Beilenson Tells Constituents of 5 Bad Checks : House bank: The Democrat facing reelection calls the overdrafts inadvertent. But he says it could become a campaign issue.

A chagrined Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles), who has carved out a squeaky-clean image during nearly 30 years in public office, disclosed Saturday that he unwittingly wrote five check overdrafts at the House bank.

“I am as careful as anyone I know . . . about writing checks and making sure that I have enough money in there,” Beilenson told about 175 constituents during a town meeting in Canoga Park. “I thought I was the last person in the world” who would have such a problem.

In a subsequent interview, Beilenson acknowledged that the five bad checks, totaling $3,169, could become an issue during what is expected to be a tough reelection fight in a new, Republican-leaning 24th District stretching from Malibu to parts of the San Fernando Valley and Thousand Oaks.

But he expressed confidence that voters would realize that he was “blindsided” by the scandal-plagued bank’s slipshod practices.

Beilenson had previously maintained that he had not written any overdrafts at the bank, which was closed in October. But he said Saturday that he was surprised in the past two weeks to learn of the overdrafts when he asked the House Ethics Committee about his record. His account had been overextended by a total of $2,600 during a 39-month period.

The eight-term lawmaker sought to distinguish between himself and many of his 355 present and former colleagues, who he said had inadvertently written bad checks, and “the two dozen or so members who clearly were abusers of the system” and wrote hundreds of overdrafts, which became, in effect, interest-free loans. Lawmakers wrote more than 20,000 rubber checks during the bank’s last three years.

Like many representatives, Beilenson said he was never told that his account was overdrawn. He said he did not even know that the bank had a policy of covering such checks with the deposits of other members. No taxpayer funds were lost as a result of the overdrafts.

Beilenson said that three of the overdrafts totaling $2,450 occurred because the bank failed to post his paycheck until the third day of the month--instead of the first day of the month when lawmakers were supposedly paid. This included checks for $1,051 and $884 dated Nov. 30, 1990, that Beilenson said covered the mortgage payments on his Maryland and Westwood homes.

In any case, he said that each overdraft was paid off within days. The bank, which did not give lawmakers interest on their deposits and functioned more like a financial cooperative, has been severely criticized for its shoddy management practices.

Beilenson’s disclosure could nonetheless prove politically damaging. The lawmaker has long touted his integrity and independence in refusing to accept special-interest campaign funds and speaking fees. This, in turn, has helped insulate him from the anti-incumbent mood that has swept the nation in recent years and appears to be intensifying.

“Although I’m obviously unhappy about this, I don’t consider myself a less honest person than I did before,” said Beilenson, who served in the state Legislature before going to Congress in 1976. “I trust the voters. They understand what’s right . . . . I believe that the great majority of voters will understand the importance of this issue. They’ll weigh it along with a lot of other things and give it its proper value.”

Beilenson announced his check problems at the beginning of a two-hour session in Canoga Park, the first of three such town halls this weekend. Although the crowd often expressed anger with Congress--and occasionally with Beilenson--no one alluded to the lawmaker’s checks.

A sampling of about a dozen voters leaving the meeting found that most accepted Beilenson’s explanation and downplayed the significance of his five overdrafts.

“He only had a couple, and they didn’t even let him know,” said Howard Barnes, a retired Los Angeles police officer from Canoga Park and a registered Republican who has crossed party lines to vote for Beilenson in the past. “I think he’s pretty honest in his statement.”

“I don’t see the check overdrafts as a big problem,” said Ed Newman, a Woodland Hills Democrat. “The big problems in this country are the deficit, the failure to compete. There’s a lot of monkey business going on, but you have to keep your sights on the big picture.”

Not everyone agreed. “There’s no excuse for it,” fumed Elsie Christianson, an independent Canoga Park voter who previously supported Beilenson. “It makes me feel he was unaccountable. I’m not going to vote for him. I think we need a new man in there.”

Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), considered the favorite to win the Republican nomination in June in the newly drawn 24th District, could not be reached Saturday.

But Republican Jim Salomon, who ran against Beilenson in the past two elections and recently moved to Calabasas to seek the GOP nomination to do so again, said that he would make the check overdrafts an issue in the fall.

“First, he should have been aware in managing his own finances, just as all citizens in America have to be,” Salomon said. “Second, in his capacity of a member of the House, he had to make sure the House bank was being managed properly--something he obviously did not do.”

Salomon, however, has his own vulnerability on the issue of bounced checks. In 1990, the international trade consultant, who is divorced, said in court papers during a child custody dispute that he inadvertently bounced a check for $600 in child-support payments because he had failed to reconcile bank statements and was unaware that he was over his credit limit.

Salomon says that this was the only check that he has ever bounced and that he made good on it as soon as he learned that he was overdrawn.