Sixteen years ago, Ted Stein was an up-and-coming real estate developer from Encino with an interest in public policy and a yearning to get involved in Los Angeles city government.
Daniel P. Garcia, who was president of the city Planning Commission and a trusted advisor to then-Mayor Tom Bradley, gave his friend the boost he needed, recommending Stein for a seat on the commission, thereby launching the developer on an extraordinary rise to civic power.
What neither man revealed at the time -- or has since -- is that Stein had arranged an apparently lucrative real estate deal for Garcia two years earlier.
Stein helped Garcia develop a 30-unit apartment complex in Glendale for no money down -- a real estate investment that was Garcia's most valuable holding and netted him, by one estimate, $170,000 when he sold the property several years later.
At the same time, Garcia voted twice as Planning Commission president in favor of Stein building projects in Los Angeles, records show.
Stein joined Garcia as a fixture in the city's most elite governing class, a group of largely unknown political appointees who serve on commissions that oversee city agencies and hand out untold millions in government contracts no matter who is in the mayor's office.
Stein resigned from his latest post as president of the Airport Commission last month after The Times disclosed that county and federal prosecutors were investigating him as a figure in a "pay to play" probe at City Hall. Stein has denied demanding political contributions from contractors.
A Times investigation shows that Stein may have engaged in his own form of pay to play at the start of his civic career.
Both Stein and Garcia deny a quid pro quo. Stein said he arranged the real estate venture for the former Planning Commission president because he was his best friend. Garcia said he recommended Stein for the Planning Commission because he was capable and hardworking.
Garcia, now a senior vice president of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals, at first acknowledged that he had erred in not disqualifying himself from voting on Stein projects.
"If it happened that way, then I made a mistake," said Garcia, who is in charge of, among other things, business ethics at Kaiser. "My reputation being destroyed over something like this? It makes me sick. It makes me feel like I want to die."
