The Powerful Weapon Shawn Boyd’s Foes Have: Shawn Boyd

Remember how indignant Shawn Boyd sounded last September?

In so many words and in no particular order, this is what he said:

Political opponents were out to get him.

He’d love to say more so he could clear his name, but his lawyer advised against it.

This was all much ado about nothing.

Now here we are in early February, a month before Boyd is up for reelection to the Seal Beach City Council, and he’s got the district attorney’s office on his tail.

From what prosecutors have said so far, it’s Seal Beach voters who ought to be indignant.

The issue last year was why Boyd, 33, a first-term councilman, hadn’t revealed his business connections with a trailer-park owner with whom the council was negotiating. By way of city-backed bonds and a state grant, Seal Beach essentially was financing the sale of the trailer park to a nonprofit corporation.

Boyd cast several votes in favor of the deal and abstained on some others, but never disclosed he had other business dealings pending with park owner Richard Hall. Boyd’s weak rationale at the time was that those dealings involved projects outside Seal Beach that hadn’t materialized, and, consequently, he hadn’t been paid by Hall for any of them.

That stretched credulity, but many of us are charitable and contemplated the possibility it

was just a goof by a rookie councilman.

I offered the helpful notion back then that Mr. Boyd had a blind spot.

The kicker, however, came last week when the district attorney’s office said it has documents indicating Boyd had received more than $100,000 in previously undisclosed payments from Hall during the period in which he voted on the trailer-park issues.

If true, that’s a much different story than the one Boyd was telling last fall.

State law prohibits elected officials who have received $250 or more in income within the previous year from voting or influencing decisions for the next 12 months on matters that could financially benefit the giver.

Suddenly, the put-upon councilman looks like a fairly calculating political operative.

The normally loquacious Boyd wasn’t talking publicly last week, and maybe he’s spending his time thinking up an answer to a fairly simple question: Why didn’t he

tell anyone he’d been paid by

Hall during the period when the trailer park issue was before the council?

Couldn’t find the words? How about: “I’m abstaining on any and all trailer-park matters because I’ve got a couple potentially lucrative outside business ventures with Mr. Hall, and I want to eliminate any potential conflict of interest.”

Last fall, Boyd said he thought revealing his connection to Hall might be used against him in this spring’s election.

Little did he know. His connection to Hall will be used against him, all right, but not the way he imagined.

That is, no one is alleging that Hall bought Boyd’s vote on the trailer-park issue. Nor is there anything wrong with Boyd brokering real estate deals with Hall outside Seal Beach.

What everybody wants to know now is what Boyd’s refusal to come clean says about how he conducts his public life. Is he that deceitful or that dumb? Boyd’s vote didn’t make the difference on the trailer-park issue, so why the hidden-ball trick?

Boyd is verging dangerously into territory already claimed by Dave Garofalo in neighboring Huntington Beach. Garofalo long protested his innocence before resigning last month. He then pleaded guilty to one felony and 15 misdemeanor charges involving conflicts of interest.

It’s perfectly possible that Boyd’s votes on the Hall-related business before the Seal Beach council were squeaky clean. The ins and outs of his involvement in that transaction will be part of the investigation.

But now that we learn that Boyd was cashing checks from Hall--even as the trailer-park issue was on the docket--a whole new round of questions emerge.

This time around, the victim strategy won’t work.

At the moment, Boyd appears keenly prescient about only one thing he said last fall: That his political opponents were out to get him.

No doubt, they are. And the best weapon they have at their disposal seems to be Boyd himself.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.