Ex-Schools Official Ordered Arrested : Court: Steven L. Presson failed to appear for sentencing on embezzlement conviction.

SANTA ANA —  An arrest warrant was issued Monday for a former Orange Unified School District administrator after he failed to appear for sentencing on an embezzlement and conspiracy conviction in a multimillion-dollar bid-rigging scandal.

Steven L. Presson, a former school district maintenance officer, was ordered arrested by Judge Myron S. Brown after he did not show up in Orange County Superior Court, where he was to be sentenced for his role in a kickback and bid-rigging scheme that diverted district jobs to two construction contractors in exchange for gifts, money and favors. Presson faces up to eight years in prison.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donna Crandall requested that the court issue an arrest warrant after learning that Presson wouldn’t be present for the 9 a.m. hearing Monday. Crandall was already in court when Presson’s attorney, Salvatore P. Ciulla, called to tell her that Presson was working in Arizona and unavailable to appear.

Ciulla “didn’t tell me anything . . . except that (Presson) is not here,” Crandall said. “I think it’s incredibly arrogant that a defendant under sentencing can just call and say he’s not going to show up and (say), ‘Get me a continuance.’ ”

Ciulla did not explain Presson’s absence in court Monday and refused to comment after the hearing.

“I can’t talk about it. There’s an explanation. I just can’t tell you guys,” Ciulla told reporters.

Monday’s hearing marked the second time that Presson has failed to appear for sentencing in the case. In May, he requested a continuance after telling the court his stepdaughter had been injured in a car accident. An arrest warrant requested at that time was held by the court, Crandall said.

The case involved $2 million to $3 million in contracts for about 80 repair and construction jobs arranged from 1979 to 1984. The convicted contractors, Ronald Brock and William A. Gustafson, were sentenced in April on five counts of conspiracy and embezzlement of public funds, including three felony charges. Each received a suspended term of one year in County Jail and three years of unsupervised probation, angering officials and parents in the school district.

Brock and Gustafson had been awaiting clarification of their sentences, but Brock’s attorney on Monday accepted the court ruling that convicted Brock on three felony counts and required him to pay no fines and serve no jail time.

Earlier, attorney Evan L. Ginsburg had requested that all charges be reduced to misdemeanors because the district attorney was unable to prove that the contractors had caused the school district to suffer any specific loss.

The sentences received by Brock and Gustafson were not consistent with felony charges and the charges should be reduced to misdemeanors, Ginsburg said. While maintaining that his client’s sentence is “probably invalid,” Ginsburg said Brock wants to “get on with his life. . . . This has been a nightmare for him.”

Crandall agreed that the sentences may have been improper but said that the district attorney’s office would not pursue stiffer penalties for the contractors.

“I think that, technically, (the sentence) is invalid,” she said. “But for policy reasons in our office, it was decided it would be left as it is.”

A final decision in the Gustafson case is still pending.

About 20 parents and other residents of the school district attended Monday’s hearing to encourage Judge Brown to impose harsher penalties on the contractors, whom they partially blame for the district’s financial problems.

Kathy Moran, a mother of two Orange Unified students who helped organize a petition drive to encourage the court to impose stiffer sentences, was outraged by Presson’s absence.

“That he thinks he can put us on hold is disgusting,” she said.