First of two parts
Residents within range of the troubled Baldwin Hills Oil Field, who darkly suspected that hardball-playing former County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke wired a frantically rushed series of hearings days before her retirement, likely will not be satisfied with the findings of a County-sponsored audit of her conduct.
Following an investigation critical of assertedly heavy-handed machinations especially by Ms. Burke’s high-profile deputy, Mike Bohlke, a San Francisco law firm nevertheless absolved the Supervisor and her sidekick of wrongdoing, with strands of explanations intriguingly attached to the conclusion.
Ms. Burke’s accusers charge that her motivation was to cue an outcome that would greatly benefit a deep-pockets oil drilling company — Plains Exploration & Production Co. — allowing PXP to safely hurdle surprisingly stiff residential resistance to sweeping new drilling regulations covering the next 20 years.
While Ms. Burke’s intended legal objective was reached a year and a half ago, the victory was at least temporarily hollow for PXP. Largely, but not entirely, the drilling company has been idled since leaving the Board of Supervisors in late October of ’08. Four separate resident lawsuits — scheduled for adjudication three weeks from today, Tuesday, April 6, at 111 N. Hill St., downtown Los Angeles — have prevented PXP from plunging into the full-scale, relatively free-form, drilling targeted by the Board of Sups’ ordinance.
Mostly ignored since its release three weeks ago, the 15-page findings by Harvey M. Rose Associates were triggered by the sudden and ground-shaking firing of a supposedly muscular County figure, Bruce McClendon, the well-regarded Director of Regional Planning. He charged Mr. Bohlke with forcing into the ordinance a Burke-inspired increase in the number of wells that may be drilled or re-drilled in a year, from 35 to 53.
The probe may have implied that a cloud rather than a halo could fit above Mr. Bohlke. He was cleared “with qualifications.”
Mr. McClendon’s canning came weeks after he received a favorable job review and tangled with the deputy of the quite influential Ms. Burke.
Here is how investigators characterized Mr. McClendon’s accusations:
Former Regional Planning Director Bruce McClendon alleges that former Second District Assistant Chief of Staff Michael Bohlke instructed him and Principal Deputy County Counsel Elaine Lemke to make two substantial changes to the Baldwin Hills Community Standards District Ordinance on the morning of the day of the last public hearing held by the Board of Supervisors on the ordinance. The changes that Mr. McClendon alleges he and Ms. Lemke were instructed to make concern (1) the number of oil wells that may be drilled or re-drilled in one year under the Director’s Review procedure4 and (2) the amount of funds necessary to be put in a reserve account by the operator of the oil field in order to defray the expenses involved in the County’s monitoring responsibilities. According to Mr. McClendon, Mr. Bohlke instructed Ms. Lemke and Mr. McClendon to substantially increase the number of oil wells that would be allowed to be drilled by PXP and to significantly reduce the amount of the reserve fund that PXP would be required to set up with the County.
In their summary, investigators seemed to say that what happened off-stage during heated negotiations over the structure of the ordinance may have breached legal purity, but fell short of wrongdoing, hence the clouds.
We conclude that the allegation is not substantiated, but with qualifications. The qualifications are due to statements by Mr. Bohlke in our initial interview that he had ordered or instructed the former DRP Director to increase the Department’s recommended number of wells in which drilling would be allowed in the staff report to the Regional Planning Commission, and due to some of his communications to DRP staff in emails cited above.
After Mr. Bohlke’s review of this investigation’s preliminary findings, he recharacterized his communications with the former DRP Director pertaining to the number of recommended wells to be advocacy rather than instructing or giving orders. Since Mr. Bohlke’s initial statements, subsequently restated, were the strongest corroboration of the allegation, our final conclusion is that the allegation is not substantiated, but with qualifications due to Mr. Bohlke’s preliminary statements, which we confirmed with him after our initial interview. We also concluded that many aspects of Mr. McClendon’s allegation were not supported by the evidence reviewed. In his interviews, Mr. Bohlke stated that he believed the non-intrusion provision of the Governance Ordinance did not, and should not, apply in instances of ordinance development.
We believe that our original interviews with Mr. Bohlke and our review of internal communications initially provided sufficient evidence to show that he violated the nonintrusion provision of the Governance Ordinance. However, after his review of the preliminary findings of this investigation, Mr. Bohlke re-characterized his communications with staff and the former Director of DRP as advocacy rather than giving instructions or ordering. He also reiterated his opinion that the non-intrusion provision of the Governance Ordinance does not apply to legislation being developed by the Board of Supervisors. We do not concur with that assessment as we found no exemptions to the non-intrusion provision in the Governance Ordinance or other County documents. Mr. Bohlke’s interpretation demonstrates the absence of a clear, widely shared interpretation of the non-intrusion provision in the County.
Here is the complete report.
[img]810|left|Excerpt of LA County Auditors Report ||no_popup[/img]
