Judge Refuses to Bar Compton College Trustee

Control of the financially troubled Compton Community College District returned to state hands Monday after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied the district’s request for an injunction against state intervention.

The fight over the district will move to a full trial, but no date has been set. In the meantime, Special Trustee Arthur Tyler resumes powers that he was granted by state community college Chancellor Mark Drummond in May to oversee management of the Compton district’s fiscal recovery.

In her ruling Monday, Judge Dzintra Janavs called the financial situation at Compton College quite dire and said the district’s Board of Trustees had failed to provide proof that the college would face irreparable harm if Tyler remained in place.

But Janavs also warned Drummond’s representatives that a flurry of emergency resolutions and executive orders issued after the fact could open the state to stronger legal challenges during a trial.

“I have a lot of problems with this,” Janavs said, referring to a Drummond executive order issued late Friday that further bolsters the chancellor’s ability to displace an elected board of trustees when deemed necessary.

“Provisions of this order are likely to be found invalid,” she said.

Earlier this month, Janavs granted the Compton district a temporary restraining order against the takeover until Monday’s hearing. Over the last few weeks, Tyler and the Board of Trustees had agreed to table decisions on matters of disagreement.

Since then, the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges, which oversees 109 colleges in 72 districts statewide, has adopted an emergency resolution backing Drummond’s actions.

The chancellor’s executive order Friday, his second relating to the Compton district, gives more details and parameters for placing special trustees at districts facing fiscal troubles. Janavs specifically criticized a clause that prevents the five-member Board of Trustees from convening meetings without a special trustee’s permission.

State community college officials said it was necessary to clarify the chancellor’s authority in such interventions because some related regulations were vague or had never been used. Still, the new orders and regulations apply specifically to Compton.

In addition, local Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton) is sponsoring a bill that would authorize the state Board of Governors to appoint special trustees at community college districts. Dymally said the bill was aimed at giving legislative backing to the state’s action last month.

The district’s lawyers have argued that the state takeover is heavy-handed despite Compton’s troubled finances, and that a takeover illegally disenfranchises Compton’s voters less than a year after Board of Trustees elections brought in two new members, Lorraine Cervantes and Gerald Burgess.

State lawyers said Monday that the district has still not supplied an audit that would explain why the Compton Community College District was left with a $300,000 deficit after the 2002-03 year instead of the expected surplus of $2.2 million.

Barry Green, the Compton district lawyer, told the judge that an audit should be completed by mid-July.