Merrill Serves Lawmakers With Apology

If this was supposed to be a practical joke, state lawmakers just didn’t get it.

Legislators were grumbling Wednesday after efforts to issue a subpoena earlier in the week to Michael Stamenson, a Merrill Lynch & Co. broker linked to Orange County’s financial woes, were briefly sidetracked when one of the company’s top public relations officials pretended to be the long-sought investment banker.

Paul W. Critchlow, the firm’s New York-based senior vice president for marketing and communications, later apologized in a note to Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside), co-chairman of the state Senate special committee that is investigating Orange County’s investment debacle. Critchlow said he was only joking with the Senate sergeant-at-arms who was attempting to deliver the subpoena.

Craven and other lawmakers weren’t laughing, most notably because the state Senate Special Committee on Local Government Investments had been attempting for more than a week to deliver a subpoena requiring Stamenson to appear at the panel’s Tuesday hearing.

Although officials with Merrill Lynch insist that Stamenson intended all along to appear voluntarily, lawmakers and Senate staffers expressed a belief last week that the broker was attempting to duck the subpoena.

The two sides finally ironed out any possible confusion and set Monday as the date for Stamenson to be served in the offices of a Sacramento lobbyist representing Merrill Lynch.

But when the sergeant-at-arms arrived with the subpoena, Critchlow claimed to be Stamenson. Unconvinced, the sergeant pulled out a blown-up driver’s license photo of Stamenson and told Critchlow that he was not the bond broker. Critchlow then showed the sergeant to a room where Stamenson was waiting.

Craven, who issued a memo to Senate colleagues on the committee detailing the episode, said that Critchlow was “confronted” on Tuesday outside the hearing room and agreed to issue an apology.

In that handwritten note, Critchlow said the remark was made “in jest” to the sergeant-at-arms and that he understood it had “caused some additional consternation and confusion in this process.”

Critchlow said in the note to Craven that he had apologized in person to Scott Johnson, the lawmaker’s chief counsel, and wished “to apologize to you for my flippant action. I intended no disrespect and hope you will forgive me.”

Critchlow could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.