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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

March 9, 2003

Quesada case ruffles feathers

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Contra Costa prosecutor James Sepulveda might have pleased environmentalists last week when he filed criminal charges against Frank Quesada, the former Pittsburg councilman who borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a developer and then voted on his controversial projects.

But when Sepulveda also announced that he would seek punishment of only about 300 hours of community service, the news appalled those environmentalists and reopened a political wound.

"Common sense dictates if you have a financial obligation with someone, and they have an issue before you, you should bow out," said Tim Donahue, chairman of the Sierra Club's East Contra Costa chapter. "Any moron can figure that out. It's very discouraging that he's basically getting a slap on the wrist."

"It seems like Sepulveda isn't using an even hand," added Evelyn Stivers, East Bay field representative for the Greenbelt Alliance. "Clearly the damage that Quesada has done is far greater than what Gayle Bishop did. The impact on the qualify of life of Pittsburg residents will be felt for generations. We need to look at how we follow through with people who break the rules."

TWO CASES: During his two-decade career as the county's corruption cop in the District Attorney's Office, Sepulveda has filed civil complaints against elected officials who stepped out of line. But there are only two cases in which he has filed criminal complaints:

• Sepulveda prosecuted Bishop, a former Contra Costa County supervisor, in 1997. A jury convicted her of nine felony counts for using county staff and resources for her campaign and law practice and then lying about it to a grand jury. Two counts were overturned on appeal. When it came time for sentencing, Sepulveda wanted the judge to send Bishop to state prison for three years.

"This case is not about trying to total up the dollar loss to the taxpayers," he wrote at the time. "It is about the continued and persistent abuse of a sacred public trust and the arrogance of power."
Indeed, that was the judge's first sentence, until a state Court of Appeal branded that as "harsh" and told him to reconsider. Bishop was eventually sentenced to a month in County Jail and five months' home detention.

• Sepulveda last week filed three misdemeanor conflict of interest charges against Quesada. The former councilman was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to developer Albert Seeno Jr. and his brother, Tom Seeno, at the same time that he was voting on Seeno projects worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars.

Quesada's votes included, for example, support for loosening general plan hillside restrictions that affected the developer's land, and plans for parts of the 2,938 single-family homes, townhouses and apartments in the massive San Marco subdivision now under construction at the west end of the city.

The penalty for each count is up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Instead, anticipating a no contest plea, Sepulveda plans to ask that Quesada provide the community service.

He cited Quesada's need to care for his ailing wife as a consideration. "He did perform many years of public service. It doesn't seem to me that jail accomplishes anything here."

COMPARISONS: There are key differences between the cases.

Bishop's misappropriation of public funds was a felony.

Quesada's conflict of interest charges are misdemeanors.

Bishop tried to plead her case to the grand jury (which led to the perjury charges), continued to maintain her innocence and showed little or no remorse at the time that Sepulveda called for her to go to state prison.

Quesada has spoken to Sepulveda only through his attorney and has never returned media calls about the case. So we don't know if he's remorseful.

Then there are the early warnings they received.

During the Bishop trial, Sepulveda emphasized that he had previously told Bishop not to use county equipment for her law practice. She had been warned.

But Sepulveda told me last week he had no recollection of his own 1983 investigation of Quesada. It's a puzzling gap in his memory. There were media reports at the time.

At that time, Quesada and his wife owed Seeno Enterprises more than $10,000 on a loan for improvements to their restaurant in a Seeno-owned shopping center.

In 1983, then-Contra Costa District Attorney William O'Malley and Sepulveda cleared Quesada of wrongdoing for borrowing money from Seeno and then casting three votes favoring the developer.

The reason, O'Malley and Sepulveda said at the time, was that two of the votes were on a housing bond program for which Seeno had already been selected as a builder three years earlier. Quesada did not participate in the earlier selection.

The legal conflict of interest issue in the first Quesada case was exactly the same as the current one: Borrowing money from a developer and then voting on his projects.

Indeed, it seems from the documents Sepulveda uncovered in his latest investigation, Quesada's debt to Seeno in the first case was part of his debt to the developer in the second one. The loan has never been paid off; Quesada has added to the debt by borrowing more -- and missing rent payments for his Seeno-owned home -- and he continued to vote on Seeno's projects.

Quesada had been warned and he thumbed his nose at the rules.

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES: Finally, there's an ugly issue that the Greenbelt Alliance's Stivers raises -- politics.

Sepulveda's boss at the time of the Bishop trial was then-District Attorney Gary Yancey. Bishop argued she was the victim of a political prosecution because Yancey was a close friend and supporter of her opponent in her 1992 election.

(The potential conflict was so great that Yancey recused himself from the case and turned it over to the state attorney general's office to prosecute. The attorney general's office, in turn, deputized Sepulveda and kept him on the case while he was continuing to report to Yancey on all his other cases. The court of appeal frowned on that, but said Bishop should have challenged it at trial rather than during her appeal.)

Sepulveda's current boss is District Attorney Bob Kochly, who received $5,000 last year for his election campaign from a developer political action committee for which Seeno is the largest contributor.

To be sure, there's no evidence that the campaign contributions have influenced Kochly or Sepulveda. But it has prompted Stivers and others to raise the question.

Ultimately, Kochly is responsible for the sentence Sepulveda seeks in the Quesada case. It's not a done deal yet. Quesada is scheduled to be arraigned April 7.

Seth Adams, director of land programs for Save Mount Diablo, estimates that Quesada has cast votes on projects worth over a billion dollars to Seeno. "The real issue in terms of punishment," Adams said, "is does it deter other elected officials from similar conflicts of interest?"

The Sierra Club's Donahue doesn't think Quesada should serve time in jail. He didn't think Bishop should have, either. But, for him, 300 hours of community service for Quesada isn't enough.

"There should be more of a sense that this isn't going to be tolerated," he said. "I think it should be enough to give the public the feeling that the punishment is sufficient enough that we're not going to see this repeated. I don't think what is being proposed is sufficient enough to give that impression."

Reach Daniel Borenstein at 925-943-8248 or dborenstein@cctimes.com.

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