Bribery Tarnishes Colton’s Image

Seven oversized billboards rise from the valley floor like steel totems of Southern California culture, hawking cars and casinos and other emblems of easy living to motorists rushing through a major freeway interchange in southwest San Bernardino County.

But for residents of Colton, a quiet blue-collar town nestled along the edges of the Riverside and San Bernardino freeways, the billboards symbolize something darker: greed and corruption.

Over the last few months, three former and one sitting member of Colton’s City Council, including two former mayors, have admitted pocketing bribes in a vote-selling scandal whose scope has surprised even the most jaded of people in this cynic’s paradise.

“It’s just out of control,” said Abe Simon, 62, owner of a small downtown clothing store within eyeshot of Colton City Hall. “A lot of people are disgusted with them. They feel betrayed.”

In some ways, Colton’s corruption scandals are purely local. Longtime politicos, such as former Mayor Abe Beltran, and relative newcomers, such as Councilman Don Sanders, have admitted taking cash and gifts to help businessmen erect and sell some billboards, build restaurants and market sites in a city-owned trailer park.

But the scandal, which has ensnared two Orange County businessmen as well, also touches on broader and more universal issues of trust and faith, the personal motives of those seeking public position, and the insidious role of money in politics.

“What is the purpose of a politician?” asked Gary Kilbourn, 53, who owns the Country Health store around the corner from Colton’s circular City Hall. “They don’t serve the common good. They serve the lobbyists. This is how they are bred.”

Colton, a poor cousin in Southern California’s sprawling family of high-priced cities, has a racially mixed population of 48,000 that consists largely of low- and moderate-wage commuters who work in Riverside, San Bernardino and other nearby cities.

Particularly vulnerable to economic storms, Colton had a December unemployment rate of 5.8%, compared with 4.5% for San Bernardino County overall and 4.9% for Riverside County. The median price for a home--the local architecture leans heavily toward single-story bungalows--hovers around $125,000, less than half that of Orange County. New developments offer single-family houses “with huge lots” beginning at $150,000.

It’s the kind of place where patios are built by friends over a weekend, and car repairs are done at home. The city library boasts 12 shelves of Chilton’s auto repair manuals, the bible for driveway mechanics.

The bribes behind the indictments seem unimaginative. Instead of wiring money to hidden overseas accounts, for example, the local graft-takers pocketed wads of cash during clandestine meetings at Orange County restaurants, accepted free carpeting and let their corrupters pay off personal credit card bills, according to the indictment and plea agreements.

The pervasiveness of the corruption surprised the federal prosecutor heading the investigations into Inland Empire graft.

“Part of it might have been my own naivete of what goes on in local government, and part of it is a reflection of the close-knit and insular political culture that seems to exist in that county,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Edward Moreton.

The Colton cases form the second wave of prosecutions mounted by a task force that includes Moreton’s office, FBI agents and San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies--but not the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office.

“Early on in the investigation the decision was made that it would be better for us to go forward without them,” Moreton said, declining to elaborate.

The task force is still active, Moreton said, but he wouldn’t discuss continuing investigations.

In the first wave of indictments, four former San Bernardino County officials and three businessmen pleaded guilty two years ago to corruption charges centering on former county Chief Administrator James Hlawek.

Hlawek, who is awaiting sentencing while cooperating with investigators, also is an unindicted co-conspirator in some of the Colton cases for his role in setting up meetings and delivering bribes, according to federal court records.

Both rounds of investigations hinged on gathering evidence against suspected bribe-takers, then pressuring them to implicate others. Without offering specifics, Moreton said Hlawek was the common link between the two waves.

The Colton cases involve four scandals and eight defendants. Six of the defendants pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges, admitting to allegations in the indictment and agreeing to cooperate with investigators.

The remaining two defendants, former San Bernardino County Supervisor Jerry Eaves and Newport Beach businessman William S. “Shep” McCook, pleaded not guilty to the charges contained in the indictment of giving trips to Eaves and his relatives. Bribery charges against both men were dismissed late last month by U.S. District Judge Manuel Real, who ruled that the federal court had no jurisdiction because the allegations did not involve federal money. Eaves, however, will be tried in April on federal mail-fraud charges.

Moreton said task force members were trying to determine their next step, but that they did not intend to drop the case.

For Colton, whose working-class flavor can be found in the massive cement works on the city’s southwestern edge and in the union halls sprinkled around downtown, the bribery scandals are just another, more insidious wrinkle in a political culture notable for its viciousness.

