Allen’s Dealings With an Unpaid Political Adviser Questioned : Assembly: Critics say aide has spoken on her behalf, and that the lawmaker takes up issues outside her district that assist his clients. Both insist the alliance is ethical and rooted in shared frustration with Fish and Game agency.

When the state moved to tighten regulations on the growing practice of prospecting for gold nuggets by vacuuming the stream beds of Northern California, it was Assemblywoman Doris Allen to the rescue.

Working hand in hand with her confidant, wildlife biologist and Sacramento business consultant Harold C. Cribbs, the Orange County lawmaker weighed in on the issue, backing the miners and challenging the procedures being used by the Department of Fish and Game to adopt the new regulations.

In 1994, Allen and Cribbs pushed legislation that would have weakened the department’s authority over recreational mining and suction dredging. Although opposition from environmentalists killed the measure, the miners succeeded in getting the Fish and Game Commission to revise the regulations.

Though not a lobbyist, Cribbs was hired for his efforts by the miners. “If it wasn’t for Hal and Doris, [the department] would have destroyed our industry,” said Dave McCracken, president of the Modern Gold Miner and Treasure Hunter’s Assn.

The gold mining fight spotlighted what many lawmakers and state officials say was a high-octane legislative alliance. As Cribbs--neither a registered lobbyist nor a salaried legislative staffer--helped author and shepherd an environmental agenda for Allen, she exercised the power of her elective office in a way that benefited his business clients.

Allen and Cribbs say they had a common interest in marine and wildlife issues and shared a frustration with the Department of Fish and Game. “I’ve been in the forefront of going after the department,” she said. When Cribbs was assisting her, she said, “he doesn’t represent anyone else but me.”

Using expertise gained as the longtime executive director of the Fish and Game Commission, Cribbs helped Allen emerge from the obscurity of minority Republican ranks to become a force in the Capitol on environmental and development issues.

In turn, Allen as a lawmaker gave Cribbs access to the innermost circles of the Capitol, allowing the consultant to negotiate on her behalf, represent her at meetings, design bills for her and serve without pay as an adviser. And, during her tumultuous three-month stint as Speaker, Cribbs helped hire staff and joined Allen in attending a meeting of the Assembly Democratic Caucus, typically reserved for Democratic lawmakers.

Even in Sacramento, where lawmakers and lobbyists historically have intertwining interests, this working relationship was out of the ordinary, according to lawmakers and staff. What stood out, they said, was that Allen popped up championing local development issues far from her Orange County district and Cribbs’ role seemed to muddle the lines that typically separate registered lobbyists from public officials.

Allen, facing a recall election next week, declined to discuss specific issues they worked on, but said the criticism is based on “lies” from her recall opponents. “I have an absolutely marvelous record that is [being] made to look like something that it isn’t,” she said. “I know what went on, and it was honorable. There was nothing there that was dishonorable.”

She said her relationship with Cribbs was ethical, aboveboard and rooted in shared frustrations with state government--especially the state Fish and Game Commission. The Cypress Republican said Cribbs had acted as her “helper” without pay because “he’s a good citizen” and knowledgeable about the state’s environmental laws.

Cribbs said he worked on the lawmaker’s staff as an unpaid volunteer “because she had nobody else that she could trust out there” after Allen became Speaker. Asked whether he should have registered as a lobbyist, Cribbs said he had consulted a lawyer and his activities failed to meet the legal registration requirements. “I’m not a lobbyist because I’ve never gone to a member of the Legislature and asked them to do diddly-squat, as far as the bills are concerned.”

Lobbyists are required to register with the state if they are paid $2,000 in a month to influence a legislative or administrative action or have 25 contacts over two months with state officials.

Some watchdogs of legislative ethics say Cribbs’ activities in the Legislature are unusual.

Robert Stern, co-director of the Center for Government Studies, a nonprofit research organization that studies state and local government, said, “I think it’s very rare to have somebody who is involved in representing a legislator who is not a paid staff person.

“We shouldn’t be having people being paid by private industry to appear to be staff people who are then affecting the private industry. That’s not the way government works,” Stern said. “People should know his position.”

Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni (D-Novato), chairwoman of the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee, said a complaint about Cribbs and Allen has not been lodged with her panel. While emphasizing that she was not speaking for the committee, Mazzoni said there may be a problem with the role of unpaid staffers that needs to be addressed, saying, “This is something as an individual legislator I wouldn’t be involved in.”

Earlier this year, Allen became the Assembly leader in a political maneuver led by former Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) that gave her the post and prevented a Republican majority from seizing control of the Assembly. Orange County conservatives retaliated by gathering more than 26,000 signatures to place Allen’s recall on Tuesday’s ballot.

“I’ve been through an absolutely ugly, vicious, evil recall,” said Allen, who resigned as Speaker in September. “Whether I win or not . . . I hope the people in my district have followed my record. . . . I have done nothing that they would be ashamed of.”

Indeed, in the battle with Allen, the relationship with Cribbs has been fodder for some Republicans. “I certainly see it as a conflict,” said Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside). “He [Cribbs] negotiates on behalf of Allen with government officials whom he deals with in his business. He pulls her like a pistol to benefit his own consulting firm.”

At the heart of the Allen-Cribbs legislative collaboration are two issues: Cribbs’ role as a volunteer adviser during Allen’s tenure as an assemblywoman and later as Speaker, and the degree to which Allen got involved in local development disputes outside her district affecting Cribbs’ clients.

