Ferré Ending Reign
San Bernardino County Sentinel
Friday, July 2, 2010

Faced with the prospect of being criminally charged for scores of votes she made as a member of the city council over the past several years, Grand Terrace Mayor Maryetta Ferré announced last week that she will not seek reelection in November.
In the last year, Ferré, like the rest of the city council and the Grand Terrace community, has been treated to the uncomfortable spectacle of the district attorney’s office filing criminal charges against one of her former colleagues, Jim Miller, for allegedly violating California Government Code Section 1090, which applies to conflicts of interest involving public officials. Government Code Section 1090 prohibits an elected official from voting on any matter in his or her official capacity in which he or she has a financial interest.
Miller was arrested in July 2009 and charged under the 1090 statute for having voted on consent calendar items that acknowledged check registers that included payments to the Grand Terrace City News for legal notices the city ran in that publication. The Grand Terrace City News is a newspaper owned by Margaret Miller, Jim Miller’s wife.
The district attorney’s office alleges that Miller’s vote on those matters constituted a conflict. The consent calendar is a collection of items deemed by the city clerk, city manager and city attorney to be non-controversial in nature which are grouped together as a single item on a city council’s agenda so they can be passed in a single yes or no vote.
Miller voted on the consent calendar after being provided an assurance by the city attorney that there was no conflict for him to do so. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment and has rejected a plea offer that would have substituted a Government Code section 87100 misdemeanor crime for the 1090 felony Miller is charged with. He is now set to go to trial on July 27.
Though Ferré has not been charged with any criminal violation by the district attorney’s office, she engaged in action that was similar to that of Miller’s. Ferré’s husband, Frank, is a board member of the Riverside-Highland Water Company and is paid a stipend for serving in that capacity. The Riverside-Highland Water Company is the major purveyor of water to the entirety of Grand Terrace, including the municipality of Grand Terrace. As mayor and formerly as a city council member, Ferré consistently voted to approve consent calendars that contained check registers that included checks to the Riverside-Highland Water Company. Between January 2003 and January 2010, the city of Grand Terrace approved in 129 consent calendar votes the payment of $376,507.06 to the Riverside-Highland Water Company. Mayor Ferré participated in at least 105 of those votes.
In this way, Ferré engaged in action that is legally indistinguishable from that engaged in by Miller and for which he is being prosecuted.
Previously, however, Ferré said did not think there was any legal problem with her consent calendar votes conferring payments upon the company her husband oversees. Any accuracy to the suggestion that she had herself run afoul of the same law that had tripped up Miller, Ferré said, "is completely out of the question. I have a written legal opinion from the city attorney that it is not a conflict of interest."
Ferré said she did not have a mastery of the legal issues involved in the case, stating "I have no idea" how Government Code Section 1090, under which Miller was charged, differs from Government Code Section 87100, which also pertains to conflicts of interest and which some have suggested also applies to her. "I don’t see any connection here whatsoever. I’m sorry, I don’t."
In Miller’s case, the city published legal notices in the Grand Terrace City News between November 2006 and August 2008, paying a total of roughly $18,000 for those ads. Miller, with the rest of the council, confirmed those payments on the consent calendar.
Miller and Ferré are not the only Grand Terrace officials to have been challenged over potential conflicts of interest inherent in their voting patterns.
Councilwoman Bea Cortes, who was formerly working as a sales agent with Terra Loma Real Estate, likewise approved consent calendar payments to the company with which she was professionally associated.
Available records show that between February 12, 2006 and August 11, 2009, Terra Loma Real Estate was paid a total of $12,042.93 by the city for property management services, approved in varying amounts on 36 separate consent calendar votes. Cortes participated in at least 33 of those votes.
Miller in March resigned from the city council, a ploy seen as an act of contrition which some suggested might lead to the district attorney’s office dropping the charges against him. So far that has not occurred.
By choosing not to run in November and effectively surrendering the mayor’s gavel at the end of the year, Ferré may be hoping to stave off a criminal prosecution.
One Grand Terrace resident who has followed politics in the city very closely over the last decade is Betty Guzman. She indicated that Ferré’s decision to step down from the council dais may not have been driven by circumstance involving Miller but rather by the ever complicating circumstance of troubled governance at City Hall.
Guzman suggested that Ferré and the rest of the city council may have been too trusting of those to whom they had delegated authority in the past – specifically former acting city manager Steve Berry. With the arrival of current city manager Betsy Adams, Guzman said, past depredations at City Hall are coming to light and Ferré may not now have the stomach to face up to them.
"Now that Steve Berry is gone, the new administration may have perhaps opened Maryetta's eyes as to all the wrongdoing and shady deals going on while she was a council member and mayor. I'm sure she doesn't want that brought up by her challenger," Guzman said.
Indeed, councilman Walt Stanckiewitz had made clear his intention to vie against Ferré in November. Her abrupt departure from the upcoming political fray now leaves the field open for Stanckiewitz, although Tom Schwab, who served as city manager for nineteen years and as finance director for five years prior to that, is hugely popular among Grand Terrace’s residents. Schwab was eclipsed by Berry, who had served as assistant city manager beneath him for six year, when Schwab was felled by health problems in 2008. Schwab had earlier indicated that he was considering a run for city council and, in the aftermath of Ferré’s decision, is now considering ratcheting that up into a campaign for mayor.
In closing out her political career, Ferré, 73, is bringing the curtain down on a San Bernardino County political dynasty, of sorts. Her father, Albert Huntoon, was once mayor of Colton.