California High Speed Rail: Conflict of Interest Pringle and Katz

 Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design, (CARRD) announced the conflict of interest with board members, Curt Pringle and David Katz in accordance to California’s 1099 code.  CHSRA Chair Curt Pringle is also the Mayor of Anaheim and an Orange County Transportation Authority (“OCTA”) board member. CHSRA board member Richard Katz is also a board member of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (“LA Metro”) and a board member of Metrolink.

 Though Pringle is to leave his office as Mayor of Anaheim by the end of the year, the board may be in the position to make critical decisions in the next few meetings as to the spending of the first billion in ARRA funds to begin construction on one segment. There also may be issues with Pringle’s Reappointment to the Orange County Transit Authority (OCTA) board back in January and the question of whether  he will be required to give up his position as Chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority. (CHSRA)

Section 1099 of the California Government Code states: “When two public offices are incompatible, a public officer shall be deemed to have forfeited the first office upon acceding to the second.” 
According to Government Code 1099,  there are only three requirements to be in violation of the law. 1) Both offices must be public offices with more than advisory powers.  2) There must be the potential for any kind of conflict between the duties of the offices. 3rd, There must be no exemption in the state law that allows someone to serve in both positions. Elizabeth Alexis stated the word “check,” after each item, in her opinion, a clear cut violation supported by a legal ruling written on April 23, 2010 by Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine that indicates Chairman Curt Pringle and Board member David Katz are holding incompatible offices. Counsel Letter. 

Sighting the difficulties of such a mega-project, Alexis  explains the “ biggest challenge is maintaining public confidence in the integrity of the process over the decades that the planning and construction will last. “ “This project needs not just to be clean, it needs to be squeaky clean.”
Pringle’s Bio and Katz Bio

Are there examples of  conflicts of positions in the past?  According to CARRD’s time line, yes. Pringle was appointed Feb 2007, and then 2 weeks later, a bill was co-sponsored by the City of Anaheim and OCTA passed in the Assembly making Anaheim, the terminus of the phase one project instead of LA.  See the CARRD statement as well as the time line down below in Conflict of Interest  document.

For example, one could interpret special treatment with the Anaheim station with the CHSRA paying $200 million, while other cities are asked to absorb anything above the simplest of stations including, according to Alexis, “  that for  Mountain View, CHSR would pay for the tracks, but if they wanted something nice such as a fountain, they would have to pay for it.

As background, here are the three amendments proposed by Judge Kopp at the Executive/Administrative Committee Meeting on September 1st in Sacramento:
 Amendment #1 “Any board member may secure placement of a matter for information or action on a monthly agenda.  A member may also place a matter on the agenda of a committee which has subject matter jurisdiction of such matter.” 
Amendment #2  “No Authority board member who holds another public office incompatible with Authority board membership may participate in board or committee discussion or action that falls within the jurisdiction or reasonably could affect an interest of the other public office. “
Amendment 3  “Upon the request of any board member, the Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer shall, on behalf of the Authority, obtain an opinion of the Attorney General of the State of California as to whether a board member or Peer Review Group member is holding another public office incompatible with Authority board membership or membership on the Peer Review Group.” 

The three amendment requests died, in the Executive/Administrative Meeting, September 1st, as a result of the lack of a second, not a surprise by most observers, since there are only three members of the Administrative board, Pringle, Kopp and Fran Florez.

Quentin Kopp would not give up and brought the matter up to the full board meeting the following day.  Pringle argued, as he did the day before, that this very type of law was in Government Code section 1099, which prohibits a person from holding incompatible offices.  He didn’t see the need for the changes in policy since it was in the law.

For more than 1 hour  Judge Kopp and Curt Pringle played verbal ping pong, splicing and dicing words in the laws that prohibit conflict of interest in public office.  Pringle said Kopp was trying to “stir the pot.” Kopp said “he resented the implications” Board member, Diridon suggested that the board might just be left with bunches of old retired people without the vibrancy of those with the right current experience.

However, board members, Lynn Schenk and David Crane wanted to hear more. Crane thought he might take a crack at composing something that the board could live with since after all, it was common sense to recuse one's self when there was the possibility of conflict.  He also wanted to find out what would be the consequences of such a board action such as would board members have to resign?

And that is the million dollar question that may be addressed by the Attorney General’s office in the near future. Alexis says,” the Authority and the individuals in question have known about this issue for some time and have taken no action AG to Van ark letter  Jerry Brown’s office is aware of this issue, “the ball is in their court.”