By CHRIS BOUCLY / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER -
The City Council this week voted to respond to a grand jury report that accuses Councilman L. Allan Songstad of "misfeasance of office" by "disagreeing wholly" with the findings and not implementing any of the report's recommendations.
The report was issued in early July following the grand jury's investigation of a complaint filed late last year by Councilwoman Barbara Kogerman. The complaint requested the grand jury investigate whether "leaders of a taxpayer-funded organization had attempted to quash information and debate on issues of public concern and ... had inappropriately attempted to interfere in a local city council election," according to the report.
Kogerman's complaint stemmed in part from a July 2010 meeting between Songstad, Tustin Councilman Jerry Amante, Lacy Kelly, former executive director of the Orange County division of the nonprofit League of California Cities, and Jim Doti, the president of Chapman University. Songstad and Amante were on the nonprofit league's O.C. division board of directors.
During the meeting with Doti, the four discussed a May 2010 report commissioned by Kogerman – then a candidate for Laguna Hills City Council – critical of Orange County city managers' compensation. Kogerman – who ran into many roadblocks trying to get information for the report – sought help from Fred Smoller, director of Brandman University's graduate public administration program, who assigned two graduate students to the project. Brandman is part of the Chapman system.
The published report's cover page said it was by the two Brandman students with a foreword by Kogerman, though she was the author and they did research and data compilation. That gave the report an air of authority that was inaccurate, said critics, including members of the local League of Cities division. Kogerman later amended the cover page.
In the meeting with Doti, Songstad and Amante voiced concerns about the report's data and interpretations, and about the authorship issue. Doti, in an August 2010 interview with the Register, said he emailed Smoller to discuss the issue, asking him to consider "sending an official letter stating it wasn't written by the Brandman students." Doti said the three "did not demand Fred Smoller's head."
Smoller sent a letter to the editor to the Register saying it was not a Chapman report, a statement repeated in his blog. Fourteen months later, in October 2011, Smoller resigned as head of the public administration program, saying "a breakaway group from the (non-profit corporation) and other disgruntled elected leaders had convinced (university) administrators that I could no longer be an effective public face for the program," according to the grand jury report.
In November 2011, Kogerman, now a councilwoman, filed her complaint. After reviewing documents and interviewing Songstad, Amante and Kelly, the grand jury issued its July 2012 report finding, in part, Songstad and Amante apparently misused their membership in the League of Cities to influence Doti and Smoller; arranged the meeting with Doti under the auspices of introducing Lacy "when their intentions were to influence the university to investigate and discredit the report where students were assigned as interns to a political campaign;" and "may not have been forthcoming with the Orange County Grand Jury in their testimony about the primary purpose in meeting with university officials and the facts and circumstances related thereto."
The grand jury recommended Laguna Hills and Tustin review the conduct of Songstad and Amante, determine needed action to prevent such conduct, and get them "continuing ethical training;" and the cities "should refrain from attempting to exercise influence over public and private educational institutions."
At the time, Kogerman hailed the grand jury's findings while Songstad and Amante said it was off base.
"I have a right to go talk to anybody I want to if I think that someone is acting unethically and attributing a report to someone who didn't write it," Songstad said.
On Sept. 4, the Tustin City Council voted 3-2 to disagree with the report and not implement its recommendations. Laguna Hills officials in a 3-1 vote with Songstad abstaining and Kogerman dissenting voted Tuesday to take the same action.
Laguna Hills' response to the grand jury states the report should have been directed to a different governmental agency (the League of Cities) because it "focuses on matters that are not related to the 'operations' of the (city) and ... are also not under the 'control' of the (city)."
Kogerman questioned her colleagues on the decision, saying the city is responsible for the actions of its representatives regardless of the organization on whose behalf those actions were taken. She asked the council to help her get the grand jury testimony unsealed.
"If the grand jury got it wrong, would you agree that the testimony should be unsealed?" she said. "And then we can see what the sworn testimony actually was that led 19 grand jurors and the county counsel and a Superior Court justice to approve this report."
The council did not take action on her request.
Staff writer Teri Sforza contributed to this report.
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