Leader of Bond Measure’s Foes No Stranger to Controversy in Palmdale

It’s late morning in a Palmdale cafe, and Diana Beard-Williams is shaking hands with a local minister and his wife.

“Those are what I call my ‘quiet supporters,’ ” she says of the couple, who leave with a smile.

Beard-Williams is perhaps Palmdale’s best-known rabble-rouser and one of its highest-profile African Americans. But these are tough times for the 47-year-old mother of two.

A judge recently dismissed the racial discrimination suit she filed against Palmdale School District, for which she had worked as spokeswoman for three years. Some political insiders say Beard-Williams’ unproven claims of racism have ruined her credibility in an increasingly multicultural city.

Yet, Beard-Williams is still on the political front lines, leading the opposition to a hotly debated, $25-million school construction bond on the Nov. 6 ballot. Her opponents are amazed.

“Oh yeah, she’s got a lot of credibility right now,” school district Supt. Nancy Smith said sarcastically.

Beard-Williams was fired by the district in 1999. District officials alleged, among other things, that she falsified her resume, bullied co-workers and wrote a sexually explicit novel on a district computer. But Beard-Williams maintains she was fired for exposing questionable bookkeeping.

U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz threw out Beard-Williams’ suit because she failed to show up in court for cross-examination. She said later she could not make the session because she didn’t have the proper anti-anxiety medication.

Beard-Williams says she is fighting the bond measure because the district cannot be trusted with the taxpayers’ money.

One of her supporters, former district mental-health worker Madeleine Tattoon, said Beard-Williams still has something to say to voters. “I think the poor people are listening to her,” she said.

But Doug Dotter, parent of a child in the district, and other backers of the bond proposal say Beard-Williams is motivated by revenge. “She has a personal vendetta, and she’s trying to use children as pawns in looking to get even with the district,” Dotter said.

Supporters say the bond measure is crucial because the district needs classrooms for 8,700 more students, and Palmdale’s population is booming.

But voters here are wary of new taxes: Larger bond measures failed in the Palmdale area in 1996 and 1997. The school proposal, Measure W, would cost homeowners about $30 a year per $100,000 of assessed property value.

Last November, the passage of Proposition 39 lowered the percentage of votes needed to approve bond measures to 55% from 67%. But Beard-Williams insists the measure can be defeated.

Though her anti-Measure W group has raised less than $1,000, she says it has 100 volunteers working the phones. Their efforts could be enough, Beard-Williams says, to tip the scales, because voter turnout has been low in the last two school bond elections.

Beard-Williams’ attempts to sway public opinion have stirred controversy in Palmdale for years.

In 1995 and 1996, she hosted a radio talk show that eviscerated the local Republican clique headed by businessman Frank Visco, attorney R. Rex Parris and Assemblyman George Runner. Parris was so angered by her attacks on Visco--she played the theme from “The Godfather” whenever he was mentioned--that he pulled advertising from the station’s parent company.

Since her dismissal from the school district, Beard-Williams has remained unemployed, focusing on life at home.

Measure W, she said, “will probably be my last public fight.”