Executive Concedes Firm Paid for Roth Landscaping : Investigation: Baldwin Co. official was ‘highly embarrassed’ to learn of $1,950 payment after denial.

A top executive with one of Orange County’s biggest development companies was shocked to learn last week that his firm paid nearly $2,000 to landscape Supervisor Don R. Roth’s front yard, the executive’s lawyer said Tuesday.

“He didn’t have any idea until the (district attorney) showed him the evidence,” said Dennis M. McNerney, attorney for Geoffrey S. Fearns, president of the Baldwin Co.’s Orange County division. “He was highly embarrassed by that.”

The question of how the Baldwin Co. came to pay a subcontractor for the landscaping of Roth’s bare front yard in late 1990 has become the latest issue in the 7-month-old investigation into whether Roth, a two-term supervisor, engaged in a criminal pattern of influence peddling.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Guy Ormes said McNerney’s explanation--that Fearns had not known about the payment--”is consistent with at least some of the evidence we have gathered.” He declined to elaborate.

As recently as last week, Fearns told The Times that he could “categorically deny” that the Baldwin Co. paid anything for the Roth job. He took the same position when questioned by district attorney’s investigators during interviews on the Roth case, McNerney said.

But McNerney said Fearns was later convinced by the company’s own records that Baldwin had in fact paid a subcontractor $1,950 for the landscaping, and that Roth never paid for the work. He blamed the problem on a bookkeeping oversight at the Baldwin Co.

“It’s just one of those things that slipped through the cracks,” McNerney said. “He’s embarrassed because he protested so loudly that the Baldwin Co. hadn’t paid for the thing--and he was wrong.”

Roth’s lawyer, Dana Reed, said Roth believed that the bill was paid by his then-wife, Jackie Roth. Reed said that Don Roth now plans to pay for his “fair share” of the work.

Roth voted at least five times on matters involving the Baldwin Co.--Southern California’s ninth-largest builder in 1991--in the year after the landscaping was done. As a result, the job could pose conflict-of-interest problems for Roth under state law if authorities determine that the work amounted to a gift from Baldwin to the former Anaheim mayor.

Elected officials are required to report to the state the “fair market value” of gifts they receive. They are precluded from voting on matters affecting anyone who has given them gifts worth more than $250 in the previous year.

Fearns testified before the Orange County Grand Jury under subpoena Friday in connection with the Roth case.

McNerney said that Fearns arranged for Southern Counties Landscape Inc. of Brea, which is also owned by the Baldwin family, to do the work. But he maintained that the job was unrelated to Roth’s role of reviewing and voting on Baldwin matters.

“That didn’t have anything to do with what (Fearns) did for Mr. Roth. (Fearns) felt sorry for (Roth); he knew he was getting a divorce, and he knew he was getting killed financially in the divorce,” McNerney said.

McNerney said Fearns wanted to do Roth “a favor” because he knew that the supervisor was trying to sell the newly purchased Anaheim Hills home after his divorce.

Fearns “said the supervisor wanted a favor--that he needed some work done real fast and at the cheapest possible price,” McNerney said.

McNerney said he did not know how much the landscape work was worth. But several Orange County landscapers agreed in interviews that the $1,950 paid by Baldwin to Southern Counties for the job was substantially below the typical price. The landscapers said that price tag appeared to represent a wholesale cost, and that the same work would ordinarily cost two to three times more.

Southern Counties installed an automatic irrigation system in the Roths’ front yard, put in 2,000 square feet of sod, and planted two birch trees, four azaleas, and about two dozen other plants, records and interviews show.

“There’s no way that could be done (at retail) for $2,000,” said Bill Conner, owner of Treehouse Landscape Co. of Santa Ana. Asked by a reporter for an item-by-item breakdown of the work done at the Roths’ home, he estimated the ordinary cost to the public at $5,600.