ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Is Business a Little Too Cozy in Brea?

State conflict-of-interest law is supposed to prevent public officials from taking governmental actions that also benefit any outside sources of their income. But what happened in Brea last year was a case study in how the law was ignored--and then botched on the enforcement end.

For starters, Mayor Wayne D. Wedin, then a councilman, should have known better than to urge the selection of a certain engineering firm to get some major city planning work. At the same time, he was subcontracting with that company in a separate venture. Wedin is an economic-development consultant and is described by the Keith Cos. of Costa Mesa, a firm that he did work for in San Diego, as one of the best in the business.

But after his own city had expended considerable planning staff time to endorse two other firms as the most qualified applicants for a project regarding the proposed development of a canyon area on the Orange-Los Angeles county border, Wedin pushed hard to get the contract for Keith Cos., the firm he was associated with. The effort to win a contract for a friend nearly worked. It was only after an anonymous whistle-blower wrote to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, questioning Wedin’s relationship, that his interference was headed off.

But that’s not the end of the story. It turns out that the FPPC was satisfied to make only a single phone call to the city attorney and then dismissed the case, concluding in January that “no violation of the conflict-of-interest prohibitions by Councilman Wedin appears to have a occurred at this time.”

Its finding was based on some outright errors of fact evident in the commission’s letter to the city attorney. And a review of the FPPC file by The Times revealed no indication that the enforcement division had any inkling that Wedin had done work for the Keith Cos. on a redevelopment project in San Diego. It never interviewed Wedin and never dug into the potential conflict.

Wedin, for his part, does not deny that he did the outside work, but offers an unconvincing interpretation of how those efforts were structured.

The FPPC needs to do a more thorough job if it intends to have its regulations taken seriously. For starters, it’s good that the commission is reopening this case. It is an example of why councilmen who are also development consultants may be walking a very thin ethical tightrope.