State Accuses Montgomery of 22 Election Infractions

On the eve of his sentencing on criminal conflict-of-interest convictions, former Moorpark City Councilman Scott Montgomery has been charged in a separate matter with 22 violations of state election law.

The violations cited by the California Fair Political Practices Commission concern Montgomery’s alleged failure to report the source of 19 campaign contributions worth $5,400 during his unsuccessful attempt to win a spot on the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 1994 and his reelection to a Moorpark City Council seat in 1992.

In a statement released Tuesday, state investigators charge he also mishandled campaign funds, personally cashing checks drawn on his campaign account but never accounting for how the money was spent.

Montgomery faces up to $2,000 in fines for each violation or a total of $44,000 in fines, said Gary Huckaby a spokesman for the state commission. If Montgomery can’t pay, Huckaby said, the commission would set up a payment plan for him.

The former councilman was served with the charges Monday and has up to 15 days to contest the allegations, which will be reviewed by an administrative law judge for a ruling in mid-July.

Montgomery’s attorney, James Farley, did not return phone calls Tuesday. But in previous comments about the case, Montgomery has said that the state elections investigation was urged by the Ventura County district attorney’s office.

Huckaby said the charges were not timed to coincide with Montgomery’s sentencing and that the state investigation was totally separate from the criminal investigation conducted by the district attorney’s office.

“There was nothing timed,” Huckaby said. “It came out when it came out.”

Today, Montgomery is set to be sentenced for felony and misdemeanor conflict-of-interest violations for accepting a $3,500 loan from a trash company executive and then voting on a contract the firm had with the city.

One of the violations relates to Montgomery’s failure to disclose on statements of financial interest that he received that money. Those statements are meant to list candidates’ income sources and avert possible conflicts of interest that would occur when voting on items for which officeholders may receive financial gain.

Montgomery faces a maximum sentence of 3 1/2 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines on the convictions.

Prosecutor Mark Aveis would not say whether he would bring up the state elections charges in today’s sentencing hearing, but said he was not surprised by the allegations.

“No, they’re not surprising to me, although the details of the investigation were never made known to me,” Aveis said.

Although the election law violations are not criminal in nature, they do represent a wide range of either exceedingly shoddy reporting or intentional concealment of information, said the state commission’s Huckaby.

“We consider all violations of the Political Reform Act serious,” Huckaby said. “I’d put this somewhere in the mid-range of violations. It’s not the smallest violation we’ve had and it certainly isn’t the largest either.”

Only two of the alleged violations concern Montgomery’s successful 1992 City Council race. The rest allegedly occurred during his 1994 run for supervisor. In two instances, in which he received anonymous cash donations of $100 and $600, state investigators could not determine who had contributed the money, Huckaby said. Candidates are not allowed to accept anonymous contributions of $100 or more.

The investigators used canceled checks and bank records to find the identities of the 17 other contributors, he said. Huckaby said the contributors are not alleged to have done anything wrong, and that it was Montgomery and his campaign committee’s failure to list the donors that resulted in the charges.

Many of the contributions in question came from developers in 1994.

They include $200 from Messenger Investment Co. Vice President Gary Austin and his wife. The Messenger company has a proposal to build 3,221 homes near Moorpark.

Montgomery also failed to disclose $250 in contributions from Griffin Industries, which has built homes in Moorpark, or from home-building giant Kaufman and Broad, investigators said. He also failed to list a $1,000 contribution from the developer, A-C Construction Inc., they said.

The decision to file charges against Montgomery came after state elections lawyers could not negotiate a settlement with the former councilman.

The yearlong state investigation was hampered, in part, because Montgomery initially would not turn over all the documents requested by investigators, Huckaby said.

Last December, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered Montgomery to turn over copies of bank statements, canceled checks and deposit slips.

At the time, an attorney representing Montgomery said he had not wanted to turn over the records for fear that they would be given to the district attorney’s office.