Roth Opposition to Sprinklers Sets Off Inquiry

SANTA ANA —  Authorities are investigating whether Orange County Supervisor Don R. Roth helped kill a costly residential fire-prevention measure in exchange for thousands of dollars in improvements to his Anaheim Hills home from a major local builder, The Times has learned.

In one of his first official acts as chairman of the Board of Supervisors in January, 1990, Roth--citing a last-minute staff recommendation--made a successful motion to shelve a controversial proposal that would have forced developers to install automated fire sprinklers in thousands of new homes. The board unanimously approved the move.

Roth said he was sending the measure back to staff “for further study.” Nearly three years later, it has not returned to the board for a vote.

In a Thursday statement, Roth denied any connection between the home improvements in early 1990 and his own position on the sprinkler issue, while his attorney, Dana Reed, called the suggestion “preposterous” and “utterly ridiculous.”

But even as the county’s building industry was lobbying against the proposal at that time, workers for the Presley Co. were knocking down a bearing wall at Roth’s new Anaheim Hills home and doing other free or undervalued work for him.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Guy N. Ormes said: “We can confirm that we are looking at the sprinkler vote and whether or not it has any relation to the house improvements.” He declined to discuss further details.

A fire official said the district attorney’s office has contacted the Orange County Fire Department about its failed efforts to persuade the supervisors to approve the legislation as a critical life-saving measure.

Larry J. Holms, Orange County director of fire services, said he was told that one of his employees had been questioned recently by investigators about whether there was “undue pressure” surrounding the sprinkler proposal.

And Roth’s ex-wife, Jackie Roth, confirmed that she was also questioned about the issue by district attorney’s investigators when they interviewed her last month as part of a seven-month investigation into allegations of influence peddling against Roth.

Jackie Roth refused to discuss details of the interview.

But sources said she told authorities about a conversation she allegedly had with Roth in mid-1989, as the couple were discussing a family-room expansion and other home improvements that the Presley Co. was planning to make at the Roths’ new home.

In recounting that conversation, Jackie Roth was said to have quoted Roth as saying that the work “wasn’t going to cost anything” because the Presley Co. wanted to ensure Roth’s support on the upcoming sprinkler vote.

Jackie Roth alleged that her husband told her: “They don’t want me to be voting for sprinklers,” sources said. She later confirmed to The Times that she had told authorities about this remark.

Evidence has mounted in recent months about meals, trips, flight upgrades, landscaping work, an $8,500 loan and other unreported gifts that Roth received from local business people who later had projects before the county. Under state law, elected officials are required to report all gifts in excess of $50 and to disqualify themselves from voting on matters for one year involving people who have given them $250 or more.

But the remark that Roth’s ex-wife alleges he made to her about the sprinkler vote appears to draw the most direct link to date between a gift and a Roth vote that followed it.

Presley Co. officials declined to discuss the issue. Asked whether there was any connection between the improvements and the vote, company President L.C. (Bob) Albertson Jr., an occasional golfing partner of Don Roth, said: “No comment.”

In a written statement released by his lawyer, Roth said he was “saddened and appalled” to learn of his ex-wife’s allegations. “Her claim is absolutely false. I can only attribute her statements to the fact that she remains very bitter over our (1991) divorce.”

Reed said the sprinkler issue was a volatile one, with heavy pressure from both sides.

“Of course he was lobbied (by developers). He was lobbied on the other side as well,” Reed said. “It is utterly ridiculous to suggest his opinion on such a major issue was colored by the fact that he had some work done on his house.”

Roth, under investigation since May over allegations of influence peddling, received thousands of dollars in free or undervalued improvements at his new Anaheim Hills home from the Presley Co. in late 1989 and early 1990.

After the Roths told top officials at Presley that they were unhappy with parts of the floor plan in their model home, the company knocked down walls to enlarge both the dining room and the family room, added French doors, and did other custom work, interviews and records show. The Roths ended up with the biggest home in their 37-house development, at 2,700 square feet.

As a matter of policy, Presley did not alter floor plans for new homes, and one neighbor has said the developer refused his request to pay for a dining room expansion similar to the Roths’. “Once they build the house, that’s it. They say they don’t do any changes,” Chris Sarantos told The Times.

The original sales price of the Roth home was about $345,000. The closing price was then raised by $3,700, which was apparently intended to cover the cost of expanding the family room and putting in new support beams there.

This was the only payment made for the additions and changes, but remodeling specialists have said all the extra work--including expanding the dining room by more than 100 square feet--would normally cost at least $15,000.

Another major home builder, the Baldwin Co., later paid another firm nearly $2,000 to landscape the front yard of Roth’s new home. Roth did not pay for the work until last week, when Reed said he forwarded $975 after questions were raised in The Times.

Roth did not report the home improvements or landscaping as gifts in state-required disclosure statements. When the work was first disclosed in The Times in recent weeks, questions focused in part on votes that Roth later cast on Presley and Baldwin matters, posing a potential conflict under state law.

