Embarrassed by Bad Checks, Bates Declares

Beleaguered by his involvement in the House check-writing scandal, former congressman Jim Bates (D-San Diego) said Sunday he is still trying to sort out his complicity in the case, then forge on with his campaign for another San Diego congressional seat.

Bates and 20 other current and past congressmen were named on a list of “worst offenders” in the checking scandal. The list was deliberately leaked to the media Saturday night.

On Sunday Bates acknowledged writing 89 bad checks which he has been cited for, but said that he had been told by the bank, that, as a privilege of his congressional depository account, he would be protected from bouncing checks.

“I’m embarrassed,” Bates said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. “I feel bad about it, but I was told by the bank I had been given overdraft protection. I think it’s unfair for the bank to come back and treat me as if I was not protected.”

Bates said he should shoulder blame for poor record keeping, but emphasized that his mistakes were within the law, and were covered by what, he believed, was the policy of the bank.

“I mean it was careless on my part,” Bates said. “It’s not good practice to overdraft excessively, but if it had not been covered the bank policy, I probably would have been paying closer attention.”

Bates said that the House bank was used for direct deposit of government salary checks. Upon taking office in 1983, Bates said he was told he must use the banking system to collect his pay.

“It was a bit of a problem, because, frankly I’m a lousy bookkeeper,” Bates said. “My wife typically does all the book keeping, and we were operating on two coasts. I didn’t focus on the (House) account, because I regularly transferred my checks to a personal account my wife and I shared. I would leave a little of each pay check in the (congressional bank) account just to cover miscellaneous checks I might write.

“Sometimes, I figured incorrectly.”

According to the House Ethics Committee Bates figured incorrectly 89 times. . Bates did not dispute the number, but said in each instance, he was notified that the bank would hold the check until he could replenish his account. Bates said there was no ceiling on the number of overdrafts and he was “never given a dollar amount that I was limited to.”

The listing of “worst offenders” by the House Ethic Committee was made on the basis of the total number of bad checks the congressmen wrote when the overdrafts exceeded their monthly take-home pay in at least eight of the 39 months studied.

Bates, who exceeded his approximately $4,000 monthly take home pay nine times, said the criteria for which determining worst offenders seemed “arbitrary.”

He also said that many of his House colleagues who have been involved in the scandal were part of the same “class of 1983” and all had the same understanding of bank policy.

Bates said he does not know what affect the scandal will have on his bid for the 50th District congressional seat, but said he will continue campaigning in good faith. He said he will try to obtain bank records which show that overdraft protection was an entitlement that had been offered to him.