Sen. Hurtt’s Son Wrecks State Car on Pleasure Trip

As state Senate GOP Leader Rob Hurtt told it Tuesday, he was just being a good dad.

Last month, the conservative Republican from Garden Grove loaned his state-owned Chevrolet Tahoe to his teen-age son for a trip to a friend’s wedding in Montana. Hurtt says he figured his son, Spencer, and a buddy would be safer on that long journey in the beefy sport-utility vehicle than the youth’s own tiny Toyota pickup.

If so, Hurtt’s decision proved prophetic.

In the early morning of Aug. 15, Spencer Hurtt crashed the brand-new state vehicle into the back of a pickup truck on the isolated Escondido Freeway outside of Barstow. The 18-year-old and his friend escaped injury, but the driver and a passenger in the pickup say they’ve been seeing doctors for head, neck and shoulder pain.

For Hurtt, the episode has become something of a political pain in the neck.

Although Senate rules do not specifically prohibit the use of state-owned vehicles by a lawmaker’s family, news of the crash had politicos in the state Capitol tittering at the expense of the newly christened king of Senate Republicans.

In the past, Hurtt has made a point of driving his own automobile while doing the People’s business. The wealthy owner of an Orange County firm that manufactures plastic buckets and decorative tins, Hurtt declared soon after he was first elected in early 1993 that he wanted to save taxpayer money by avoiding use of a state-owned vehicle.

How, then, to explain the Chevy Tahoe, which was purchased for him by the Senate Rules Committee back in May?

“I had been the most austere person around,” Hurtt said Tuesday. “I decided after three years that I had been a good boy long enough and I should be able to drive a [state-owned] car like anyone else.”

Under Senate rules, there is an assumption that there will be personal use of a state-owned car by the lawmaker, but it’s “up to the discretion of the member” when it comes to family taking the wheel, said Greg Schmidt, executive officer of the Senate Rules Committee.

Hurtt said he uses the vehicle for legislative business in Southern California, and his son rarely gets behind the wheel, preferring instead his own small pickup.

Spencer Hurtt left with 24-year-old Daniel Wilson, a friend from church, about 4 a.m. for the trip to Montana for the wedding of another church buddy, the senator said.

The pair were eastbound on the freeway when Spencer Hurtt fell asleep at the wheel just before 7 a.m. and rammed into a 1985 Nissan driven by George Lippincott, 38, a painting contractor from Murietta. Also in the pickup was Lippincott’s nephew. Hurtt was driving at more than 75 m.p.h. when the accident occurred, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said.

The Highway Patrol spokesman said the agency reopened the case a few days ago after Lippincott made allegations that it was Wilson, not Spencer Hurtt, who was driving at the time of the accident.