Irwindale can’t release public docu…
Saturday, October 30th, 2010 Uncategorized.
IRWINDALE – A day after four city officials were charged with misusing public money, city employees said no information about city finances can be released until next week due to a computer upgrade.
An accounting system conversion underway Thursday put the city’s software offline until Monday, Irwindale Finance Director Laura Nomura said.
“We’ve been working on it since May,” Nomura said. “It’s been in the works for a while. we need to proceed with business as usual.”
On Wednesday, Councilman mark Breceda, 50, retired City Manager Steve Blancarte, 56, of Altadena, former Finance Director Abe De Dios, 65, and former Councilwoman Rosemary Ramirez, 49, were charged with misappropriation of public funds in connection to lavish travel expenses between 2001 and 2005.
The trips were first chronicled in this newspaper in a 2007 article based on public records.
Blancarte, Breceda and Ramirez appeared in court Wednesday and their arraignment was set for Dec. 2.
De Dios, who was out of town Wednesday, appeared in court Thursday, according to officials at the District Attorney’s Office. De Dios will be arraigned with the other defendants.
The four attended theater shows and baseball games during the trips, even though they were intended to get a better bond rating for the city, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said.
Prosecutors allege the officials spent $14,000 of public money on activities that had nothing to do with city business.
According to Irwindale officials, the city’s finance accounting software upgrade has been in the works since May. Inquiries into city spending cannot be answered until Monday, they said.
“If it’s true that they’re in the middle of a software conversion, it’s lamentable, but not a fact that sounds like anything untrue,” said Peter Scheer, director of the open-government advocacy group the First Amendment Coalition.
Nomura said the system is being upgraded to make it a more effective search tool.
“We’re on a very old system version,” she said. “We’re going to a web-based version.”
A phone call to the software company, Springbrook, was not immediately returned Thursday.
According to its website, the company was founded in 1985 and its corporate headquarters is located in Portland, Ore. It works with local government and utilities agencies, according to the site.
Meanwhile, the action by the District Attorney’s Office has raised the spirits of government watchdogs who have been hounding the city for years.
Former resident James Hunley and former City Councilman Sal Hernandez plan to request more documents from the city regarding travel, they said. they believe the increased scrutiny will cause employees at City Hall to more quickly give them public records.
“I’ve requested a lot of stuff before, but they didn’t give it to me,” Hernandez said.
The city in 2005 won a restraining order against Hunley, who has been keeping tabs on the city for years. Hunley, a critic of several city governments, was recently arrested in Baldwin Park on suspicion of trespassing at Royal Coaches Autobody and Towing yard.
Irwindale City Attorney Fred Galante said Hunley in 2005 scared staff members in Irwindale.
“Would stand in front of them and would really make comments that would scare a lot of employees,” Galante said. “The trial court agreed with us.”
But a state appeals court reversed the decision in 2006.
Galante, who has been the city’s attorney since 2003, declined to comment on the investigation into Breceda and the former officials.
Hernandez and Hunley also are interested in several deals made by the city’s redevelopment agency, they said.
They also plan to keep an eye on the case of Rolando Valera, a Baldwin Park print shop owner arrested in March on suspicion of trying to bribe two council members in 2008. Prosecutors said Valera wanted the council members to vote in favor of a conditional use permit for hard liquor sales at the Mariscos Uruapan restaurant in Irwindale.
Valera’s case is scheduled for a pretrial conference Nov. 9 and is expected to go to trial, DA officials said. Valera pleaded not guilty and has declined to comment.
maritza.velazquez@sgvn.com
626-962-8811, ext. 2718
<a href="http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_16462573tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_16462573Fri, 29 Oct 2010 03:19:49 GMT 00:00″>Irwindale can’t release public documents until Monday due to accounting system upgrade, officials say