Pinpointing publishing rights’ transfer still tricky business

Theresa Moreau

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- Contradictions are still surfacing around the date

of Mayor Dave Garofalo’s sales agreement for the publishing rights to the

Local News, the Chamber of Commerce Business Directory and the Conference

& Visitors Bureau Visitor’s Guide.

In September 1998, City Atty. Gail Hutton requested an opinion from

the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission on whether any of

Garofalo’s votes on matters involving advertisers in publications he

owned constituted a conflict of interest.

In that request, Hutton wrote: “On Dec. 15, 1997, Mr. Garofalo sold

all three publications to Coatings Resources Inc.”

The statement conflicts with Hutton’s Aug. 1 memo, in which she

recommended the visitors bureau terminate its publishing contract with

David P. Garofalo & Associates, Garofalo’s corporation that was awarded

the contract in 1993.

In the Aug. 1 memo, Hutton wrote: “In January 1998, [David P. Garofalo

& Associates] entered into a contract with [Coatings Resource Corp.] in

which DGA would sell the Local News to CRC.”

Garofalo also released his own memo, dated June 19, in which he wrote:

“The Local News was sold, as all records properly show, to Coatings

Resource in December 1997. The transaction was concluded on Jan. 14,

1998.”

The actual purchase agreement did not surface until recently.

Councilman Dave Sullivan, who asked Hutton at Monday night’s council

meeting when she received the contract, was told Tuesday that Hutton’s

office did not receive the purchase agreement until May or June of this

year.

That promissory note, which released Garofalo’s publishing rights to

Ed Laird’s company, Coatings Resource, had a sale date of Jan. 14, 1998.

An amendment to the purchase agreement, which stipulated that Garofalo

would undertake the actual printing of the Local News, was dated Feb. 25,

1998.

Garofalo and Laird signed both documents, but there were no dates by

the signatures and the documents were not notarized.

In June, Hutton told the Independent that when her office offers an

opinion to a council member or seeks an opinion from the Fair Political

Practices Commission, documentation that supports the given facts is

requested.

“We would ask him for some kind of documentation on some of this, or

we would ask him more details and he would orally tell us,” Hutton said.

“And then we would write it up and ask him, ‘Are these the facts that you

gave us?”’