Hot-Button Issues Find a Frontman

His hot-button issues and defiant politics have made Jeff Stone a lightning rod for controversy on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.

He has railed against the scourge of methamphetamine dealers, sexual predators and jailed felons -- all popular and carefully chosen political themes during his one-year tenure as a supervisor.

Stone’s proposed remedies are just as well crafted, with acronyms such as IMPRISON (“incarcerate more prisoners responsibly in satisfying overwhelming need) and ERACIT (“enforce responsible alcohol consumption in Temecula”). Increasingly, he has been breaking protocol by taking on local issues in the districts of fellow board members, and challenging rivals.

“I’m a rabble-rouser,” the pharmacist said from his district office in Menifee. “I take stands on issues people at home want something done about; I’m their frontman.... And I’m the first to admit I’m an obsessive-compulsive personality -- not pathological, though.”

Stone recently made headlines by shepherding a county measure that would have made pharmacies keep records on customers who bought certain cold medicines. But county lawyers pointed out that only the state can regulate drug sales.

Now, he is in a war of words with Sheriff Bob Doyle over reopening an old prison at Eagle Mountain, midway between Indio and Blythe.

“Both Stone and the sheriff have lots of good ideas. I don’t understand why they are at loggerheads,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Marion Ashley said. “It’s a difficult environment to work in on this issue. I just hope it doesn’t spill over into other matters.”

Stone argues that the old prison can be modified to handle up to 2,000 inmates, half in an adjacent “tent city” that would be modeled after one that Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio built in a sun-baked field.

Doyle, who has authority over county jail facilities, says the Eagle Mountain structures are inadequate and not secure. He says the dormitory-style cellblocks would put deputies in danger.

“I can’t force the sheriff to do what he doesn’t want to do, and I don’t have support on the board,” Stone said. “So I’m taking it to the streets. My staff and I have prepared a 21-page report on this matter that will be filed on Tuesday.”

His hope is that the report will prompt residents to demand that the board take the matter under review, or even raise the estimated $11 million needed to rehabilitate the facility.

Doyle, who supported Stone’s opponent in the 2004 race for supervisor, called Stone a “grandstander” and suggested that the plan doesn’t stand a chance. “We’ll do the right thing, despite Stone,” Doyle said. “If he wants to fabricate or spin this issue -- so be it.”

Whether Stone wins or loses the showdown with the sheriff, the dispute will only add to his rising political trajectory in the county. Stone is attracting the attention of Republican leaders who have come to view his brash style as refreshing in a county growing out of its skin.”He gets people wound up, and on occasion gets people bent out of shape. But he really believes he’s doing it for the good of the people he represents,” said Kevin Jeffries, county Republican Party chairman. “I view Stone as someone who’ll do a few turns as Riverside County supervisor and then make a run for Congress or some other higher office.”

In Temecula, where Stone served 12 years as a councilman and three terms as mayor, people still talk about his clashes with colleagues and constituents over the prior council’s plan to offer Wal-Mart hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives to locate on property reserved for a shopping mall.

In that fight, Stone prevailed.

“The first thing Jeff did after being elected in 1992 was successfully keep a Wal-Mart from coming to town -- which I regard as the single-most important event in our city’s history,” said Temecula Mayor Jeff Comerchero, who served on the council with Stone at the time. “It was an uphill battle.”

“Today, there is a flourishing mall surrounded by restaurants on that land that produces the sales tax that allows us to bring a very high level of services to our residents,” Comerchero said.

Nonetheless, rampant growth in Temecula while Stone was at the helm spawned a backlash organized under the Citizens First of Temecula Valley that nearly cost Stone his third bid for reelection.

“We were a pro-smart-growth group, and it seemed like Jeff Stone was pro-any kind of growth,” Michelle Anderson, a former member of the group, said. “As mayor, he ran the council with an iron fist. But because of our efforts, he won his last election by only 63 votes.”

Stone, 49, grew up in Anaheim and has been speaking his mind and challenging authority since his fourth-grade teacher told his parents: “This boy is not going to finish high school.”

“That motivated me to get moving,” Stone said.

