6 of 7 Area Congressmen Deny Writing Bad Checks : Shortfalls: A seventh official says it’s a private matter. A report says there were 8,331 overdrafts at the House bank in a year. No public funds were lost.

As yet another cloud of controversy gathers over Congress, six out of seven San Fernando Valley-area congressmen said Tuesday they did not write any of the more than 8,000 checks that fellow lawmakers bounced at the House bank last year.

The seventh, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), declined to discuss the issue. A spokesman said Waxman considered it a purely private matter.

The General Accounting Office reported two weeks ago that House of Representatives members had bounced 8,331 checks at their private House bank between July, 1989, and June, 1990--and that the bank had covered the shortfalls without charging interest. The GAO said that 581 checks written by 134 members were for $1,000 or more, and 24 members bounced at least $1,000 in checks for each of the first six months of 1990.

Local lawmakers and their aides said they have received few calls and little or no mail on the subject. Some suggested the issue was strictly an “inside the Beltway” concern; others said it had not yet been picked up by the major media in California.

But one thing was clear: Amid widespread national discontent with incumbents and with the approach of a 1992 election in which all congressmen will have to run in newly drawn districts following reapportionment, no one wants to be associated with the hot check controversy.

“I bet my life I haven’t had any overdrafts in the past 10 years,” said Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale). “My wife is very meticulous with the account, and we don’t get that close to the line.”

He added, “I think if there are individual people who have been mistreating a privilege--there may have been as many as 15 who have been way overboard--it’s a bad mistake to paint the whole Congress as check kiters.”

Reps. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles), Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) and William M. Thomas (R-Bakersfield), or their spokesmen, said that, to the best of their knowledge, the congressmen have never bounced a check. Gallegly, in fact, is one of about 100 members who has sought a letter to that effect from House Sgt.-at-Arms Jack Russ, who administers the House bank.

Waxman declined to respond to surveys of all House members being conducted this week by the Washington Post and Roll Call, the newspaper of Congress.

The bank, a convenient place for busy House members to get cash, covered the shortfalls--apparently with funds deposited by lawmakers in good standing--so no public funds were lost. But some freshmen lawmakers, mostly Republicans, have expressed concern about growing public outrage that Congress is getting a break that is unavailable to most citizens.

Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) took to the House floor last week to announce that the bank would no longer cover overdrafts. But Foley has resisted calls to release the names of the bad-check writers.

“It is a relatively minor matter, but it’s one of those things that should not have been allowed to happen,” said Beilenson, who added that he was shocked to learn that the system even permitted overdrafts without penalties. “We should be treated like other people are.”

The flap, he said, regrettably “is one more thing that leads people to dislike or distrust or reduce their faith in government.”