D.A. Opens Political Corruption Inquiry : Investigations: Information will be gathered on officials countywide. Some question Bradbury’s use of his dwindling budget.

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said Thursday that his office has begun a countywide probe of political corruption and will gather information on officials in every local city, including Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark.

The investigation will be done by a political corruption unit Bradbury formed in February and which is now conducting an inquiry into possible laundering of contributions by card club promoters to the Oxnard City Council.

The new two-investigator unit will routinely analyze campaign and personal finance documents filed by city officials and by holders of county and statewide offices, Bradbury said.

“The honest politicians don’t have a thing to worry about,” Bradbury said in an interview.

The corruption unit, whose investigators have received special training, will also undertake a broad range of special investigations, looking for corruption not only among politicians but in government-related transactions involving large amounts of money, he said.

Bradbury said the special unit will employ a variety of investigative tools, including the first use of wiretaps in his 15 years as district attorney. Investigators’ reports will be forwarded to him for review, Bradbury added.

“This is truly proactive,” Bradbury said. “We’re going out and looking for something instead of just waiting for someone to report it.

“We’ve found in most jurisdictions that public corruption will go on for a long time until somebody gets their nose out of joint and tips you off,” he added. “We want to find out up front.”

He said district attorneys in large California counties are placing new emphasis on political corruption because of scandals in recent years in Orange, San Diego, Riverside and Sacramento counties and the state Legislature.

“It’s important to stress that I think we have a very clean county,” Bradbury said. “We are not going to go beyond some well-accepted and understood law enforcement techniques. . . . This is not a witch hunt.”

Several local officials, however, questioned Thursday whether Bradbury is making the best use of his dwindling budget by probing for conduct that has rarely occurred in Ventura County. And one suggested that the veteran district attorney, whose term expires in 1994, may be focusing on corruption for his own political gain.

“I haven’t seen any real (corruption) problems in my 15 years around the county,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said. “It just seems strange that at a time when he’s turning down prosecutions for a number of crimes because he’s short people, that he now decides to do this.”

County Supervisor Maggie Kildee said she believes Bradbury’s special unit is unnecessary.

“I’d be very surprised if he finds there is that kind of corruption going on,” she said. “I’d like to see our resources going to prevent or punish crimes that are a threat to our lives and our property.”

Susan Lacey, chairwoman of the County Board of Supervisors, said she was surprised upon learning of Bradbury’s new unit.

“Really!” she said. “At a time when he’s not doing misdemeanors. I didn’t know anything about this. I don’t think anybody did. Does he really think there’s political corruption here? Does he have anything to base that on?”

Lacey noted that county supervisors have no direct control over how Bradbury allocates his budget because he is also an elected official. But she said the prosecutor’s new unit would seem to duplicate some of the work of the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

“They do come around and review our statements,” she said. “They just did spot checks of our campaign committees. They did all of the (local) supervisorial races last year.”

Oxnard City Atty. Gary Gillig, who like Lacey has argued with Bradbury over public issues recently, said he does not believe Bradbury’s investigation into Oxnard’s card club promoters was necessary, because the state and local officials would have conducted detailed probes if the City Council had not killed the card-club proposal this week.

But Gillig said he does not second-guess how Bradbury allocates his staff.

“He has limited people and limited resources,” Gillig said. “And he has a choice on whether he wants to go after drug dealers, gang bangers, robbers, burglars or politicians.”

Oxnard Councilman Andres Herrera, who criticized Bradbury this week for his “heavy-handed” lobbying to kill the card-club proposal, suggested the district attorney might have a political motive.

“It sounds like this is old-time Chicago here in Ventura County,” Herrera said. “When is he up for reelection? If nobody’s brought this up before, I’m wondering why it’s being brought up now.”

Bradbury’s $13.4-million criminal division budget faces minimum cuts of about $1 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1, and could lose 11 of its 184 positions, a spokesman said. That division now has 30 investigators, including two in the political corruption unit, but stands to lose five of those investigators.

About 1% of the criminal division budget will be spent on the new unit, said Donald Coleman, a special assistant district attorney who oversees political corruption investigations.

Coleman said the district attorney’s misdemeanor prosecutions are down from 24,408 to 19,895--or 18.5%--over the past three years because of budget cuts. But felony prosecutions are up 14.8%, from 1,853 to 2,128.

Bradbury said he formed the new corruption unit despite hard budget times “because one of our top priorities is keeping Ventura County clean.”

“We’re putting our resources where they’re most needed,” he said. “And it’s a consensus of major district attorneys throughout the state that we have to be very vigilant about public corruption.”

Bradbury said corruption will be detected, in part, by closely monitoring “big-dollar transactions. For example, a huge development where there are millions and millions of dollars. That’s ripe for some sort of political wrongdoing.” Mid-level officials who sign off on projects might be the focus of such an inquiry, he said.

Wiretaps would be used selectively and with the cooperation of the U. S. attorney’s office in political corruption cases, Bradbury said. Wiretaps were last used here by the district attorney’s office in the 1970s, he said.

Ventura County is not without its public corruption cases, he said, noting the 1991 embezzlement conviction of Community College Trustee Tom Ely and a 1991 conflict-of-interest conviction of former state job-training official Robert Munoz. County Supervisor H. F. Robinson also was convicted of accepting bribes in 1970.

And Bradbury said critics need only look to his Oxnard card-club investigation to see what can be found. He said he expects to prosecute some contributors to Oxnard City Council candidates for the November and March elections.

“We have found laundered campaign contributions. We have hard evidence of that,” he said. “I think it’s likely that there will be prosecutions.”

So far, he has evidence only of illegal activity by contributors, not by council members or other candidates, he said.

“The investigation is not even halfway completed,” he said. “We’re just now reviewing all of the documents and evidence involved.”

Principals in a casino group headed locally by Ventura developer Michael E. Wooten are suspected of making illegal contributions, Bradbury said. Contributions may have been made by people who were then reimbursed by the casino group, he said.

State law requires that the true source of all contributions be declared.

“There is evidence that is prompting us to take a very hard look at some of their contributions,” Bradbury said.

Wooten denied wrongdoing and said he has not been told by the district attorney that his group is a target.

“I’m saying we didn’t make any illegal contributions,” Wooten said. “I don’t know what law we’re accused of violating. The district attorney is talking in vague generalities.”

Wooten said he and his wife made contributions of under $100 last fall to Oxnard City Council candidates and that his partner, Frank Marasco, contributed $700 to a candidate.