He opened his first pharmacy at 27. Three years later, Stone owned two pharmacies and had sold one.

Stone first sought and won election to the Temecula City Council in 1992 after becoming irritated over graffiti someone had sprayed-painted on a building. Over the next dozen years, he lead efforts to reduce graffiti, drunk driving and red-light running, and fought Wal-Mart.

His political career suffered a setback in 2000, when he lost a bid for the 66th Assembly District to Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta in the Republican primary.

About the same time, allegations surfaced about Stone’s work as a pharmacist.

Stone later admitted to committing four improper business practices in exchange for the dismissal of 16 other accusations brought against him by the state Board of Pharmacy.

He admitted that he had improperly stored prescription records, failed to properly inform the state he had sold his pharmacy, failed to include information pamphlets with some estrogen prescriptions and did not adequately protect the confidentiality of some customers whose prescriptions were written on office logs.

The settlement required him to pay a $10,000 fine, adhere to conditions of a three-year probation and submit to periodic reviews of his procedures.

Stone said that case involved administrative violations and “paperwork errors,” and was politically motivated.

“My admissions were part of an effort to stop the bleeding of my legal fees,” he said. “The Board of Pharmacy used me as a high-profile example during my ill-fated bid for the Assembly. That was because they feared a pharmacist in the state Legislature would scrutinize their management and enforcement policies.”

He put that controversy behind him and, in May, trounced incumbent Jim Venable in a race for Riverside County supervisor.

Venable, when interviewed last week, said Stone showed a lot of promise, but suggested that he may need more seasoning to become an effective political leader.

“I think Jeff is going to do a good job. Of course, it’ll take a little bit of time,” said Venable. “He’s got a lot to learn ....”

Experience or not, Stone has been more than willing to play the role of political aggressor on the board.

In May, supervisors unanimously passed an ordinance to tighten restrictions on where paroled sex offenders can live. Stone wrote the ordinance after convicted rapist David Allyn Dokich, 52, was placed in a Mead Valley neighborhood, near Perris, in Supervisor Bob Buster’s district.

It requires that the state provide Riverside County 60 days’ notice before the release of a felony sex offender in the county. It also prohibits sex-offender parolees from living within 1 1/2 miles of schools, libraries, parks or recreational centers, and requires that felony sex offenders wear tamper-proof tracking devices at all times.

However, County Counsel William C. Katzenstein expressed reservations about the ordinance on grounds that the county had no jurisdiction over state parole guidelines. The ordinance went into effect immediately, but was adopted predicated on and subject to review by the state attorney general, at Katzenstein’s suggestion.

Later, when Stone recommended the board vote to censure Democrats on the Legislature’s public safety committee for not being tougher on sex offenders, his fellow supervisors nixed the idea.

In a separate matter, Stone sponsored a county ordinance that included a provision to crack down on illicit production of methamphetamine by requiring that consumers buying cold remedies give their names, addresses, telephone and driver’s license numbers to store clerks.

After Riverside supervisors voted unanimously for the law, Stone proudly told a reporter that the ordinance would “allow us to track down those who are obviously buying for reasons other than illness.”

But the following day, county officials said that the record-keeping provision had been removed from the ordinance before the vote because of legal concerns.

As amended, the ordinance places no burdens on shoppers or stores. It requires convicted methamphetamine makers to pay for the cleanup of their hazardous labs and establishes a county fund for rewards to tipsters who help with the successful prosecution of meth producers.

The lingering question was: Did Stone know that the measure had been revised?

“Absolutely,” he said. “In this case, reporters got their information from the Internet, or they were not paying attention to what was being discussed at the board meeting.”

To some observers, Stone’s sparks on the board are signs of refreshing exuberance.

“Now, we have a balanced, well-rounded board in Riverside County,” said Ron Hartley, a spokesman for the Canyon Lake Merchant Owners Assn. “We’ve got the wisdom of older, more experienced supervisors such as Roy Wilson and Marion Ashley, and the aggressiveness of Jeff Stone.

“But one Jeff Stone is enough. You don’t want too many.”