Allen’s sudden elevation to Speaker last spring catapulted Cribbs into the public eye as he assumed a prominent--although unpaid--role as a top-level adviser and de facto chief of staff.

“It was a bad situation from the staff perspective that the person who was acting in the role . . . of chief of staff was not on the staff,” recalled Tony Quinn, a consultant who served on Allen’s staff while she was Speaker.

Assemblyman Dan Hauser (D-Arcata) said that to legislators, Cribbs’ role was a mystery. It was unclear to Hauser what Cribbs’ role really was and neither Cribbs nor Allen ever spelled it out, he said. Hauser, who has many legislative interests that parallel Allen’s, said he assumed Cribbs was on Allen’s paid staff but “those lines were never clearly defined.”

Says reformer Stern: “People should know his position. ‘Hey, I’m representing her [Allen], but I’m doing it as a person representing these private interests.’ ”

Over the years, nowhere was the Allen-Cribbs association more apparent than at the Fish and Game Commission, which was once primarily the domain of hunting and fishing interests but now also carries out environmental protection programs.

Through these environmental issues, Cribbs, 58, at the time executive secretary of the Fish and Game Commission, and Allen, 59, then a newcomer to the Assembly, first met in the early 1980s on a Fish and Game organized wilderness trail ride.

Cribbs, a biologist by training, acknowledges that he was forced to retire from his job in 1990. He said it came after he got involved in an endangered species dispute.

That same year, Cribbs became a private consultant and helped draft and pass Allen’s high-profile initiative to ban the use of gill nets by commercial anglers. Its approval by voters propelled Allen into the forefront of Fish and Game issues.

“I’ve had my wars with the Department of Fish and Game and I’ve held them accountable and I paid dearly for it. . . . The department hates me,” Allen said.

Interim Fish and Game Director C. F. Raysbrook, who was once summoned to Allen’s office to discuss the agency’s treatment of a Cribbs’ client, said Allen was not hated, but he did believe that her criticism was unfair and often excessive.

As for Allen’s role in the development disputes handled by the Fish and Game Commission, “I thought it was irregular,” Raysbrook said. Although it was not unusual for lawmakers to comment about department decisions relating to their districts, he said Allen stepped beyond the normal protocol by jumping into local disputes far from her district.

Cribbs said Allen’s purpose in intervening was not to grant him favors but to hold the Fish and Game Commission accountable. He said she had a longstanding belief that “people were being abused by the department.”

One of the most high-profile collaborations that drew Allen and Cribbs together revolved around gold mining, primarily in Northern California. In the early 1990s, the Western Mining Council and later other gold mining groups hired Cribbs to help lead their fight against a proposal by Fish and Game officials to tighten regulations on suction dredging to find gold.

Cribbs assumed two hats, representing the miners as well as Allen. He corresponded with the department and held discussions on behalf of the miners, but--at a 1993 hearing on the regulations--he wrote on a sign-in card, “I will speak in part on behalf of Assemblywoman Allen.”

But Cribbs’ relationship with some of the miners cooled when they got into a dispute over whether he had been paid for all his work. Representing the miners “ended up costing me,” Cribbs said.

When Allen presented a goldmining bill on Jan. 11, 1994, to an Assembly committee, Cribbs was at her side acting as her technical adviser.

In a crowded hallway outside the hearing room, several state employees said they witnessed Allen complaining loudly to one of the miners about their failure to fully pay Cribbs. One Fish and Game Commission aide, who asked not to be named, took notes during the discussion and then gave them to her boss in an informal memo.

“You don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” the memo quoted Allen as saying in reference to Cribbs.

Cribbs, who was standing at Allen’s side, said he remembered the discussion but did not recall her making any mention of the payment issue. “It had nothing to do with fees,” he said.

But Cribbs said he did recall that Allen was angry because she believed that at the same time the miners were asking her to pass legislation, they also were seeking to make a deal with the department over regulations.

“They had gone around and behind and tried to cut a deal without talking to her, without talking to me. She was upset about that,” Cribbs said.

When Cribbs had trouble getting the necessary Fish and Game Commission approvals for other clients who were proposing a development on environmentally sensitive property near Santa Barbara’s airport, Allen repeatedly intervened.

On another project, Allen drew the ire of a local lawmaker when she interceded on behalf of developers, who had hired Cribbs as a consultant.

Fish and Game officials, including interim director Raysbrook, earlier this year were summoned to a meeting in her office where they were asked to explain in front of developer Steve Taylor, Cribbs and a high-ranking official from the governor’s office why they had objected to certain portions of a proposed housing project in a Rancho Palos Verdes canyon.

Allen in April followed up the meeting with a letter to Raysbrook. “The department has proposed unreasonable exactions” on the developer, she wrote.

Assemblyman Steven Kuykendall (R-Rancho Palos Verdes) said that since his election a year ago he has become increasingly irritated with Allen’s involvement in his district.

The lawmaker, whose own property is just 75 feet from the proposed project, recalls feeling that Allen was “overstepping [her] bounds as a state official.”

Cribbs insisted that Allen’s only reason for interceding on both projects was her belief that the department was making unreasonably harsh demands on the developers. “I don’t care if it’s [the project] in Timbuktu,” he said. “The issue is not that local project. The issue is that [the Fish and Game Commission is] an agency run amok.”