Secrets Extend a String of Scandal

Battered by a government corruption scandal that has brought seven guilty pleas, six legal settlements and five sentencings, San Bernardino County community leaders have been hoping for an end to it all. They aren’t going to find it--not yet, anyway.

This week brought new allegations, backed by transcripts of secretly recorded telephone calls, that San Bernardino County Dist. Atty. Dennis Stout and two top lieutenants secretly helped a political candidate in a failed plot to dethrone County Supervisor Jerry Eaves.

Challenger Ed Scott, a former Rialto City Council member who lost to Eaves in last year’s election, secretly taped his conversations during the campaign with the district attorney’s office, at the suggestion of an FBI and sheriff’s corruption task force. No charges have been filed in the case.

Supporters of Eaves, a Democrat, say the transcripts show that Stout, a Republican who is prosecuting Eaves on separate corruption charges, is waging a partisan vendetta against the supervisor.

The new allegations are not formally tied to the three bribery schemes that sent a series of county officials and business executives to prison or halfway houses in recent months. Still, the tapes share the traits of those scandals--from petty, personal bickering to full-blown political espionage.

At one point, according to transcripts released by investigators, Assistant Dist. Atty. Dan Lough told Scott to find a “marginally honest” private investigator to research Eaves’ credit card use. Other exchanges have darker undertones:

“Dennis doesn’t mind us helping you. In fact, you know, he likes the idea,” Barry Bruins, the district attorney’s chief investigator, told Scott in a March 31 telephone call. “But he doesn’t want us tied to anything, and he’ll get really mad if we [mess] up and do that.”

Indeed, Bruins told Scott while turning over a box of Eaves’ campaign finance reports last February: “Don’t even tell your wife who you got this [stuff] from.”

‘A Pattern of Corruption’

The tapes are a bitter reminder that despite widespread efforts at reform, allegations of corruption are alive and well in San Bernardino County.

“I think it’s extremely naive to think that it has come to an end,” Scott, also a Republican, said Friday. “There’s a pattern of corruption in this county. There are a lot of people in the county who still believe it’s business as usual.”

To Michael LeMay, a professor of political science at Cal State San Bernardino who has followed the cases, the latest twist was somewhat discouraging--but not terribly surprising.

“It’s like three steps forward, two steps back,” he said.

County officials have taken a number of substantive steps to shed their reputation. In 1999, they hired Will Randolph as the county’s chief administrative officer, citing his ethical credentials. The Board of Supervisors recently named Fred Aguiar, a former speaker pro tem of the California Assembly, as its chairman, largely because he was seen as removed from the county’s good-old-boy days.

The latest developments could undo much of that progress, LeMay said. “It’s dirty tricks politics, and it gives San Bernardino County this image of continuing to use those tactics in election campaigns,” he said. “Even the district attorney, who is supposed to be watching out for the law, is going around bending it.”

Dismay at Being Recorded on Tape

In a prepared statement, the district attorney denied any wrongdoing--and said he was “very concerned” that the Sheriff’s Department was working “at odds” with his office.

“Any citizen, let alone a law enforcement agency, would be alarmed to learn their private conversations were being taped,” Stout said. “ . . . We are frankly dismayed that they would focus their resources on my office, when we should be working together to end political corruption in the county.”

Critics are calling for Stout to resign. Stout declined to comment beyond his statement.

Eaves could not be reached for comment Friday, but his San Bernardino attorney, Don Jordan, called Stout’s actions “a gross violation of public trust.”

Last year, Stout’s office was investigating Eaves on a variety of corruption allegations connected, at least peripherally, to the other scandals. Much of the investigation focused on allegations that Eaves took gifts from firms seeking county contracts, then failed to report the gifts on disclosure forms.

The charges were loosely connected to three separate bribery and kickback schemes that prompted four former county officials and three business executives to enter guilty pleas in October 1999.

Eaves--though his supporters say the charges were based on politics, not law--was indicted late last year on two felony perjury charges and 17 misdemeanor misconduct charges. He has pleaded not guilty, and three of the misdemeanor charges have since been dropped.

The task force taped the conversations as part of a probe to determine whether the district attorney’s office had leaked information from that investigation to Scott.

“The guy is the worst kind of prosecutor,” Assemblyman John Longville (D-Rialto), an Eaves supporter, said of Stout. “He uses the power of his office for political purposes.”

LeMay said the latest developments will benefit Scott and Eaves.

Scott, LeMay pointed out, declined to use any damaging information he had collected about Eaves in his campaign, though he eventually lost to Eaves by little more than 1,000 votes. And Eaves, LeMay said, has claimed all along that “this is a political vendetta.”

“Like most voters, I was skeptical,” LeMay said. “That’s what politicians always say. And then, lo and behold, we have this. It gives great credence to what Eaves has been saying.”

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Jerry Eaves is also referred to as Gerald Eaves or Gerald R. Eaves in other Los Angeles Times stories.

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