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Illegal Calif. land sale does not deter Calvert, for now |
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By Susan Crabtree
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Posted: 07/11/07 07:14 PM [ET] |
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) has not ruled out selling a disputed piece of land back to the organization that he and two investment partners bought it from, even though a grand jury last week found that it was sold illegally.
Through a spokesperson, Calvert said he is only one of three partners and not involved in the day-to-day operations of turning the land into a Dollar Storage facility, as planned.
“Any future decision regarding the property would have to be made by the partnership,” Calvert’s spokesperson said in an e-mail.
The spokesperson declined to indicate whether the lawmaker would sell his portion of the investment to his partners, citing a policy against speculating publicly about future personal investment decisions.
A report released last week revealed that a grand jury in Riverside County, Calif., concluded that a water and sewer company that operates under governmental guidelines violated state law when it sold four acres of public land to Calvert and his investment partners without first offering it to other public agencies. The land included the local park district, which had long expressed interest in purchasing the land and turning it into a park for the surrounding Hispanic community.
The grand jury recommended that the company, the Jurupa Community Services District (JCSD), give the park agency $1.2 million — the amount Calvert and his partners paid for the land. It also instructed the JCSD to provide a response to the jury’s findings by late September.
The report notes that the JCSD acquired the property in 1976 and that “documentation indicates the 4.3-acre property was intended for use as a park.”
Yet Calvert and his partners, Woodrow “Woody” Harpole and Dollar Storage, have not broken ground to build the storage facility planned for the site.
“There’s only a sign out there right now that says there’s a storage facility coming soon,” Harpole said.
But Harpole added that he has spent around $100,000 on various drawings, aerial maps and landfill, and therefore is not inclined to sell the parcel back to the JCSD or to anyone else.
“I didn’t buy it to sell it,” Harpole said. “That wouldn’t be my first choice.”
More broadly, Calvert’s role in the land deal has raised questions about whether federal money that he helped obtain for a desalination project for JCSD in a 2005 bill influenced its decision to sell the parcel to him and his partners without notifying others that the land was for sale. Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.) sponsored the legislation along with Calvert and four other area congressmen.
Concerns surrounding the land deal as well as the grand jury’s investigation into the sale were discussed during internal House GOP deliberations earlier this year, when House Republicans debated whether Calvert should win a seat on the Appropriations Committee, according to two GOP sources attending some of the discussions.
Several GOP members expressed reservations about naming Calvert as Rep. John Doolittle’s (R-Calif.) replacement on the spending panel. Doolittle resigned after the FBI raided his home in an investigation stemming from Doolittle’s ties to jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
For his part, Calvert has denied any wrongdoing in the matter. He also said in a statement that the grand jury’s report proves his innocence.
“The grand jury findings prove that there was no wrongdoing on my part or that of my investment partners,” he said in a written statement. “I find it regrettable that the Jurupa Community Services District failed to follow the proper steps in dispensing with its surplus property. When I invested in the parcel of land I was unaware the [JCSD] made the missteps outlined by the grand jury’s findings.”
The county grand jury was investigating only the JCSD’s sale of the 4.3-acre parcel and whether it was done in accordance with California law. But other local media reports have raised questions about the proximity of several of Calvert’s real estate deals to earmarks he attained. The FBI requested copies of his financial disclosure reports last year.
Meanwhile, Harpole insists that he acted alone in acquiring the land and that Calvert was a passive partner who was only approached after the land was acquired. Harpole said he thought the vacant land would be a good investment and then looked up land records to find out who owned it.
When he called Carole McGreevey, then JCSD’s general manager, to inquire about whether the land was available for sale, he said he knew her name but did not know her personally. Calvert’s name never came up during his initial discussion with McGreevey, Harpole said.
Bobby Hernandez, the chairman of the park agency’s board, said he has not given up hopes of purchasing the original land and building a park, as originally intended. In lieu of that, Hernandez said, the agency would like the $1.2 million so it can find another property to develop into a community park. If the JCSD does not comply with the grand jury’s
recommendations, he said, the park agency would explore its legal options.
Eldon Horst, who has replaced McGreevey as JCSD’s general manager, said in an interview that the JCSD is not compelled by law to honor the grand jury’s recommendations. Horst said he will work with the organization’s attorney to prepare a draft response in two weeks.
The decision on whether to give the money to the park district “will be a separate board policy action,” he said. He added that he believed “there are no supporting facts” in the grand jury’s findings that suggest the park district should get the $1.2 million in proceeds.
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