Misidentified Donations to 2 Supervisors Investigated

The district attorney’s office is investigating $1,500 in campaign donations to each of two Orange County supervisors by a Massachusetts trash-hauling company that initially listed the contributions as coming from its employees.

Supervisors Bruce Nestande and Thomas F. Riley, recipients of the money, said they had no way of knowing the money actually came from GSX Corp. of Boston and not from workers at the company’s district office in Santa Ana.

In a Feb. 21 letter to the supervisors notifying them of the actual source of the money, the company agreed that Riley and Nestande did not know the contributions were not from the employees, an assertion supported by Shirley Grindle, who first brought the matter to the attention of the district attorney’s office.

Author of Ordinance

“I’m positive they (Nestande and Riley) knew nothing about it,” said Grindle, author of a county ordinance on campaign contributions and unofficial monitor of donations to supervisors. “Both of them are smart enough not to get involved.”

It is a violation of California law to disguise the source of campaign contributions.

Joseph L. Boren, GSX vice president and author of the letters to Riley and Nestande, said in a telephone interview Thursday that the company had conducted its own investigation “and we have taken appropriate action,” which he declined to specify.

Boren’s letter to Nestande and Riley said the company “has recently learned that certain present and former employees of GSX made contributions to your campaign committee which may have been reimbursed from corporate funds. In order to resolve any uncertainties regarding the source of these contributions, we would appreciate it if you would amend your campaign statement to reflect that the contributions from the following individuals were contributions of the GSX Corp. of Orange County. . . .”

‘Error Is Ours Alone’

One letter listed Deborah Battrell as a $100 donor to Riley and Anthony Otting, Patricia Stambaugh and Jackie Witt as donors of $300 each. The other letter listed Otting and Robert Gottlieb as contributors of $250 each to Nestande.

“This information has only recently come to our attention, and the error which has occurred is ours alone,” Boren wrote. “Your campaign committee had no previous knowledge and could not have known of these reimbursements.”

Boren said Thursday that “the letters speak for themselves” and declined to elaborate.

Nestande said Thursday that he has returned the money. Riley said he did not know if he would also return the individual contributions.

In addition, the company gave $1,000 to Nestande and $500 to Riley. Ron Rogers, campaign manager for Nestande, who is running for California secretary of state, said the company contribution would not be returned.

Grindle said Boren’s letters were written after she began calling employees in the company’s Santa Ana office to check if they had personally contributed to Nestande and Riley or if they had been reimbursed by GSX.

$1,500 for Each Supervisor

The letters were dated three days after GSX lost an attempt to get the supervisors to allow competition for trash-hauling contracts in unincorporated areas of the county, rather than exclusive contracts now in effect.

Even after attributing all contributions to GSX, the company’s donations came to only $1,500 to each of the two supervisors. County law requires supervisors to abstain from voting on matters involving a company or individual that has contributed $1,622 within the past 48 months.

Nestande said that as soon as his campaign office received Boren’s letter, Rogers notified the district attorney’s office and amended the campaign financial statements required by law to reflect the company contribution.

The company and individual donations were made to Nestande on Nov. 8. The contributions to Riley were made Sept. 28.

Maurice L. Evans, deputy district attorney in charge of special assignments, said his office “started looking into the (matter) last week. . . . We’ve interviewed some people.”

He declined to say who was interviewed, but he said no one had talked to corporate officials in Boston yet.