Supervisors’ Pick Lawyer With Broad Credentials

In retaining Gerald Edmund Boltz to represent them, the Orange County Board of Supervisors chose a nationally respected securities lawyer whose career spans five decades as both an aggressive prosecutor and defender of those accused of securities violations.

Boltz, 63, was the regional administrator of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s office in Los Angeles from 1972 to 1979 and before that was an SEC enforcer in Texas and Denver. For the last 15 years he has been in private practice, the last two as a senior partner at Bryan Cave in Santa Monica, where he specializes in federal and California securities law.

Other lawyers and analysts say that Boltz enjoys an excellent reputation and that his intimate understanding of the inner workings and procedures of the SEC are certain to be invaluable to the supervisors, who are being questioned by the federal agency as well as by state and local investigators over the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy filing.

“He’s one of the best securities lawyers in the country,” said Robert Fusfeld, a senior counsel for the SEC’s regional office in Denver. “He’s an absolute expert on securities law, and he’s got the reputation of utmost integrity.”

Boltz declined to be interviewed, saying that matters involving his clients are confidential.

As an attorney for the Board of Supervisors, Boltz is essentially representing Orange County against any potential action that may stem from regulatory investigations. His as-yet undisclosed fees will be paid by the county, which has already agreed to pay up to $435 an hour for some of its bankruptcy counsel.

The five supervisors, among other county officials, have been subpoenaed by the SEC, which legal experts say may be looking into the relationship between county officials and the brokers who underwrote county bonds, whether the county properly disclosed facts to investors before issuing the bonds, and the oversight responsibilities of the board.

“If I were a supervisor and the SEC wanted to talk to me, I’d like to have someone like Boltz sitting next to me,” said Robert F. Watson, a securities lawyer who worked with Boltz at the SEC in Denver and Texas and is now in private practice in Ft. Worth, Tex.

Boltz, a native of Dennison, Ohio, graduated from Ohio Northern University’s law school in 1955. After two years in the Army and a year as an assistant attorney general in Ohio, Boltz joined the SEC in Denver in 1959 as an special investigations attorney and later worked in the agency’s Ft. Worth office.

In his seven years as head of the SEC’s Los Angeles operations, Boltz is credited with having turned a sleepy local office into one of the commission’s most aggressive branches--quadrupling its staff, doubling its caseload and pursuing notable investigations involving Equity Funding Corp., Beverly Hills Bancorp and Lincoln Thrift in Phoenix, among others.

“When we were at the SEC, he was a very strong enforcement leader,” said Charles Hartman, who was hired by Boltz in Los Angeles in 1972. Hartman co-authored with Boltz a chapter in “Securities Law Techniques” about how to litigate with the SEC and defend against an SEC injunction.