Official’s Bribery Conviction Surfaces : Ventura: Though it was overturned, some are dismayed the new port commissioner didn’t mention the case while applying for the job.

The newest commissioner for the Ventura Port District was convicted of bribe-taking while he was a Los Angeles Harbor commissioner 24 years ago in a case that was later overturned on appeal.

Robert (Nick) Starr, 59, told The Times this week that he felt there was no need to mention the case in application papers or interviews with city officials because it was resolved and no one asked about it before his appointment by the Ventura City Council on June 29.

“If they wanted that type of information, and maybe if they put down a question like, ‘Do you have anything that might embarrass the city of Ventura?’ maybe I would have filled it in,” Starr said.

On learning of Starr’s bribery case, however, several Ventura officials expressed dismay that he had never mentioned it in interviews before they appointed him to the five-member board of port commissioners.

One fellow port commissioner said he is considering quitting because of tension with Starr over the case. Other city officials expressed concern that the revelation could further tarnish the image of the port district, which is just beginning to rise above legal troubles that have plagued it since the mid-1980s.

Councilwoman Cathy Bean said it does not matter that the conviction was thrown out.

“What matters is that we weren’t informed of this. I think this should have been disclosed,” Bean said.

“Twenty-four years is a long time, and certainly I’m not even going to put any judgment on him,” said Councilman Gary Tuttle. “But I do think it does not look good when somebody is appointed for the exact same position there was controversy around in the past.”

Ventura Harbor Manager Richard Parsons said that he learned of Starr’s past earlier this month from a Los Angeles Harbor official. The official, whom Parsons would not name, gave the commissioners old newspaper clippings about the case that were passed on to the City Council and Port District Commission.

Starr alleged that the clippings were leaked to city officials by port district board Chairman Richard Hambleton. He said Hambleton was upset that Starr objected to a board proposal to let the financially troubled Harbortown Resort hotel operate rent-free at the harbor for three years.

Starr said that after he made the objection at his one and only meeting with the board to date--arguing that such a deal would be “a gift of public funds and a violation of public trust”--Hambleton threatened him.

“He said, ‘If you don’t resign, I’m going to gather up all this information and send it out, and the people who appointed you will be embarrassed,’ ” Starr said.

But Hambleton said he did not threaten Starr. He said he suggested that Starr consider quitting because his past might reflect poorly on the port district.

“My words were precisely this: ‘I’m deeply concerned about the effect this could possibly have on the district, particularly given that for the first time in a long time, the district is on a roll,’ ” Hambleton said. “It was only a suggestion. . . . There wasn’t any threat.”

Hambleton said that now he is considering quitting his post because of the tension with Starr.

“The commission is only five people, and we have to work very closely,” Hambleton said. “Obviously, my raising this question . . . has put a strain on at least my relationship with Starr, and I apparently haven’t pleased a couple of council members.”

One councilman critical of the disclosure about Starr’s background was Jim Monahan, who said he supported Starr’s appointment despite having vague knowledge of some controversy involving the former Los Angeles Harbor commissioner.

“I was under the impression there was a court case and it was resolved,” Monahan said, adding that he did not know the nature of the charge.

He criticized officials for reviving a long-dead case.

“I don’t think it’s an issue. It’s something that was resolved 20 years ago,” Monahan said.

Starr’s bribery conviction came in 1968 when he and another Los Angeles Harbor commissioner were found guilty by a jury on charges that their medical lab accepted $6,500 in furniture from a Los Angeles developer who wanted their help on a $12-million construction project.

The Times stories on the case were part of a series on city corruption that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.

The judge sentenced Starr to one year in the Los Angeles County Jail and forbade him ever to hold public office again, but allowed him to remain free pending appeal.

The state appeal court overturned Starr’s conviction in 1970. Although Starr admitted the lab accepted the furniture from the developer, the court ruled that the jury was not properly instructed that it must prove the case on evidence and not Starr’s statement alone. The district attorney did not refile the charge, court records show.

In an Aug. 20 letter to the City Council and harbor officials, Starr wrote that he laid blame at the time on his fellow Los Angeles Harbor commissioner, Karl Rundberg.

“When asked, I acknowledged that while the actions were those of Mr. Rundberg, I was aware of--not involved in--his actions,” the letter says. Starr also wrote that the district attorney requested dismissal of the case in 1971 “in the interest of justice.”