But carrying potentially greater significance for these and other local builders was a vote that Roth didn’t cast.

This came on Jan. 10, 1990. Roth had just taken over as chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and one of his first official acts in that powerful seat was to have the board pull an item off its slim agenda for the day.

The item: a proposal that would have forced local developers to install automatic fire sprinklers in all new single-family homes in unincorporated parts of the county, as well as some existing dwellings.

At least a half-dozen Orange County cities have adopted similar sprinkler ordinances in recent years, but local builders have continually opposed the idea, arguing that it would make housing even more costly for new-home buyers in those areas. The sprinkler systems are estimated to cost about $2,000 per home.

Led by the Building Industry Assn., developers lobbied hard in the weeks before the scheduled sprinkler vote for the supervisors to reject the idea.

But officials with the Orange County Fire Department backed the sprinkler mandate just as strenuously, insisting in meetings with supervisors that the cost was well worth the lives that it could save.

Fire officials argued that the ordinance would mean better protection from fire for 60,000 homes--and 180,000 people--by the time the unincorporated parts of the county are built out. And they pointed to a recent study in New Zealand and Australia showing that sprinkler systems controlled or extinguished fires 99.8% of the time.

Roth spoke with representatives from both sides in the week before the vote, his appointment books indicate.

The calendar, obtained by The Times through a public records request, shows that Roth was scheduled to meet with Larry J. Holms, director of county fire services, about the sprinkler issue on Jan. 4, and he had a meeting set with BIA Executive Director Tom Daly the day before. He was also scheduled to play golf with Albertson--a past president of BIA--and another top Presley executive two weeks before the vote. Prosecutors are interested in these meetings and the topics of discussion.

The sprinkler issue was billed as a major showdown as it came up for a vote before the Board of Supervisors on that day in January, 1990.

The measure was put on the board’s agenda, a public hearing was set, and press reports sized up its chances for success. But the vote never came.

Instead, Environmental Management Agency Director Michael M. Ruane recommended in a memo to the board just two days beforehand that the vote be put off. He said the board might not have been given “a detailed, consistent” report on the measure’s full impact.

Roth agreed. He had been the most outspoken member of the board in raising questions about the sprinkler mandate, saying in one interview three days before the vote: “There is no outcry from the public demanding fire sprinklers. . . . The public is very, very complacent about this issue.”

In addition, Roth is regarded by both critics and supporters as a pro-development politician who has long derided increased regulation on business. Roth has received $434,213 in campaign contributions--or a third of his total fund raising since 1985--from developers, according to a computer-assisted study by The Times.

At the Jan. 10 meeting, Roth, citing the recommendation of county staff, moved to pull the item from the agenda and ordered further study. His fellow supervisors agreed to the motion unanimously and without comment. “This item will come back before the board after analysis and revisions have been completed,” Roth said, according to tape-recorded minutes of the meeting.

County officials said then that a staff report on the issue might be done within 30 to 60 days. But almost three years later, no such report was ever done, according to Floyd McLellan, the county’s top building official.

“It’s a dead issue right now,” he said.

Once they are placed on the supervisors’ agenda, county items are rarely pulled before a vote. So what happened in the case of the sprinkler issue?

Ruane and other county officials said that the Fire Department rushed the matter onto the agenda without a base of support.

“There was a lot of concern” among supervisors about the measure’s impact on both housing costs and safety, Ruane said. Some officials believed that the issue should best be left to the state, despite the fact that some cities had already approved such regulations.

Holms and Ruane said the complexity of negotiations between fire officials and developers has delayed the issue’s return to the Board of Supervisors.

McLellan, the building official, said officials at the Environmental Management Agency made clear to him that the matter should not come up for a vote because of infighting between the Environmental Management Agency and the Fire Department. “There’s no way they wanted that (quarreling) to go before the public,” he said.

But William L. Wright, then the Orange County fire marshal and now fire chief for the city of San Bernardino, said he was dumbfounded by the turn of events.

In a recent interview, Wright said Roth and other county supervisors appeared receptive to the sprinkler idea as he and other fire officials met with them in the weeks before the vote. “That got your hopes up. The comments were all very positive,” he recounted. “It looked like things were going well. But then I started hearing problems, and it just came to a screeching halt. We did a 180 (-degree turn).”

Wright said he knew the measure faced no chance of passage at the Jan. 10 meeting. He said he is still unsure what changed the measure’s fate--except that “the developers had a lot of clout.”

Wright said he would have liked to have known at the time that Roth was receiving thousands of dollars in free or undervalued home improvements from a major local developer who opposed the measure. “I’d have probably realized that we were beating a dead horse,” he said. “And you’d certainly have taken a different approach if you felt that the deal was already done. That certainly changes your thinking.”

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this report.