The Los Angeles Times du lieu suivant : Los Angeles, California • 3
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Sunday, March 31, 1985I'art I 3 ilooAnsjekoSHmco Parole Critics: Who Has the Keys? Two Agencies Point Finger at the Other for Mounting Violations LOUIS MORET Former Loi Angtles public worki commissioner played key role In helping Wolfe get Capri contract. ft We) 1 I i rtf 1 aW By TED ROHRLICH, Times Staff Writer Hundreds of California felons avoided parole supervision last year by employing a simple expedient: They gave authorities phony addresses, which no one checked before the convicts were released, according to parole officials. While bureaucratic errors or overworked, individual agents may have been to blame for a failure to check addresses, some officials blame the entire system of parole administration for what they see as a broader failure. These officials said that many of the felons who gave the false addresses and were later caught along with hundreds of other parolees who repeatedly broke laws last year by abusing drugs or committing relatively minor new crimes were allowed to remain free on parole. The officials attributed this lack of punishment, which they deem a higher-than-desirable tolerance for parolee misbehavior, to a conflict of aims between the two government agencies that share jurisdiction over paroles.
The agencies are the state Board of Prison Terms, an independent body with the power to revoke paroles and send convicts back to prison ROLLA E.WOLFE Contractor and former partner with Moriarty who got big government contracts in Los Angeles and San Bernardino under questionable circumstances. for up to a year at a time, and the state Department of Corrections' Parole Division, whose agents monitor parolees' progress and refer troublesome cases to the board. Parole critics mainly board officials contend that the Parole Division is not referring all cases that it should to the board for decisions on whether to hold parole revocation hearings. And they say they fear that public safety is being risked because some parolees who should be locked up are being left on the streets. 'March to Different Drummers' "We march to two different drummers," said James H.
Hoover, a former member of the board and now one of its revocation hearing officers. "The Parole Division is hearing the governor say we have too many people in prison and so they're not reporting everything the board. The Board of Prison Terms is hearing the governor say public protection comes first: If they commit a crime, lock them up." Even critics concede that the most serious parole violators are regularly referred to the board, as required by board rules. But they say that Parole Division management, which is accountable to the Department of Corrections as well as to the board, may be too preoccupied with the department's problems of prison overcrowding to refer less serious violators including parolees who evade supervision, abuse drugs or commit minor crimes. They attribute this to a fear within the department that the board would compound overcrowding problems by sending these parolees back to prison.
Such a fear would be reasonable. But Parole Division officials deny that they are influenced by it. In recent years, the board has returned to custody more than 95 of all violators referred to it. California's prisons, the last of which was built in 1963, are bursting. They house 50 more inmates than they were designed to hold.
Internal Corrections Department studies have focused on methods to reduce overcrowding, including "(reducing) to the extent possible the number of parole violators being returned (to Please see PAROLE, Page 32 ART SNYDER Los Angeles city councilman who lobbied city staff for Wolfe and then received $2,600 in campaign funds from Wolfe, his lobbyist and a Moriarty employee. DAN BOATWRIQHT State senator hired as Wolfe's lawyer for $14,000 while persuading state health department to bypass a staff member critical of Wolfe's political connections. MAUREEN KINDEL Los Angeles Public Works Board president who supported changing the contractor selection process, then later conceded, "ultimately the process wasn't so great." CAL McELWAIN San Bernardino County supervisor and longtime friend of Wolfe's whose son was on Wolfe's payroll. McElwain voted for Wolfe's landfill contract. jiryprmmimnw inwi.l 1 1 1 1 i 4 W.
PATRICK MORIARTY Wolfe's business partner while their company pursued contracts. He bowed out after newspaper allegations of his influence-peddling. WOLFE: Successful Lobbying by Moriarty 's Ex-Partner Draws Fire 1. 1 1 a MARSHA TRAEGER Los Angeles Times Crowd cheers on a contestant in bareback bronc riding at Griffith Park; below, a participant sports a Western look. Continued from Page 1 expensive or more qualified.
