Flynn Says Supervisors Conspired With Rival : Politics: Colleagues deny discussions he calls illegal meetings about Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi’s remap request.

Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn charged Friday that other supervisors violated the state’s open-meeting law this week by allegedly agreeing among themselves to realign Flynn’s district and put his political rival, Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi, back in it.

Flynn, in an interview Friday, also accused Supervisors Maggie Erickson Kildee and Vicky Howard of conspiring with Takasugi and former supervisorial candidate Carolyn Leavens to defeat him in next spring’s election.

“Maggie and Vicky are working hand-in-hand on this and being encouraged by the others,” Flynn said. “I march to somewhat of a different drummer than they do, and I may be an annoyance. I may be in the way.”

Howard, Leavens and Erickson Kildee all said they had no idea what Flynn was talking about. They said they had never discussed Flynn’s political future with each other. Takasugi, who has said he may run against Flynn next year, could not be reached for comment Friday evening.

“That is absolutely baloney,” Howard said. “He’s saying things that are absolutely untrue. I’m just sick he’s saying things like that.”

Flynn’s differences with the rest of the board were obvious in reapportionment hearings last month, when he bitterly opposed a plan favored by the other four supervisors. Flynn later apologized and agreed to a compromise.

But the final plan cut Takasugi out of the supervisor’s Oxnard-based 5th District. Takasugi said this week that he would petition the board to move his house back into Flynn’s district, and the other four supervisors said in interviews that they would be inclined to honor Takasugi’s request.

Flynn said Friday that two separate conversations about Takasugi’s request--one between Erickson Kildee and Howard and the other between Erickson Kildee and Supervisor Maria VanderKolk--constitute an illegal meeting.

State law prohibits decision-making through a series of phone calls or small meetings between individual board members.

Howard and Erickson Kildee acknowledged talking to each other privately about their positions on Takasugi’s request after their comments were reported in The Times on Wednesday.

“To Vicky, I said something like, ‘That’s interesting that you thought (Takasugi) should be back in too,’ ” Erickson Kildee said. “It wasn’t a conversation about what anybody ought to do.”

Erickson Kildee said she mentioned the issue to VanderKolk in a conversation about other minor changes that needed to be made in the boundary between their districts.

VanderKolk agreed to address all of the changes in a letter that the rest of the board would consider next month, Erickson Kildee said.

“We talked about the fact that John had said in the newspaper that it was up to the other board members” to address Takasugi’s request, Erickson Kildee said. “So we just said we’d do it all in one letter. It certainly wasn’t an illegal meeting.”

Flynn said recent events--and other sharp differences with supervisors over the last year--have convinced him that Howard and Erickson Kildee are engaged in an “effort to get me off the board.”

For example, Flynn said he thinks that the final reapportionment map may have been changed by Howard at the last minute to exclude Takasugi and make it appear that Flynn had participated in political gerrymandering.

Flynn said he thought that Takasugi was still in his district when he and Howard went over redistricting maps the morning of the board’s vote. He said he didn’t notice the Oxnard mayor was out of his district until the next day.

Howard said she made no last-minute changes in the plan. And Steve Wood, the county planner who drew the new boundaries, said Takasugi had been inadvertently drawn out of Flynn’s district a week before the final vote. No changes were made the final day, he said.

Flynn said he thought the other board members were out to get him because of past disagreements, including bitter exchanges in a debate last year about where to put the new county jail. The board voted 4 to 1, with Flynn dissenting, to locate the jail near Santa Paula.

“This is an effort on the part of Maggie Erickson Kildee and Vicky Howard to get me off the board,” Flynn said.

Erickson Kildee said she was baffled by Flynn’s charges.

“This whole thing is coming in a strange fashion, and I don’t understand it,” she said. “John has been a good supervisor, and I have never worked against him. . . . He’s gotten angry the last few months, and I don’t know why.”

Over the last two weeks, Leavens has publicly opposed Flynn’s position on the damming of Sespe Creek. And he charged last week that by acting as a spokeswoman for water and business interests on that issue, she had begun her campaign to unseat Supervisor Susan K. Lacey next year.

Leavens narrowly lost to Lacey in 1988.

Leavens, owner of a large Ventura County ranch, said she is not running for any public office next year. And she said she was not aligned with anyone who was trying to defeat him.

“Good heavens,” she said, “I have never had any conversation along that line with any one of those three people, nor has the thought crossed my mind. Just the fact the he is suggesting this is just mind-boggling to me.”