District Says Contract With Advisor Sought Only Financial Services

The school district is asking a judge to throw out a lawsuit that claims the district broke the law last year by using taxpayer money to help pass an $81-million school bond.

But the Ventura County Libertarian Party says it has the proof needed to show that the Ventura Unified School District hired a financial consultant more for political acumen than for financial advice.

That, the party contends, would be a violation of state law, which prohibits school districts from spending public money to advocate a partisan political cause.

If successful, the suit would have ramifications for half a dozen other Ventura County school districts, from Oxnard to Thousand Oaks, that have hired Dale Scott & Co. for identical services.

A Ventura County Superior Court judge will hear arguments today on whether the lawsuit filed last year should ever be heard.

“Government should not take sides in an election, and certainly should not spend public money to do so,” said Robert Chatenever, the Ventura attorney representing the Libertarian Party. “The money being paid to Dale Scott is roughly $400,000 more than other financial advisors charge for these services. . . . I think everybody knew what they were buying.”

According to Chatenever, Scott & Co. will be paid about $600,000 by the time it is finished issuing the $81 million in Measure M bonds--three times the amount other financial advisors he polled would have charged.

Pointing to a campaign manual prepared for Measure M by Scott & Co.--as well as the firm’s own marketing brochures trumpeting the success of the school bond campaigns for which it has provided “financial services”--Chatenever argues that the true purpose of the contract is obvious.

“I don’t have a smoking gun that says, ‘These guys were scheming in the closet,’ ” Chatenever concedes. “But I strongly believe that by inference, the point of hiring Dale Scott becomes clear.”

Not so, according to attorneys for Dale Scott & Co. and Ventura Unified, both of which are targeted in the suit. They are seeking to have the case dismissed on grounds the contract was perfectly legal and focused only on financial services.

The political services Scott provided? They were voluntary and free of charge, according to Jim Thompson, the Sacramento-based attorney defending the district.

“Our position is real clear: The contract says what they were hired to do, and that’s all they were paid for,” Thompson said. “There was no wink and a nod, nothing under the table.”

Donald Austin, general counsel for Ventura Unified, said the move by the Libertarian Party to protect taxpayer money could cost the public $50,000 to $150,000 in lawyer’s fees.

It could also result in delays for some of the school improvements, since the consulting firm has yet to be paid, due to the legal dispute, he said.

“What galls me is, here are these so-called do-gooders that are supposed to be interested in taxpayer money and the public good, but this is only going to end up costing the taxpayers more money and slowing down the work on the schools,” Austin said.

Neither Dale Scott nor his Orange County-based attorney, Layne H. Meltzer, returned phone calls for this article. Ventura Unified Supt. Joseph Spirito, also named as a defendant in the suit, declined to comment, referring inquiries to the district’s attorneys.

In addition to the campaign manual, Chatenever argues there are numerous facts pointing to an unethical, if not illegal, alliance among administrators, Measure M backers and the consulting firm.

Debbie Golden, a parent who managed the Measure M campaign, stated in a deposition that she had a series of Wednesday morning meetings--at her home during school hours--with Spirito, Austin and various school officials to discuss the progress of the campaign.

Moreover, Golden said the blueprint for the campaign, along with the Dale Scott manual, was a list of current and former student addresses provided by the school district.

School officials are legally entitled to participate in bond campaigns, but only on their own time and with their own resources.

Austin argued that he and all other school officials who attended the Wednesday morning meetings did so off the clock. He added that the decision to allow the campaign access to student information was made by himself and other attorneys, and they believe it was both legal and proper.

“It’s not an eight-hour-a-day job,” Austin said. “For me, it’s often evenings and weekends. It’s a flexible schedule, and the employees that were doing that certainly put in their time.”

Also present at many of the Wednesday morning meetings was Mitch Templeton, a Scott & Co. employee who, according to the company’s own materials, primarily provides political advice to clients.

According to Golden’s deposition, at which she was represented by school district lawyers, it was Templeton who counseled her on different aspects of the campaign. And it was Templeton who picked up the tab for desserts for volunteers following a campaign meeting.

No one contends that Scott and Templeton were not knee-deep in the Measure M campaign, Austin said. The issue, he said, is that school officials believe the financial advisors were providing political counsel out of their own pocket, while the Libertarian Party believes there were strings attached.

“He [Scott] worked for the Yes on Measure M committee, but that was on his own,” Austin said. “That is not uncommon for financial advisors.”

Chatenever finds that extremely hard to believe. He would like to see the district throw out its contract with Scott & Co. and hire a less expensive consultant for bond-related advice only.

“This [political consulting] is not something a regular citizen from Northern California comes to Ventura to do in exercising his 1st Amendment rights,” he said. “I think it would be a travesty for this practice to escape judicial review.”