School Board Fires Counsel Over Taping of Trustee

The Oxnard school board has fired its attorney amid a bizarre case involving a well-regarded school district employee who stands accused of illegally tape-recording the telephone conversations of district trustee Jim Suter, school officials said Tuesday.

News of the district’s legal troubles surfaced as Pedro R. Placencia Jr., 56, a longtime coordinator of migrant education for the district, pleaded not guilty Tuesday morning to a six-count felony grand jury indictment in Ventura County Municipal Court.

School board Chairwoman Susan Alvarez said that during a Sept. 3 closed-session meeting, attorney Herman Sillas revealed that in June--weeks before the school board learned the tapes existed--he received a single tape of Suter’s conversations from trustee Mary Barreto, who testified before the grand jury last week that tapes of the phone calls were anonymously left on her doorstep. Barreto was not present at the meeting because she was on vacation at the time.

But Sillas never alerted the district attorney’s office nor the remaining members of the school board, who did not learn about the tapes until news of the investigation broke in the summer, Alvarez said.

“We were totally shocked, because we didn’t feel this legal counsel acted on behalf of the school board at all,” Alvarez said.

“The question is, why didn’t Mr. Sillas let us know?” said trustee Francisco Dominguez. “It’s just stunning.”

School board members voted unanimously Sept. 17 to terminate the nearly 3-year-old relationship with Sillas’ law firm, Alvarez said.

The school district now has no legal counsel and is seeking new legal representation, Alvarez said.

Both Dominguez and Alvarez said they continue to fault Barreto for not telling her fellow school board members about the tapes.

Barreto could not be reached Tuesday. Her attorney, Tim Quinn, said he did not think his client turned any tapes over to Sillas, but simply sought the attorney’s legal advice.

“This thing is so petty, the political bickering,” Quinn said of the school board. “It’s absolutely unbelievable to me that adults would act like that.”

In a phone interview from his Los Angeles office Tuesday, Sillas said he could not comment on the matter due to an attorney-client privilege involving confidential information.

On Tuesday, Municipal Judge Steven Hintz set an Oct. 28 pretrial hearing for Placencia with a jury trial set to begin Nov. 5.

The six-count grand jury indictment followed the testimony of 12 witnesses over two days last week.

Placencia, who was booked into Ventura County Jail following his arrest at his office Monday afternoon, posted bail and was released that night.

Defense attorney Victor Salas Jr. said his client’s not-guilty plea will force the district attorney to prove that Placencia made the tapes.

“If it is true that Mr. Placencia made these tapes--and I’m not saying that he did--you have to question the motivation,” he said. “. . . Every now and then, public officials have to do things to expose what is even a worse evil than what they’re doing.”

Alvarez said she welcomed the jury trial as a way of finding out what motivated the taping of Suter’s phone calls. She said only then will the school board be able to turn its full attention to its real job--the business of educating children.

“Until you find out what the motivation was, you really can’t put this behind you,” she said.

Dominguez, meanwhile, said that with Suter being the only white member of the school board, he fears a public perception of a racially motivated conspiracy.

“Some may read into it that they think there is a larger picture,” Dominguez said. “There isn’t. It’s just an isolated incident.”