Last Friday “Citizens For a Fair Trash Contract” won an important victory in their long-running legal challenge to Los Alamitos’ trash hauling contract award. But, this ruling could prevent a full trial on the politically sensitive allegation that three council members received election contributions which were in exchange for a favorable vote on the contract award.
The trash contract lawsuit is another round in a long-running contest between the two sides on the Los Alamitos City Council. The conflict goes back at least as far as the 2008 election when the citizens group, which seems to be made up primarily, or exclusively, of two individuals, claimed election contributions had been made to win favor in awarding the trash hauling contract.
That allegation, rejected by the City Council members against whom it was directed, was dismissed by the court for lack of evidence. Thus, it has not been given a full hearing in a court with a jury. The losing plaintiffs have said they will appeal, but most recent developments might prevent the political contribution issue from ever going to trial.
Failure to have a definitive jury verdict – regardless of the winner – on the dirty political tricks question is critical because the political life expectancy of the defendants could depend on the outcome. The political life we are talking about is much bigger than a term limited seat on the Los Alamitos City Council. One of the defendants in the portion of the citizens’ case which was dismissed by the court is none other than Los Alamitos Mayor Pro tem Troy Edgar, who recently announced that he is running for Congress in next year’s election.
The two issues alleged by the plaintiff in this law suit are first, the contract was not awarded to the lowest appropriate bidder, as city code requires, and second, three of the sitting city council members accepted tainted election contributions to swing the contract award. So far, the court dismissed the political contribution part of the challenge and agreed that the trash hauling contract was not awarded in accordance with city code. Thus, last Friday, the judge nullified the trash hauling contract.
While the plaintiff may appeal the ruling dismissing the political contribution issue, that appeal may be rejected by the court, regardless of the merits on either side. The reason a dismissal of any appeal of the political contribution issue appears more than likely, is that the only remedy available in the code section under which the law suit was filed is nullification of the contract and the judge ordered that last Friday.
The City may, of course, choose to appeal the decision to nullify the contract, but this could open up the political issue to further hearings and perhaps even a trial. Other than appealing the court’s rejection of the contract, Los Alamitos’ other options are to either modify the City’s code to ensure the contract award is consistent with the new code, or to use a new contract award process which is consistent with existing City code.
The Los Alamitos City Council is expected to hold a closed session this coming Monday. At that time, they could decide to 1) appeal the contract nullification, 2) agree to change the City code, or 3) re-bid the trash contract. Since the option selected by Los Alamitos has huge ramifications for the political contribution ruling appeal, the likelihood of that appeal moving forward is tied to the City’s decision on the contract nullification issue.
In the mean time, the judge’s contract nullification order will be drafted and presented to the lawyers for concurrence. That process should take about two weeks, at which point the judge will review the order, and make it official. The order will be drafted based on the court reporter’s transcript of Friday’s hearing. However, those transcripts are not yet available. This means that if Los Alamitos moves to decide their next step at a closed session on Monday, it is unlikely they will have a written judge’s order to work from.
Beyond the nullification of the trash hauling contract and the dismissal of the political contributions challenge, the other remaining issue is mounting legal bills. Of course, everybody is looking for somebody else to foot these bills. Los Alamitos might think they are protected by the indemnification clause in the trash contract, but at the moment, that contract is null and void. We will look into the legal bills issue another day.
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About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
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