Probe Seeks Papers on Belmont

Los Angeles school officials are probing allegations that a recently retired administrator has destroyed records being sought in a state investigation of his role in the most costly high school in the nation’s history.

Supt. Ruben Zacarias ordered the inquiry after learning that Dominic Shambra, former head of the special unit that planned the Belmont Learning Complex, routinely discarded documents relating to the project, now under construction just west of downtown.

Shortly before Shambra retired and left his post as head of the school district’s Office of Planning and Development last Monday, Zacarias ordered him and his staff not to destroy any more documents, said Richard K. Mason, general counsel for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Mason said he is now attempting to reconstruct the missing records, which have been requested by a state legislator, from the files of other school district staff who may have received copies.

Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the state Joint Legislative Audit Committee, is investigating claims of exorbitant spending, unfair bidding practices and possible conflict of interest in the school district’s development of the $200-million Belmont complex.

The project, intended as an innovative venture that would combine a badly needed new high school with retail shops, housing and a joint city-school recreational facility, has come under increasing criticism because of the selection of the Japanese construction firm Kajima International as contractor, even though Kajima’s bid was the costliest of the three.

Shambra said he recommended Kajima because it promised the more ambitious--and therefore more expensive--plan the district wanted.

In a letter to Wildman, school district lawyer Mason said Shambra “emphatically denies any improper record destruction, and points out that this issue may have arisen because it is not his policy to retain records in the ordinary course of business.”

Mason said it would not have been improper for Shambra to destroy documents such as invoices that he copied to another district branch for payment.

“The issue is the degree to which Mr. Shambra retained records in the ordinary course of business,” Mason said. “Not all records received by an office need to be retained.”

In a letter to Mason, Wildman said he was “stunned by Shambra’s disregard for his responsibility to maintain his division’s public records.”

Shambra, however, told The Times that Mason’s letter misstated his comment and that he never destroyed any public records, but rather only discarded copies of documents maintained by others on his staff.

Questions about the missing documents highlight an intensifying struggle between legislator Wildman--a former teacher in the Los Angeles district--and the district’s legal staff over Wildman’s demand for thousands of documents.

Earlier this month, the Board of Education voted not to turn over to Wildman numerous letters and correspondence related to the Belmont negotiations on grounds that the communications were protected under attorney-client privilege.

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Mason said Wildman’s audit, which he initiated as chairman of the audit committee without a vote of its members, does not have the authority to view privileged information.

But Mason--saying he wished to cooperate with an examination of the Belmont deal--added that he will ask the board Tuesday to request a formal state audit of the Belmont project.

He said the district could turn over the disputed documents to a state auditor without violating the attorney-client privilege.

“We think an audit is the best way to clear the air on this,” he said.

Wildman said a district request for an audit is premature, but that he would call for his own audit if the results of his preliminary investigation merit it.

Wildman agreed to launch the investigation into the high school last spring at the behest of state Sens. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) and Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who were concerned about escalating costs and how the deal came together. But the probe gathered momentum in the past two months after Wildman hired a team of contract investigators.

Wildman is now exploring the link between the architect on the Belmont project, McLarand, Vasquez & Partners Inc., and Wayne Wedin, an Orange County expert on local government who has received more than $1 million in contracts with the Los Angeles school district for consulting work that included Belmont.

Last year, Wedin and the Vasquez firm joined a team that won a $30-million contract to design and build a new Legislative Assembly Complex in Panama City.

Wildman has requested correspondence and memos that might illuminate whether Wedin influenced the district’s selection of the Vasquez firm while the two were working together on the Panama bid.

In an interview Saturday, Wildman downplayed the focus on Wedin, saying the investigation is centered on the broad policy questions of the wisdom of developments such as Belmont. However, in a letter to Mason this month, Wildman indicated he was seeking particularly Shambra’s correspondence with Wedin.

Shambra castigated Wildman for turning a broad inquiry into a “hit piece.”

“This has become a strict attack on me and Wedin,” he said. “It’s just no question.”

The school board terminated Wedin’s contract late last year amid growing concern of some members over the high cost of outside consulting services purchased by the district.

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The school board approved Shambra’s recommendation of Kajima as the Belmont contractor in April, but the commercial component of the plan has yet to materialize. Ground was broken last fall, with officials saying that if the development could not attract commercial tenants they would use the space for school parking.

In a status memo he wrote on the project shortly before his departure, Shambra blamed the failure of negotiations with commercial tenants on opponents of the development, including Wildman, school board member David Tokofsky and Local 11 of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, which is engaged in a bitter labor battle with Kajima. The firm owns the downtown New Otani hotel.