City Urged to Resume Trash Truck Purchases

Fearing potential litigation, a Los Angeles City Council committee voted Thursday to recommend that the full council rescind its moratorium on purchases from Amrep, whose trash truck killed two boys in December.

At the same time, the Public Works Committee passed a motion calling for the Ethics Commission and a city task force to investigate disclosures in The Times that the city continued to buy the trucks despite warnings of design flaws and mechanical problems.

The task force would consist of the offices of the chief legislative analyst, city administrative officer and city controller.

“I feel very confident that this issue will get the scrutiny it deserves,” said Councilman Richard Alarcon, chairman of the committee.

Only three days ago, the City Council voted in emergency session to stop buying the trucks and spare parts after the revelations in the newspaper.

But Alarcon said Thursday that his committee backed off, in part, because the city attorney’s office said the city could be held liable for not honoring its contract to accept the trucks with bodies from Amrep and chassis provided by Inland Empire White GMC.

The full council will probably vote today to continue making the purchases while the investigations proceed.

At Thursday’s hearing, attorneys for Inland and Amrep called The Times report inaccurate, denying, among other things, that false documents were submitted during a 1993 bid for a $10.7-million contract.

“We feel that we submitted proper and valid documents,” Inland attorney Tom Dominick insisted.

On a March 1, 1993, document, Inland said its trash truck bodies would be made by Perma--which is Amrep spelled backward--at its Stockton facility. Inland’s president attested under penalty of perjury that information in the bid--the lowest submitted--was true.

However, business records show, Perma did not exist at the time it was listed. Nor did the Stockton address.

In May, one month after a competitor said he raised an objection when the bids were opened at a city meeting--Amrep owner Jose Ghibaudo filed for a business name for Perma in San Joaquin County, records show.

When first contacted by The Times, Amrep’s longtime attorney, James Reed, said he had not heard of Perma. But in an interview after the newspaper’s report, Reed said Perma “was in the process of being formed” at the time it was listed on the bid. He said Amrep owner Ghibaudo was forming Perma because he believed he was going to lose control of Amrep to his brother, Eduardo, who co-owned the firm.

But that account was disputed by Eduardo Ghibaudo.

“I was not trying to buy Amrep,” Eduardo Ghibaudo said in an interview. “I was against them building the automated trucks [for the city] because they were badly designed. . . . That’s the main reason I left the company.”