Long Beach Councilman Resigns Over Partnership

Long Beach City Councilman Dan Baker resigned Tuesday amid questions about his personal business dealings with the head of the city’s police union.

The Long Beach Press-Telegram reported last week that Baker had not disclosed a real-estate partnership he entered into with the head of the city’s police union, Steve James, two weeks before Baker voted in August to approve a 21% pay hike over four years for the police union.

Baker and James were among a group of investors that purchased a $7.5-million, 138-unit apartment complex in Missouri last August.

Council members and city officials said they were stunned by Baker’s sudden resignation, which he tendered just after the start of the regular Tuesday night session. In an impassioned speech, Baker defended his “private” business ventures, noting that the council position is part time, with a salary of $28,000 a year, and that “like most of my colleagues, I do need to make money.”

He said he was “very certain” that any investigation into his dealings would turn up “absolutely nothing to be of concern.... Yet I do have personal friends who are still under the microscope or having their personal or professional lives harmed unnecessarily and that concerns me greatly.”

He branded the controversy “a witch hunt” by the press, in which “my fellow investors, my close friends, are being persecuted.”

The Press-Telegram editorialized Friday that the relationship between Baker and James “stinks.”

“Rather than representing the interests of his taxpayer constituents, here was Baker (in between business deals and trips to Asia, Europe and Costa Rica) outspokenly promoting a favorable police union contract without mentioning the fact he was in business with the union president, who also was busy lobbying council members for a pay raise.”

City Atty. Bob Shannon said nobody had told him the two were business partners, the paper reported. He said such business relationships can create the appearance of a conflict, but told the paper: “I’m not prepared to conclude that there was a violation of law.”

Baker, who represents District 2 on the southwest side of the city, worked for the U.S. Customs Service for 11 years, including as a supervisory inspector at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, working to “keep illegal drugs out of the U.S.,” according to the biography on the city’s website. He earned a law degree in 1998 from Western State University College of Law. He was the first openly gay council member in Long Beach.

Times staff writer Valerie Reitman contributed to this report.