City Moves to Halt Transfer of Contract to Trash Hauler

Charging that a trash hauler has a “rap sheet” of corruption and mismanagement, Thousand Oaks city officials urged a bankruptcy judge to block the transfer of city trash hauling contracts to Torrance-based Western Waste Industries.

“Western Waste has notoriously violated health and solid waste laws, corrupted public officials, and has mismanaged its business to the tune of astronomical fines and landing key executives and managers in jail or on probation,” Assistant City Atty. Nancy Kierstyn Schreiner wrote in papers filed with the court last week.

The firm has been implicated in recent political corruption cases in Compton and Louisiana and is now a target in an FBI probe in Riverside County.

The firm is also bidding to take over trash hauling in eastern Ventura County as it takes a controlling interest in Simi Valley-based G.I. Industries. G.I. is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and, as part of a reorganization plan, has proposed that Western Waste assume its contracts to pick up trash in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Moorpark and the unincorporated portions of eastern Ventura County.

A bankruptcy judge will consider the transfer at a Nov. 14 hearing in Santa Barbara and has said she will consider community input before making her decision.

Although Moorpark, Simi Valley and the county have all expressed concerns about reports of possible company wrongdoing, only Thousand Oaks has voted to disapprove the transfer of its contracts.

‘It’s in part an issue of community perception,” Mayor Andy Fox said. “We don’t want the citizens of Thousand Oaks to think that we in any way would tolerate a company that has been involved with any criminal wrong to operate here, and Western Waste does have a history that is less than exemplary.”

The city’s brief filed Friday put it more bluntly.

“Western Waste’s voluminous ‘rap sheet’ and nonlocal status explains why the Thousand Oaks City Council, unanimously voted 4-0 to reject the assignment . . . “ of the contracts, said Kierstyn Schreiner in her 18-page motion. With it she filed a 90-page declaration detailing allegations of wrongdoing against Western Waste and a statement by Thousand Oaks city officials.

Bankruptcy Judge Robin Riblet gave her tentative approval this spring to the reorganization plan, with the caveat that the plan could go forward only if all the cities and the counties that had contracts with G.I. approved the transfer to Western Waste.

But company officials from both G.I. and Western have said they have no legal obligation to get city approval of the transfer.

Joel Ohlgren, an attorney for Western Waste Industries, said Monday he could not comment on the Thousand Oaks filing because he had not read it. But in September, an attorney representing G.I. said the company would ignore the city’s vote and try to win Riblet’s approval for the transfer anyway.

Western, California’s largest trash hauler, is being gobbled up by Dallas-based USA Waste, creating one of the nation’s largest waste hauling companies. The proposed merger would leave USA Waste with estimated revenues of $800 million and assets of more than $1 billion, according to Thousand Oaks city officials.

Along with the reports of mismanagement and corruption, Thousand Oaks officials said they opposed the transfer of contracts because neither Western nor USA are local companies.

“My desire is to award the contract to a local company,” Fox said. “We have a policy to buy local where appropriate and that’s what we’d like to do here.”