcement action,” Block informed Mamaux and the two men who raised the allegations, former Carlsbad Councilman Mark Pettine and Vista attorney Thomas W. Smith.

The allegations by Pettine and Smith, filed with the commission in late January, 1990, basically accused Mamaux of seeking to financially benefit the Carlsbad developer who employed him while he was an elected official.

During his last year on the council, Mamaux was president of Centre Mortgage Co., which is owned by Dean Greenberg. Greenberg also owns Centre Development, which owns land around Palomar Airport.

Mamaux said Monday that the allegations were “a deliberate and vicious political attack on my name. There wasn’t any validity to any of the charges, and the FPPC confirmed that.”

He complained that the investigation helped bring his downfall during a reelection campaign last November, when he finished third in a four-way race for two council seats.

“It played a big part in the election, but that was the whole strategy that Pettine and Smith followed,” said Mamaux. “They abused the system, they filed phony charges.”

Neither Pettine, a deputy district attorney who left the council when his term ended last year, nor his political supporter Smith returned phone calls Monday. Pettine and Mamaux had been adversaries since 1986, when they ran against one another for a council seat.

Among the dismissed allegations were claims that Mamaux failed to disclose Centre Mortgage as a source of income; that he voted to build a golf course in a location that would have benefited his employer; that he participated in decisions to improve a road near Centre Development land; and that he voted to spend $500,000 to landscape the street near his employer’s office.

Block, an attorney in the commission’s enforcement division, said such charges were unfounded because any financial gain to Mamaux’s employer “was speculative at best, and was therefore not reasonably foreseeable.”

Block also held that Mamaux was absent during some of the council votes that allegedly could have affected his employer.

However, Block did inform Mamaux that two allegations against him “may have violated a provision of the Political Reform Act,” and he urged Mamaux to review the state’s requirements to avoid future conflict of interest.

“These apparent violations may be taken into account should you fail to comply with these provisions in the future,” Block said in a letter to Mamaux, who became the city manager of Oceanside last January.

The two allegations that prompted warnings are:

* Mamaux participated in a unanimous council vote ordering the city’s staff to prepare documents for a special tax assessment district that would allow land owned by his employer to be developed.

The commission concluded that the vote was taken early in the development process, before the staff had decided which properties would be affected by the district. Further, after the initial vote, the conflict-of-interest issue was raised, and Mamaux abstained from subsequent votes.

* Mamaux participated in a closed-door executive session of a lawsuit that involved a company owned by his employer. However, the commission found Mamaux “appears to have been unaware of his company’s connection to his employer and did not comment at all during the session.” Later, his employer lost the litigation.