Resident Who Spoke in Favor of Project Got Irvine Co. Help

A supporter of the Irvine Co.’s proposed residential development in East Orange who spoke last month before the Orange City Council acknowledged Monday that the company helped her prepare her remarks.

Tammy Warren, an Orange resident and part-time public affairs executive with the Orange County Transportation Authority, acknowledged having had e-mail communications with an Irvine Co. vice president before her remarks on Sept. 27.

The City Council has held two meetings to hear opinions on the development firm’s project for 4,000 homes, a golf course and a conference center at the county’s rural eastern edge. The project is up for approval at tonight’s meeting.

Warren said that although she received the e-mails, she spoke as a “mother of two from Orange” who has lived in the city for 15 years. “I didn’t speak as an OCTA employee,” she said.

The e-mails, copies of which an opponent of the project obtained under the state Public Records Act, were exchanged a day before the council meeting at which she spoke. They included a draft of a speech with additional talking points provided by the Irvine Co. executive.

“I hope you feel comfortable using some of this,” Robin Leftwich, the Irvine Co. vice president of community affairs wrote on one e-mail. It was signed, “Your friend, Robin.”

Warren said she had asked Leftwich for information but that she also did her own research.

What was written in the e-mails “and what I said were not the same,” she said.

Sherry Meddick, who opposes the project, said she grew suspicious after hearing Warren speak at the meeting. “It just sounded like what an Irvine Co. person might have written,” she said.

A quote by Warren is also on a project brochure on the company’s website. Meddick said she received copies of e-mails from OCTA on Saturday that included seven pages, copies of which she provided to The Times.

“It worries me that an OCTA employee is taking time paid for by the public to support a developer’s project,” Meddick said.

Warren said Leftwich was her boss at OCTA before leaving the agency about five years ago to work for the Irvine Co.

Warren said she regretted using her work e-mail address for personal reasons. “Using a computer there at work, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have done [that].”

The OCTA has a policy that e-mail should be used for OCTA business only, but no disciplinary action has been taken against Warren, an OCTA spokesman said. “The policy was reiterated to Ms. Warren by her manager,” Michael Litschi said.

Warren said she and Leftwich have been friends since their time together at OCTA.

Irvine Co. spokesman John Christensen said the firm works with supporters of their projects who request information. “But the bottom line is that they are speaking their thoughts in their words.”