D.A.’s Office Seeks Records in Huntington Mayor Case

The prosecutor investigating possible conflicts of interest by Huntington Beach Mayor Dave Garofalo has requested the minutes of all City Council meetings in that city since December 1994.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Lubinski also has requested “any and all video/audio recordings of City Council meetings” and all Statements of Economic Interest filed by Garofalo.

The district attorney’s office is also examining a list of 53 companies that have advertised in the Local News or the city’s annual Visitors Guide, publications the mayor owned since 1994 (he still publishes the Visitors Guide but not the Local News). Among advertisers on the list is PLC Corp., a developer from which Garofalo purchased a Huntington Beach home in 1998, under what appeared to be unusually favorable conditions.

The request for the documents was contained in a letter hand-delivered to the city clerk’s office late last week.

City Attorney Gail Hutton launched an investigation last month into the relationship between the Visitors Guide, Garofalo and the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau, which operates on an annual budget of $235,000 from the city. She also asked the state Fair Political Practices Commission to rule on the propriety of the mayor’s votes on matters affecting advertisers in his publications, and on two transactions involving property owned by the mayor.

Last week, Hutton said she was turning over her investigation to the district attorney’s office. “Any further investigation by this office,” she said in a prepared statement, “would be unnecessarily duplicative and redundant.”