In the 1990s, the city endured six recall campaigns in six consecutive years. In one 1997 contest, challenger James Grimsby ousted incumbent David Sandoval after Grimsby backers accused Sandoval of favoring projects that benefited his campaign contributors.

The next year, Grimsby began selling his votes directly, according to court records. He and former Mayor Karl E. Gaytan pleaded guilty last year to accepting more than $25,000 from Laguna Beach businessman Allan Steward in return for supporting four Steward projects: the sale of land within the Cooley Ranch redevelopment project and the construction of three chain restaurants. Steward also has pleaded guilty in the case and to charges in the billboard scandal.

Attempts to interview the defendants were unsuccessful.

Cash Was Exchanged at Restaurants, Roadsides

Some of the bribes were straight cash handouts. Some came during meetings at Orange County restaurants. One came along a roadside near the San Onofre nuclear plant. Sanders also admitted collecting $2,000 in cash from McCook at a gas station off the Costa Mesa Freeway, although McCook maintains his innocence.

Other bribes came in the form of new carpeting and weekends in Laguna Beach, Las Vegas and New York. Steward funneled cash to Grimsby through his wife and ex-wife--some made while Grimsby was a candidate in 1997.

Court records say Steward also paid some of Grimsby’s American Express bills and posted a $5,000 bond to spring Grimsby from jail on misdemeanor charges of cruelty to a child involving an altercation with his 17-year-old stepdaughter a few weeks before the election. The charge was later dismissed

In this classic crossroads city, the most telling aspect of the bribery scandal is that the dirty politicians simply met many residents’ low expectations of them.

Shady dealings have long been rumored in town. In 1997, Anaheim-based trash hauler Taormina Industries sued local minister Stephen Anderson for saying Taormina paid bribes to land a Colton trash-collection contract.

Over Anderson’s objections, his insurance company settled the case before the bribery indictments, which allege--but do not formally charge--that a Taormina representative gave about $5,000 to Councilman Sanders for his support in winning the city’s contract.

There were other hints of suspicious dealings. Beltran pleaded no contest in 1997 to charges he failed to disclose that Steward owed him $40,000 at the time Beltran was voting in favor of some of the developer’s projects. Steward pleaded guilty in the bribery case.

And last year, Eaves, whose supervisorial district includes Colton, pleaded no contest to violating state conflict-of-interest laws by not reporting fishing trips and other gifts from a bond underwriter during the mid-’90s, then voting to give the firm lucrative county contracts. He was fined $20,000 and barred from seeking reelection in 2004.

Robb Steel, Colton’s former redevelopment director, said that shortly after he started the job in 1998 he was told that key decisions on projects were to be made by the council members alone, without city staff recommendations.

“Colton has a long history of doing this kind of stuff, kind of working the edge of ethics,” said Steel, who now heads the redevelopment agency in nearby Rialto. “People who did business with the city took it in a humorous stride almost, that that’s the way business is done in Colton. You had to stroke somebody. They never gave me evidence, but there were a lot of questionable business deals that you wondered why those deals were done. They just don’t make sense.”

Despite Colton’s history of political drama, relatively few residents involve themselves in elections. In the 2000 presidential campaign, only 62% of Colton’s 16,850 registered voters turned out, compared with 67% for all of San Bernardino County. In a November council election to replace Councilwoman Deirdre Bennett, who was appointed mayor, only 362--or 9.8%--of the 5th District’s 3,689 registered voters cast ballots.

Scandals Give Way to Low-Key Campaign

City officials said they don’t know what kind of turnout to expect for the March 5 election to fill the 1st District council seat Sanders resigned last fall, a few weeks after pleading guilty.

Three candidates--paralegal/youth counselor Gwendolyn Brown, youth minister Ramon M. Hernandez and military retiree William W. Hines--are seeking the seat, but the campaign has been all but invisible.

While the scandals are still unfolding, the guilty pleas have already affected how the city conducts business. Suspicions ran so high in the aftermath of the indictments that City Manager Daryl Parrish demanded that developers involved in a real estate deal with Steward sign affidavits that no bribes were involved.

And City Council meetings now include a public reading of all pending contracts, after which council members are required to state under penalty of perjury whether they have received any gifts exceeding $50 from anyone involved in the contract.

Yet even the architects of those measures acknowledge their limits.

“If someone’s going to commit a dishonest act, it’s hard to stop them from doing it,” Parrish said. “It’s part of their moral fiber. They either will or they won’t.”