Board Says It Was Misled on Contract

Saying they were misled about the location and expertise of a firm offering an adult literacy program, members of the Los Angeles Board of Education say they may overturn their decision earlier this week to buy it for $6.3 million.

District leaders said they believed they were giving the project to Reality Based Learning of Redmond, Wash., when they awarded the money to a tiny California start-up with a similar name.

Pressure to drop the program grew Friday as school trustees learned that the contracted firm, RBL California, is based in the law office of J. Arnoldo Beltran, a close friend of state Sen. Majority Leader Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) and that Beltran is a registered agent for the firm.

Polanco had lobbied the board for the contract for about a year and argued aggressively for it at Tuesday’s meeting, angering Supt. Roy Romer, who opposed the contract.

According to a 1999 investigation by The Times, Polanco allegedly steered city attorney contracts in small municipalities around Los Angeles County to Beltran’s law firm.

Three of the four school trustees who approved the project in a 4-3 vote during Tuesday’s board meeting said they were inclined to reconsider their vote at next week’s meeting. The fourth, Julie Korenstein, did not return phone calls Friday seeking comment. Only one board member would have to change a vote for the project to be quashed.

Critics of the board said some members may have approved the measure to curry favor with Polanco, whose influence is important in many of Los Angeles’ heavily Latino communities and in the current redrawing of board members’ district boundaries. Board members who supported the measure said they did so on the program’s merits.

Romer has also vowed to block the deal. He said he was outraged to learn that Reality Based Learning California has no finished product and only three employees

“I do not intend to let this district be victimized,” he said. “I know all my options, and I’m not about to let this happen.”

Polanco did not return calls Friday seeking comment, but in an earlier interview he said he had no vested interest in RBL California and advocated the program because “it will be good for the kids.” The program he represented to the board on Tuesday was a Web-based children’s literacy program that could be modified for Spanish-speaking adults.

He denied misleading the board about the California company because the program’s chief designer, Gary Andersen, also had founded the Washington-based firm. Andersen is still a board member of the Washington firm but left it in October 2001 to form RBL California with two software programmers. Andersen said it was a coincidence that Polanco’s friend, Beltran, is listed as the registered agent on RBL California’s articles of incorporation.

“The senator never mentioned to me that he’s a close friend of his,” said Andersen, adding that another California contact referred him to Beltran.

Beltran did not return phone calls Friday to his Los Angeles office seeking comment.

Romer said Friday that he is also upset to learn that William Chavez, who previously had been Polanco’s chief of staff, lobbied for Andersen in Sacramento last year while Chavez simultaneously was on a $10,000-a-month retainer for lobbying legislators on behalf of the Los Angeles school district.

Romer said he was troubled that Chavez seemed to be at cross-purposes. “I think it’s a potential conflict if you have a lobbyist with multiple clients trying to sell things to the district.”

Chavez said he did not consider his actions to be lobbying since he just introduced Andersen to the assistant superintendent of adult schools, not to board members.

The episode has moved the district to take a closer look at how it procures goods and services and how it tracks lobbyists’ potential conflicts of interest.

At Tuesday’s meeting, district lawyers warned trustees that Polanco had apparently violated the state’s open meetings law by holding several individual meetings with board members in search of a consensus on a specific proposal. District Inspector General Don Mullinax said Friday that he has opened an investigation into that possibility. Polanco denied any violation of those rules.

Board members Genethia Hayes, David Tokofsky, Jose Huizar and Korenstein voted for the proposal anyway.

Hayes made the motion proposing that the board adopt the adult literacy program and said she based her decision on a visit she made to Redmond to see how RBL Washington’s methods were being used in schools there.

“My motion had to do with the Reality Based Learning in Washington,” Hayes said Friday. “If there was another company in California, I didn’t know about that.” She and two others said they are reconsidering their votes.

Andersen said the program would use real pictures of scenes around Los Angeles to give English-learning parents practical knowledge of the language. For example the program would take users on a virtual bus ride to the Los Angeles Zoo to teach them how to read signs and instructions in English.

But Andersen acknowledged that his ideas were still in the conceptual stage and that he does not own the children’s literacy program that Hayes and other board members saw in Washington.

“We’re writing the code from the ground up,” he said.

Sam Lim, president of RBL Washington, said his corporation has no affiliation with the California firm and no agreement to share software. Lim said he has asked Andersen to change his company’s name.

The relationship between Beltran and Polanco was the subject of an investigation by The Times in 1999 into allegations that the two used the threat of recall elections to muscle elected officials into giving Beltran’s firm city attorney contracts. Polanco and Beltran denied any wrongdoing.

Polanco took Andersen’s program before the board Tuesday over Romer’s strong opposition. Romer accused Polanco of using his position as Senate majority leader to ram through a specific contract, rather than encouraging a more general discussion on policy. Polanco described how he had visited every board member with Andersen in tow, lobbying for passage of the proposal.