Politician's Assistance Came After Donation
California Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) intervened in a dispute with regulators to help a West Hollywood company maintain lucrative billboards on freeways in Los Angeles and Orange counties, records show.
Perata intervened in 2001 the day after the company, Regency Outdoor Advertising Inc., reported giving a $25,000 campaign contribution to a Perata-backed initiative. The company's co-owner said the contribution came in response to a request from the senator.
Later, as the senator and his aides made inquiries with the California Department of Transportation on Regency's behalf, the firm gave an additional $300,000 in contributions and free advertising to political committees Perata controlled or influenced, records show.
At the time, the firm was in the midst of a multimillion-dollar dispute with Caltrans.
When Perata intervened on the firm's behalf, he was a member of the Senate Transportation Committee, which oversees Caltrans. Caltrans officials treated the inquiries from his office as a high priority. As agency officials scrambled to gather information, they exchanged e-mails among themselves carrying the subject line: "Fire drill for Senator Perata."
No law prohibits an elected official from soliciting a campaign contribution from a company and then taking action on the contributor's behalf. State and federal law, however, do prohibit explicit deals in which campaign contributions are traded for an officeholder's services.
Perata declined to be interviewed, but both a spokesman for the senator and a top Regency official said there was no such deal in this case.
FBI agents have contacted representatives of Regency to ask about the firm's dealings with Perata. An attorney for the firm said he had been assured by federal prosecutors that Regency was not a target of any investigation.
Caltrans disclosed evidence of Perata's intervention in response to newspaper requests for public records that the agency had turned over in February to a federal grand jury investigating Perata.
The documents turned over by Caltrans, and other Regency and Caltrans documents obtained by The Times, show that the senator contacted the agency often on a variety of matters affecting his Oakland district and only rarely on matters outside it. One of those was Regency's billboards.
