Orange County Supervisor’s Acceptance of Trip Questioned

A Wall Street investment firm gave Orange County Supervisor Don R. Roth $2,500 for a weekend trip to New York with his wife in 1987, four months after Roth voted to give the firm a major role in the county’s multimillion-dollar jail financing plans, interviews and documents show.

After the trip, Roth said in a state-mandated filing that he had received the money from the firm, First Boston Corp., in the form of an honorarium for giving a “speech at First Boston seminar.”

But First Boston officials said in recent interviews that Roth never gave a formal speech and that the seminar consisted of a closed-door meeting between Roth and about a dozen company officials to talk about jail financing strategies.

The officials said the $2,500 was intended to cover the Roths’ expenses for going to New York City for the meeting, with the rest of their time during the trip left free.

Jackie Roth, Don Roth’s wife at the time, said that she and the supervisor met for an hour on a Friday with First Boston officials. Most of the four-day trip, she said, was spent sightseeing, dining at restaurants and attending the Broadway play “Starlight Express.”

Unrelated to the First Boston trip, an investigation of Roth is under way of alleged conflicts of interest involving his relationships with people doing business with Orange County. Experts in state political law say the New York trip raises new legal and ethical questions about an elected official accepting a fee from a corporation seeking business from an agency that the official oversees.

Roth declined comment. His attorney, Dana Reed, said he could not discuss the ethics of the trip but added, “I see no legal issues here.” He noted that the statute of limitations on political finance violations has run its course, since the trip was taken more than four years ago, and that the First Boston payment was disclosed by Roth as required.

Since the mid-1980s, First Boston has vied for millions of dollars in county business in jail and airport projects, and the firm has also been chosen to underwrite some of the $3 billion in bonds to be sold to finance construction of three planned toll roads in Orange County.

Officials said it was First Boston that, in 1989, pitched to Roth the idea of building an Orange County jail about 160 miles east of Santa Ana in the Riverside County desert. Roth championed the plan for more than a year.

Several political finance experts contacted by The Times said that the First Boston trip raises the question of whether Roth--by declaring that he was paid for giving a speech at a New York seminar--misreported the purpose of the trip, a potential violation of the Political Reform Act.

In addition, state conflict-of-interest laws prohibit officials from voting or making governmental decisions on matters affecting anyone who has given them gifts or honorariums totaling more than $250 during the previous 12 months.

In the one-year period after the New York City trip in June, 1987, Roth did not cast any votes affecting First Boston, county records show.

However, both before the trip and after the one-year legal limit, he did vote on issues directly affecting First Boston:

* On March 10, 1987, Roth voted with his fellow supervisors to make First Boston the financial adviser for the county’s jail program, giving the firm responsibility for studying multimillion-dollar bond financing. But the firm never received a fee because the financing was later abandoned.

* On Sept. 13, 1988, the supervisors unanimously approved a motion by Roth to make First Boston the senior fiscal manager for the Theo Lacy Branch Jail expansion in Orange. But the firm lost the job of helping underwrite the project’s bonds when legal obstacles delayed the expansion and county officials decided to finance it without bonds.

* And on June 20, 1989, Roth seconded a motion to approve a new list of financial firms eligible to handle major building projects for the county. As a result, First Boston was listed among 15 international banking firms as potential underwriters for tax-free government bonds.