Smell From D.A.’s Newhall Deal Isn’t Flowers

The story I’m about to tell involves flowers, politics and cattle, so you might notice a strong odor while reading.

Last week, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office dropped a criminal investigation against politically connected Newhall Land & Farming Co., which is planning to build a humongous new city near Santa Clarita.

In return, Newhall agreed to devote 64 acres as a preserve for the endangered spineflower, which the company allegedly destroyed to clear space for some of its 22,000 homes. You don’t want a few rare plants standing in the way of millions of dollars worth of new home sales, especially since we don’t have enough traffic on the Golden State Freeway as it is.

Here’s my favorite part:

Newhall allegedly tried to entice cows to eat the spineflower, arguing that it’s OK to destroy plants while farming. What’s the crop, again? Cookie-cutter tract homes?

After polishing off the spineflower, the cows were ravenous. They left Newhall, marched all the way down Highway 5 and into downtown Los Angeles, where they ate L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley’s spine.

More and more, Cooley reminds me of the kid in the neighborhood pool who was the king of the shallow end, splashing water in the face of all the smaller kids. You know the kid I’m talking about. The one who was afraid to go in the deep end.

Is Cooley too timid to go after the high and mighty? I don’t know, but I’ve got a problem with the D.A.’s office playing “Let’s Make a Deal,” trading a criminal conviction for a nature preserve.

Are muggers going to get a free pass if they plant a few palm trees? Are carjackers going to beat the rap by opening a carwash?

If you’ve got enough evidence to charge a crime, prosecute the case. If you wimp out, I’m left with a pencil and a piece of paper, trying to connect the dots:

Newhall hands $70,000 in campaign contributions to L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich over the course of his career. Antonovich helps invent D.A. Steve Cooley. And Cooley’s minions call off the dogs.

It’s a field of cow chips as far as the eye can see. And Deputy Dist. Atty. Diana Callaghan and her supervisor, Richard Sullivan, are holding their noses. They wanted to throw a felony perjury and conspiracy case at Newhall, arguing the company wasn’t telling the truth about the spineflowers on its property.

But they were shoved aside by Cooley toadies who blocked a planned search of Newhall offices, and then filed a single misdemeanor charge against the company. But Cooley wasn’t done blowing kisses at these guys. His office dropped the charge in exchange for the sweetheart 64-acre deal.

“I’ve described the case as being hijacked,” says Sullivan. He believes Newhall should have been prosecuted for putting inaccurate information in an environmental impact report (a claim Newhall disputes).

But his complaints are mild compared to those of Callaghan.

“My feeling is they took this case [from us] because they wanted a certain outcome,” she says. “From the very beginning, they did not want a criminal prosecution.”

Why not?

“I think Steve [Cooley] got really nervous [that] if we went through with the type of prosecution Rich and I were suggesting, it would shut down [the Newhall] project.”

Callaghan says the new supervisor on the case, Janet Moore, called it “Steve’s O.J.,” suggesting the possibility of a high-profile drubbing in court. She wanted to know if the case could be handled as a civil matter rather than a crime.

I would gladly have given you Cooley’s take on all this, but he took a pass on the offer, handing me over to Moore.

“I don’t recall saying anything like that,” Moore says of the O.J. reference. “But if I did, it was in terms of making it clear this was a major case and it needed to be handled correctly.”

Well, if it was such a major case, why did the D.A.’s office file a puny misdemeanor charge against Newhall -- for allegedly altering a stream-bed -- and then drop that charge in the end?

Moore bristled at the question. She said it might have been difficult to win a criminal conviction, and even if she did, the fine would have been next to nothing.

“Our settlement of 64 acres involved land worth millions of dollars,” she said.

Wow. Sixty-four acres out of 12,000.

It’s open-ended, Moore argued. More property could be preserved at a later date if the Newhall farmers happen to stumble across more spineflowers where tract houses should be.

Somebody had better keep an eye on those cows.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.