3 Agencies Decline to File Charges Over Belmont Debacle

The district attorney’s office and two other prosecuting agencies declined Friday to pursue charges stemming from environmental lapses at the Belmont Learning Complex.

The decisions came as a rebuff to Don Mullinax, inspector general for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He alleged in files sent to the investigative agencies that former school boards as well as the high school’s developer and environmental consulting firms had violated civil or criminal provisions of state laws.

In addition to Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s office, the Los Angeles city attorney and the California attorney general declined Friday to pursue charges on the environmental concerns.

Garcetti’s office is still investigating another Mullinax report about alleged overbilling and lack of proper accounting in connection with the Belmont project.

Issuing a lengthy report Friday, the district attorney’s office said Mullinax did not cite specific felony criminal statutes under which it could have prosecuted anyone for environmental failures.

In its own review of Mullinax’s charges, the office also did not find any evidence that felonies had been committed, officials said.

Mullinax cited two misdemeanor statutes that he believed had been violated, but the district attorney’s office and the city attorney decided that the evidence did not support his conclusions.

“We looked for felony crimes and didn’t find any,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Paul Bernardi, head of the office’s environmental crimes/OSHA division. “We reviewed the misdemeanors in the report and didn’t find them to apply either.”

Mullinax said he was dumbstruck to learn that all three agencies had declined to pursue the wrongdoing he believes he uncovered.

“It’s a sad day for the children and taxpayers of Los Angeles,” he said. “It shows that children can be put at potential risk and tax dollars can be wasted, but no one is held accountable or suffers any consequences.”

After the release of the report, Mullinax and Garcetti traded gibes. The inspector accused the district attorney of failing to recognize crimes when he saw them and of ducking his responsibility.

Garcetti, meanwhile, said Mullinax overstepped his bounds in wrongly suggesting that crimes had been committed.

Mullinax also submitted his request to the U.S. attorney’s office. That office did not issue a report Friday.

The Los Angeles Board of Education killed the half-completed Belmont complex in January after years of wrangling over the $200-million project just west of downtown.

The project was brought to a halt last year after disclosures of environmental hazards that were not adequately assessed before construction began in 1997. Studies showed explosive methane and toxic hydrogen sulfide that permeated the 35-acre campus, a former oil field.

The district’s chief operating officer, Howard Miller, recommended killing the project because he said the cost of dealing with environmental problems could drain the general fund. In approving his recommendation, board members also cited safety concerns.

Like the district attorney’s office, the city attorney found no evidence of misdemeanor violations of environmental laws.

“There really was nothing for us to work with in terms of filing a case,” said Deputy City Atty. Vincent B. Sato of the office’s environmental protection unit.

A report released by the city attorney said the office reserved the right to reopen the case if additional, incriminating evidence came to light.

Separately, the state attorney general’s office came to a similar conclusion. In reviewing the actions of several state agencies, it did “not find sufficient basis on which to conclude that any state agency failed to perform its duties as required by law.”

The agencies included the Department of Toxic Substances Control and the governor’s office of planning and research.

School board member Valerie Fields said the reports did nothing to change her conclusion that Belmont should not be built.

“Criminal investigations have to rise to a high level of proof,” she said. That the district attorney and city attorney found no evidence of felony or misdemeanor violations did not change her opinion that “obviously, some unethical things went on.”

Moreover, she said, the board’s decision to kill the project did not hinge on whether there had been criminal activity. Rather, she said, “I based my decision on two things: whether people would be safe beyond a reasonable doubt at the site, and the cost of [environmental] mitigation and the defense of the inevitable lawsuits based on health problems that would have resulted.”

Board President Genethia Hayes was in New York and had not yet seen the report, her chief of staff said.