Torres Resigns Post at Firm Targeted by Probes

California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres said Wednesday he has resigned from his job with a prominent Latino-owned company and acknowledged that he had worked on a $3.2-million federal project run by the firm that was judged to be unsatisfactory.

Torres, a former state senator, insisted that his resignation from Cordoba Corp. had no connection to inquiries being conducted by top Commerce Department officials and the House Commerce Committee into the company’s failure to run a government-sponsored minority business center successfully in downtown Los Angeles.

He said he decided to resign from the $150,000-a-year job at Cordoba shortly after he was elected chairman of the state party earlier this year. He said he took a 50% pay cut from Cordoba after being elected acting chairman in February and severed his ties with Cordoba completely on May 1--about a month after he was elected to the position permanently.

Torres, who receives no salary from the state party, said he has no idea how he will support himself. “That’s my problem,” he said, adding that his party position has proven to be a full-time job.

The Times reported a week ago that Commerce Department officials were pressured by prominent Democrats in 1994 to give Cordoba the contract to run the Los Angeles minority business center. As a result, Cordoba won the project over the strong objections of the department’s inspector general, who warned that Cordoba was in debt and unable to finance such a project.

The minority business center closed its doors a year later, forcing the Commerce Department to abandon the effort to provide such assistance in Los Angeles.

Among those officeholders who assisted Cordoba in winning the grant were Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park) and then-Deputy Mayor Al Villalobos.

After Cordoba won the award, Villalobos, his son, Eric, and Martinez’s son, Matt, were employed on the project. But Cordoba President George Pla has denied that those jobs were provided in exchange for assistance in winning the grant.

For his part, Torres acknowledged that he recently contacted Feinstein, asking her assistance in helping determine whether Cordoba was going to receive a $269,000 “close-out” payment from the government as a result of the closure of the minority business center.

He said he was only enlisting Feinstein’s assistance in “making an inquiry” with the Commerce Department and said he did not ask her to put pressure on Commerce officials to pay the money. That payment has been frozen by newly installed Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor pending a top-level review of the Cordoba matter.

Torres said he does not recall contacting anyone but Feinstein.