In San Bernardino, a grand jury committee probing county mismanagement blasted Wolfe's lobbying and said it appeared that the landfill contract he was awarded is not in the public's best interest. In Los Angeles, prosecutor Barry Groveman said he tried to open an investigation of the Public Works Board's award of the Capri dump cleanup contract to R.E. Wolfe Enterprises. But in the press of other business, he said the probe never got off the ground. Wolfe, Moriarty and their associates contributed $14,399 to key politicians about the time the two contracts were awarded $10,899 to three San Bernardino County supervisors, $1,000 to the San Bernardino sheriff who investigated Wolfe's alleged organized crime ties, and $2,500 to Los Angeles Councilman Arthur K.
Snyder, who contacted city staff on Wolfe's behalf. While seeking the contracts, Wolfe also hired state Sen. Daniel E. Boatwright (D-Concord) and his then-girlfriend, Christine Del George, paying them more than $44,000 for their legal and lobbying Three-Day Event at Griffith Park Homosexuals Stage State's 1st Gay Rodeo By JAN KLUNDER, Times Staff Writer For Terry Toney of Venice, California's first-ever gay rodeo Saturday at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Griffith Park provided a fledgling bronc-rider the opportunity to play Marlboro Man for a day. "It's the romantic idea of what cowboys and the West mean the manliness of being a cowboy, the heroism," said Toney, participating in his first rodeo in four years.
'It's macho. It's a sex symbol." For Lisa Freeman of San Angelo, the rodeo gave a small-town girl a chance to abandon pretentions. "In Texas, you're not 'out of the said Freeman, an accomplished bronc rider. "You take guys with you and play the game. It's so nice to be in California where you can be yourself." About 50 cowboys and cowgirls from seven states are participating in the three -day event, which concludes this afternoon with cash prizes in 13 categories, including calf roping, wild cow riding, steer decorating, wild cow milking and bull riding.
thing "less than $100,000" in the Foothill Independent Bank. Wolfe's attorney, Robert F. Schauer of Ontario, contends that Wolfe's lobbying, though criticized, is perfectly legal. And he defended Wolfe's campaign contributions as being "as American as apple pie." Wolfe said flatly: "Some people think I try to buy people, and I don't." He added that he ended his partnership with Moriarty more than a year ago. Wolfe hooked up with Moriarty in August, 1982, a few monthsafter he was recruited by a Moriarty aide over drinks at a waste -hauler's convention in Palm Springs.
The aide, Richard Raymond Keith, initially tapped Wolfe to run prospective landfills on Moriarty 's property in the La Tuna Canyon section of the San Fernando Valley and in the San Francisco suburb of Pleasan-ton. The landfills were never opened. Wolfe, who built roads and ran landfills in the Midwest, was at the convention scouting new business in California, where more and more counties are seeking private contractors to run landfills as a post-Proposition 13 cost-cutting measure. A gregarious, self-described graduate of the "school of hard knocks," Wolfe impressed the rubbish men, as he does most people, with his folksy, good-ol'-boy charm. A self-made millionaire, Wolfe started in the construction business 30 years ago with two bulldozers and a truck, and has since built seven companies that did about $65 million in business throughout the United States during the early 1980s.
Before going into business with Moriarty, Wolfe said he checked out the Anaheim fireworks magnate, "and everybody thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And that's the truth. Every political person or banker I talked to about him said, 'Boy, you couldn't have a better guy to be associated with than Pat That's what was said." Together, they established R. E. Wolfe Enterprises, in which each had a 50 interest.
In addition, Wolfe said he put up $100,000 to invest in a City of Commerce card club that Moriarty was forming. (The club was the focus of recent federal corruption charges against Moriarty; Frank Sansone, a Las Vegas gambling figure with reported ties to organized crime, and four former Commerce city officials. Moriarty and the four city officials pleaded guilty; Sansone was tried and found guilty of four bribery-related counts. Wolfe said he backed out of the club very soon after he put up his money and long before federal indictments were handed down in November, 1984. He said he was warned of impending trouble by Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande, whose campaign had received $18,000 in laundered funds from Moriarty.