However, the letter does not mention that prosecutors said that Rundberg’s death after the trial deprived them of evidence they needed to try the case. Starr’s acquittal on a second bribery charge also would have barred them from showing a pattern of conduct on Starr’s part, prosecutors said.

Starr, who drives a gold-trimmed Cadillac and a boat christened “Hot Money,” is no stranger to controversy.

In the mid-1970s, the state ordered the San Fernando Valley Fair to stop renting space from Starr, who at one point had a San Fernando Valley address, and his wife Diane because the rental was a conflict of interest; Diane Starr was one of the fair directors then, and Starr had been its manager for a year.

State regulators also investigated the couple’s 47-bed North Hollywood Lodge and Sanitarium and revoked the nursing home’s license after Los Angeles County health inspectors found problems with the handling of drugs there in 1973 and 1974, state records show.

Accurate drug records were not kept, some drugs were given without doctor’s orders and others were withheld despite prescriptions for them, according to state records. But by the time the Department of Health Services revoked the home’s license in 1976, the Starrs had sold it, records show.

Starr also aided the FBI during Labscam, a massive undercover investigation of Medi-Cal and Medicare fraud in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In the mid-1980s, Starr was accused by state investigators of violating conflict-of-interest laws while helping trim Medi-Cal costs as a member of the state Medical Assistance Commission, but no charges were filed.

Starr says the case was dropped after state prosecutors learned they had stumbled onto an FBI sting operation. The FBI has never commented officially on Starr’s involvement in the Labscam investigation, but court records identified him as an FBI informant.

Ventura officials, however, are focusing solely on the bribery case.

“You look at the decision, it says, ‘Hey, he confessed, he did it, he did everything.’ The courts overturned it on a technicality,” said port district Commissioner William Crew.

Crew, a neighbor of Starr’s, said that the newest commissioner should have revealed his old problems before he was appointed.

Now, if anything is to be done about Starr’s appointment, the City Council members who appointed him must be the ones to do it, Crew said.

Starr said he applied to the city clerk for the post in May on learning about an opening left by outgoing Commissioner Lawrence L. Matheney.

“I gave them my entire resume, including my terms on the L.A. port commission,” Starr said.

Tuttle, Monahan and Jack Tingstrom, the three members of the council’s appointments subcommittee, interviewed only one other candidate before nominating Starr--over Tuttle’s protests that the search was too narrow.

The City Council voted 5 to 2 to appoint Starr, with Tuttle and Deputy Mayor Todd Collart dissenting.

At no time, Tingstrom said, did anyone mention the bribery case.

Tingstrom said that Starr, a Ventura Keys resident, walked precincts around the Keys for Tingstrom’s 1991 City Council campaign, but never mentioned the bribery case.

“Jim and I supported his appointment because of his background in businesses that were failing,” Tingstrom said Tuesday. “We felt it’d be in the best interests of the harbor.”

The 1968 case matters nothing because the conviction was overturned, Tingstrom said.

“People get accused all the time,” Tingstrom said. “Like a guy who goes to court for drunk driving and beats it. Is he guilty for being arrested, or is he not guilty?”

Monahan said: “The board is in an awkward position. The reason this is being brought up is maybe they’re not happy with his appointment.”

But Hambleton said he welcomed Starr’s business expertise at first.

“He has some very good ideas, about dredging the Ventura Keys, and how the district might be involved, he has good ideas about the Harbortown Hotel issue,” Hambleton said.

But he also said he worries that Starr’s case could taint the harbor’s image with key players and interfere with business.

“He’s ultimately shown as being not guilty,” Hambleton said. “But the perception of his being convicted by a jury--he was to never hold public office again--when that information is in the community, it’s not going to be as well understood as it might be by the attorneys and the others that can analyze it.”

In his Aug. 20 letter, Starr called the discussion of his old case “a personal attack over this non-event.”

But Tuttle said the issue is one that might justify reconsideration of Starr’s appointment.

Although only council members who voted for Starr can call officially for the council to reconsider the appointment, Tuttle said: “If the port district members feel strongly about it, the city should certainly re-look at the situation.”

Ventura Mayor Gregory L. Carson said the Starr flap “looks like it could be a problem.”

Starr should have revealed the case during interviews, Carson said.

“The bigger problem now is the disharmony that this has caused in the port district,” Carson said.