Carson's history of government graft takes new turn in federal indictments.

The arrest of four Carson officials, including its mayor, on charges of bribery and extortion last week may have disheartened many of the city's business and civic leaders.

But it didn't take them by surprise.

Most of the indictments, announced by U.S. Attorney Debra Yang on Nov. 21, were related to a $60 million contract for trash hauling services awarded earlier this year and stem from a two-year investigation.

"We've been reporting this all along," said Michael Mitoma, a former Carson mayor. "People have told the District Attorney, reporting contracts that are tainted. And nobody's ever done anything about it."

Since 1996, the District Attorney's office has received at least four complaints involving public officials, according to Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.

The office never investigated Carson City officials because the complaints were never officially filed, had no evidence or were passed on to other entities, she said.

Two of the complaints, she said, involved Mayor Daryl Sweeney, indicted last week on federal charges of, among other things, allegedly soliciting a $600,000 bribe from Browning Ferries Industries Inc., a company bidding for the trash-hauling contract.

The earlier allegations, filed with the District Attorney, involved accepting campaign contributions in exchange for contracts, Robison said.

One complaint was passed to the state's Fair Political Practices Commission, while another was dropped after discovering the FBI had an ongoing investigation, Robison said. "If they've already got it in motion, we don't step on their toes to jump in," she said.

Reaching a head

Charged last week along with Sweeney were Robert Pryce, a partner at Pryce Parker Hill LLP, indicted on 32 counts including mail fraud, bankruptcy fraud and money laundering; Raunda Frank, a city councilwoman who pleaded guilty to accepting bribes, including $10,000 from BFI; and former Carson City Councilman Manuel Ontal, who pleaded guilty to accepting bribes, including $5,000 from a transportation company bidding for a bus services contract. Ontal was cooperating with federal investigators.

Also arrested was former Carson Mayor Pete Fajardo on charges of corruption and accepting more than $10,000 in bribes while serving as mayor from 1997 to 2001.

Two BFI executives, Doug Moore and David Robinson, were also indicted, as was Michael Aloyan, owner of Huh City Disposal in Compton, who pleaded guilty to bribery. Former Inglewood City Councilman Garland Hardeman, who acted as a middleman for Sweeney, according to the indictment, also pleaded guilty.

The Business Journal last week reported on a grand jury investigation into the allegations.

The indictments are the first to be handed down in a two-year investigation that is still pending, said Ronald Iden, assistant director in charge of the FBI in L.A., which teamed with the U.S. Attorney's office and the Internal Revenue Service.

While the scope of charges took many outside the community by surprise, many city officials and business leaders say they knew about bribes and other wrongdoing long before the investigation began.

Indeed, indictments of Carson officials are nothing new. In 1971, two city councilmen were sentenced to 90-day jail terms and fined $1,500 after pleading no contest to soliciting bribes from a trash disposal firm.

The same year, Councilman Dan Spence was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $2,000 for soliciting a bribe in a zoning matter.

In 1986, former Carson City Councilman Walter (Jake) Egan was convicted on extortion and mail fraud charges involving plans to build a mobile home park on a former dump in the city.

In 1988, then-Mayor Kay Calas (now a councilwoman) and other city officials voted to re-align the departments within city administration in order to weed out favoritism and political connections.

Failed efforts

"I helped Fajardo get elected (to Carson City Council)," said Mitoma, who served as mayor from 1991 to 1997 and is now general manager of parking equipment company. "But while he was in office, I made a big mistake. It was a constant struggle from doing these inside deals. We were constantly fighting this. Fajardo was small time -- a few thousand dollars here and there. Sweeney took it to a new level."

(For his own part, Mitoma pleaded guilty in September for failing to pay $3,846 in taxes in 1995 and 1996.)

Several years ago, Fajardo had also pleaded guilty to a federal charge of collecting fees as an attorney when he was a paralegal.

Most Carson business leaders interviewed said they never were solicited for bribes, although they acknowledged there was always talk.

"Over the years, there's always rumors of this or that," said Pilar Hoyos, spokeswoman for Watson Land Co., a long-time real estate developer in the Carson area. "There's always political agendas, you'd say. But we thought it was just politics. It was just somebody trying to discredit somebody. We never thought this was actually going on."

Hoyos said Watson Land had not been solicited for bribes by Carson officials.

But Robison, of the District Attorney's office, said a complaint alleging that Watson Land had been involved in an illegal payments scheme with city council members had been filed in 1996. She could not say why the complaint was never formally filed, but suggested it lacked evidence.

"I have no knowledge of what that's referring to," said Hoyos. "We'd be concerned and would want to look into that"

Small city obstacles

Steven Frates, senior fellow at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, said that Carson's tarnished history might stem from the belief among certain elected officials that no one is watching.

"These people may think that because they're in a small city, and the press doesn't cover them as much, and the population doesn't care about local government, and people come from an environment where the government is assumed to be corrupt, they can pull this off," he said.

The city is now home to an almost equal percentage of blacks, Filipinos, Latinos and whites. As demographics became more mixed, a new generation of political leaders in places like Carson tends to be more aggressive in seeking change.

"That group is more likely to skirt the law than more moderate, patient people," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. "And they believe they're practicing politics the way it's always been in the city. They're only singled out because they're new, they're young and they're ethnic. As long as it was old, white guys there, it was nothing wrong."

The choices have, so far, turned out badly. But, Guerra added, they learned from the people who lead the city before them.

Officials in other cities similar in history and ethnic background to Carson -- such as South Gate, Compton and Bell Gardens -- recently have been indicted or are also under investigation for public corruption.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Hueston, lead prosecutor in the Carson case, said he hopes the indictments send a message to other corrupt local politicians and end the city's corrupt history.

"We hope a prosecution of this scope with charges with 20-year sentences will send a deterrent to others," Hueston said. "The scope of this particular case is unprecedented in Carson."