Wolfe said Nestande told him: "If you want to do business in Orange County or in California, you better Please see WOLFE, Page 25 Wolfe's attorney, Robert F. Schauer of Ontario, contends that Wolfe's lobbying, though criticized, is perfectly legal. And he defended Wolfe's campaign contributions as being 'as American as apple Although the event was not limited to homosexuals, most participants and spectators were gay, according to organizers, who expected the weekend attendance to top 10,000. Saturday's grand marshal was Valerie Terrigno, the mayor of the recently incorporated City of West Hollywood, who was paraded around the arena in a horse-drawn buggy to the cheers of the audience. Today's featured celebrity will be Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs.
Although new to California, gay rodeos have been staged for 10 years in Reno. More recently, similar events have been held in Denver and Houston. Al Bell, who owns Floyds, a gay country and western bar in Long Beach, has been working for three years to bring the event to California and was responsible for organizing the Golden State Gay Rodeo the nonprofit group that sponsored the rodeo. The association plans to hold a rodeo each year in Please see RODEO, Page 30 Political Snafus Sour Plans for Tijuana Sewage Plant services. Although Del George is not registered as a lobbyist with the secretary of state, Wolfe said he has paid her more than $30,000 in lobbying fees.
Wolfe said he spent another $24,708 hiring local lobbyists $16,613 for Frank Michelena of Orange County, $5,095 for Cerrell Associates of Los Angeles and $2,000 for Peter A. Lynch of Monterey Park. Neither Cerrell nor Lynch has included Wolfe or Moriarty as clients on their city lobbyist-disclosure forms. Another consultant, who Lynch said received $1,000 for his efforts on Wolfe's behalf, was Warren A. Hollier, the former Board of Public Works president who resigned in 1980 amid charges of irregularities in the board's spending practices.
In San Bernardino, Wolfe hired the son of Supervisor Cal McElwain while trying to win the supervisor's vote on a multimillion-dollar contract to run five county landfills. About the same time, Wolfe said, he had a "minor" business relationship with a bank headed by a member of a task force evaluating Wolfe's landfill contract proposal. Wolfe said he has deposited some By MARJORIE MILLER, Times Staff Writer SAN DIEGO For decades, millions of gallons of sewage have flowed across the border from Tijuana to San Diego, and for decades no one has done anything about it. San Diego and Imperial Beach officials screamed about the sewage but called it an international issue. The state of California said Mexican sewage was a federal problem, and Washington said it was a Mexican problem.
Mexico promised to clean up the mess, but failed to do so. Then last year, there was a sudden flurry of activity among U.S. lawmakers, who decided it was time to stop the pollution of border lands and beaches. Local, state and federal officials hammered out a plan to build a $60-million binational plant to treat Tijuana sewage in the United States, where it naturally flowed downhill, and presented the plan to Mexico. Congress approved $32 million and California "Mexico has said, 'Don't worry, we'll take care of and we said, I don't know what makes this different." U.S.
officials who are satisfied with the Mexican plan acknowledge that it is not ideal, but they say it is the only politically feasible solution. They note that this is the first time Mexico has agreed in writing to build any sewage treatment system. Mexico signed the agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank this month, after the United States threatened to vote against a loan from the bank for a Tijuana waterworks project. The loan agreement states that the bank may cut off funds for the water project if Mexico fails to meet its commitment to build and maintain the sewage facilities. Francisco Herrera, an aide to Sen.
Pete Wilson said: "There was no way, Please see SEWAGE, Page 28 allocated $5 million for the plant, which the Americans believed and still believe was the best technical solution to the stubborn problem. But that plant will not be built. Nor will the solution to the sewage problem be a binational one. Mexico to Build It Alone Instead, Mexico decided to build its own simpler, low-cost sewage treatment system on Mexican soil with Mexican funds without the help of the United States. U.S.
technicians are skeptical that the Mexican plan will work. Thus, the money originally earmarked for a binational plant likely will be spent, instead, on a backup system in case the Mexican system fails. "We're right back to where we were for 30 years," said Richard Reavis, border coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency..
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