Reiner Donor Was Target of Review : Metro Rail: His reelection campaign got $45,500 from a contractor being investigated by D.A.’s office.

The largest Los Angeles Metro Rail subway contractor gave $45,500 to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s reelection campaign while Reiner’s office was reviewing accusations that the company had broken safety laws and committed fraud.

Records show that the contributions by Tutor-Saliba Corp., from June, 1991, through May, 1992, were the largest to Reiner’s campaign during that year from any donor.

During the same period, three former subway safety engineers presented the district attorney’s office with detailed allegations of wrongdoing by Tutor-Saliba executives, subway construction managers and workers.

The district attorney’s office has not filed charges against Tutor-Saliba, whose top executive is a friend of Reiner.

The Times found that prosecutors in some instances failed to contact potential witnesses or gather documents to verify the accusations of whistle-blowers.

Though the investigation has languished in the district attorney’s office, federal authorities this fall launched a probe of some of the allegations.

Reiner and his staff said Tutor-Saliba has not received special treatment. Reiner, who leaves office Monday, said he played no role in reviewing the allegations and was unaware of them until a Times inquiry.

If he had known about the allegations, Reiner said, he would have returned the campaign money to Tutor-Saliba, because the circumstances create an appearance of impropriety.

“The practice we have is that if there is any inquiry going on in the office, you don’t accept a contribution,” said Reiner, who folded his campaign for reelection in September and lost to prosecutor Gilbert L. Garcetti.

Reiner said his aides “were never, ever contacted by me about anything. These are extremely competent people and I assume they do a thorough, competent job in every investigation.”

Ronald N. Tutor, the managing partner of the Sylmar-based company, is a major political donor, with his company giving tens of thousands of dollars a year to local, state and federal politicians. Records show that from mid-1991 to mid-1992, Tutor-Saliba donated more to Reiner than to any other politician. Tutor-Saliba gave $25,000 in June, 1991, plus $500 in April of 1992 and $20,000 in May of 1992.

Tutor said his company has not committed any improprieties and that he made contributions to Reiner out of friendship. “You’re trying to make something out of a harmless contribution to a guy I like,” Tutor said. “Ira Reiner was a personal friend.”

Reiner said he was introduced to Tutor about two years ago by a top official of a local carpenter’s union who was helping him solicit campaign contributions. Since then, Reiner said Tutor has visited his home for dinner and the two have developed a friendship.

Tutor said he had “no contact with the district attorney’s office” regarding the allegations. He said the accusations are “asinine” lies by disgruntled former employees.

Tutor-Saliba is by far the largest Metro Rail contractor. The company has won more than $420 million in contracts to build a major portion of the 23-mile subway between downtown Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. The first 4.4-mile subway section is scheduled to open in five weeks.

The FBI recently launched a wide-ranging investigation of the Metro Rail project, based in part on allegations raised during the last two years by eight whistle-blowers, including the three who complained to Reiner’s office about Tutor-Saliba. Federal authorities have not identified the company as a subject of the investigation.

Reiner is not prohibited by law from accepting campaign contributions from a company under investigation by his office. But ethics experts said the timing and size of the contributions raise questions about whether the donor expected something in return.

“It’s my observation that people don’t give $40,000 to that kind of campaign, or any campaign for that matter, without expecting access (to the officeholder), at least,” said Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., a Yale Law School professor who specializes in ethics.

David H. Guthman, who headed Reiner’s environmental crimes unit from 1988 to last May, said that if Tutor-Saliba enjoyed any special relationship with Reiner, “it was clearly not a factor that at any point was relevant to our review” of the whistle-blowers’ allegations.

Guthman said many of the allegations did not involve offenses that are a high priority for prosecution.

“Looking into allegations of substandard construction (or) contract fraud was not an item of concern to my unit of the D.A.’s office--or even the D.A.’s office,” said Guthman, who is now the chief legal adviser to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury.

According to interviews and records, the first whistle-blowers came forward on April 12, 1991--two months before Tutor-Saliba contributed $25,000 to Reiner’s campaign.

Former tunnel worker Patrick Chiodo and safety technician Robert D’Amato met for 65 minutes with Deputy Dist. Atty. Fred Macksoud. The pair presented 10 detailed, written allegations of wrongdoing by Tutor-Saliba or its employees.

A copy of the allegations and a tape of the meeting obtained by the Times show that the whistle-blowers alleged that Tutor-Saliba personnel:

* Billed Metro Rail for work that company employees performed on unrelated projects.

* Employed a sham minority contractor.

* Inflated trucking costs that were billed to Metro Rail.

* Hired unqualified safety technicians and engineers.

* Removed gas-vapor monitoring equipment one month before the disastrous 1990 tunnel fire because high readings had forced frequent construction shutdowns.

“There’s no truth to them,” Tutor said of the allegations. “They’re pure unadulterated lies.”

Macksoud said he has not opened a formal investigative file, but his inquiry into D’Amato’s and Chiodo’s allegations is continuing. “We’re looking at everything,” Macksoud said. “Nothing is foreclosed.”

Chiodo and D’Amato said neither Macksoud nor anyone else with Reiner’s office has recontacted them during the past 20 months to seek names, phone numbers or addresses of potential witnesses. Four witnesses whose names were given to Macksoud during the April, 1991, meeting told The Times that they have not been contacted.

“They really dropped the ball, for whatever reason,” said D’Amato, a founder of the Valley Coastal Chapter of the American Society of Safety Engineers. “There are some very serious items that should have been looked into.”

Michael Quint is another former Metro Rail safety engineer frustrated by the district attorney’s handling of allegations that he brought to Macksoud’s attention on July 12, l991.

In an eight-page memo to Macksoud, Quint alleged “falsification of documents and the concealment of (structural) defects” in subway construction by Tutor-Saliba.

Quint criticized the district attorney’s office for, in his view, failing to investigate the matter and instead referring his allegations to the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, the agency overseeing the subway project. The commission concluded that Quint’s charges could not be substantiated.

Macksoud said Quint’s allegations are still under review. But his superiors said that an investigation was never opened.

The third whistle-blower, Nelson McIntire, contacted the district attorney’s office in October, 1991. McIntire said he took allegations of “serious, willful (safety-related) violations” by Tutor-Saliba to Jan Chatten-Brown, an assistant to Reiner specializing in workplace safety.

McIntire said he has heard nothing from the district attorney’s office since his 40-minute meeting with Brown more than a year ago.

Brown said in an interview that she suggested to McIntire that he speak with Macksoud. McIntire disputed that.

McIntire filed a lawsuit against Tutor-Saliba in July, alleging he had been fired for refusing to cover up safety violations. Tutor-Saliba is contesting the suit.

Two other tunnel workers have filed well-publicized lawsuits alleging wrongdoing by Tutor-Saliba. But they have not been contacted by the district attorney’s office, according to their attorney, Larry M. Roberts of Pasadena.

Frustrated with what he viewed as a lack of interest from the district attorney, one of those workers, Ben H. Pate, said he complained to a Tennessee congressman who later requested the federal investigation.

Pate, 62, a quality-control inspector who worked on Metro Rail from March, 1989, to April, 1991, filed a lawsuit in July against Tutor-Saliba and five other Metro Rail contractors. His suit alleged that he was fired because he “refused to approve shoddy and improper workmanship of defendant Tutor-Saliba.”

Pate, a native of Copper Hill, Tenn., took his complaints to his hometown congressman, Republican John J. Duncan. Last summer Duncan requested that Congress’ investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, open a review of the Metro Rail construction project, which receives federal funds. The FBI started its own investigation this fall.