State to Reopen Probe of Ex-Official

The state Fair Political Practices Commission agreed Thursday to reopen its conflict of interest investigation of Henry M. Voss, formerly the state’s highest-ranking agriculture official, based on newly released records.

At a tense meeting, the commission also took the extraordinary step of urging Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren to investigate whether officials of the California Department of Food and Agriculture had violated obstruction of justice laws by failing to provide official records subpoenaed by commission investigators.

A spokesman for new Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman called the failure to produce the records an “unfortunate oversight” and said Veneman “welcomes the involvement of the attorney general or any other parties to get to the bottom of this.”

In addition, the FPPC’s top staff investigator disclosed to the five-member commission the existence of previously unreported tape recordings that he said may demonstrate whether Voss participated in decisions that affected his private farming businesses.

“We are now informed that there are approximately 125 tapes that were not previously provided,” enforcement chief Darryl East told the commission. “We will be going through those tapes, plus approximately 23 boxes of materials at the state archives.”

East said that he has not examined the tapes, but that he has been told that they contain discussions of “executive meetings and the decision-making process” concerning the awarding of contracts to promote California produce overseas.

East said the tapes and other materials have been secured and investigators will start examining them early next week.

Without dissent, the commission ordered its staff to reopen the Voss investigation based on new records obtained independently last week from the department by Common Cause of California and Consumers Union. The two groups told the FPPC what they had found.

The groups, which first filed a conflict of interest complaint against Voss last year, said the records link Voss to the awarding of $755,000 in state contracts to major agribusiness corporations in 1989 and 1990. The same corporations provided income to Voss’ farming businesses.

At the time, California was heavily involved in the promotion of its agricultural products to markets abroad. The program has since been abandoned.

Voss resigned under pressure last spring, insisting that he had no conflicts of interest. But he acknowledged that he did not report $420,000 in income that his farming interests received from businesses that he was charged with regulating.

In a proposed settlement with Voss, the commission staff last month recommended a fine of $21,000 for failing to report the income. But approval of the settlement by the commission has been postponed until the bigger issue of Voss’ alleged conflicts is concluded.

The commission last month dismissed conflict-of-interest charges against Voss, on grounds that its staff had conducted a thorough investigation and uncovered no evidence of such conflicts.

East told the commission Thursday that the new information uncovered by the two independent organizations had been subpoenaed by commission investigators but was not made available earlier by the Department of Food and Agriculture.

He said the department gave different reasons for failing to provide the records detailing the awarding of the promotion contracts to companies such as Sunsweet, Del Monte and Blue Diamond.

“The first explanation was that they misunderstood the content of the subpoena,” East said. “The second explanation was that [the documents] were newly found.”

The commission also ordered its staff to seek Lungren’s help in finding out whether department employees had violated criminal laws against obstructing an investigation.

Lungren spokesman Steve Telliano said the attorney general will “evaluate the request and determine whether it is proper for us to open an investigation.”

Voss’ attorney, former FPPC Chairman Ben Davidian, complained that the renewed probe occurred in a “hanging judge” atmosphere. He said he believed that no evidence of wrongdoing by Voss would be produced.