BREA : Council Won’t Pay Isles’ Legal Bills

Spurred by complaints from angry residents, the City Council decided this week not to pay the legal expenses of former Mayor Ronald E. Isles, who pleaded guilty last month to seven counts of misdemeanor conflict of interest.

Isles’ request for $10,000 to pay for attorney fees and other legal costs died on the table when no one among the three council members present made the required motion to vote on it.

Councilman Wayne D. Wedin, who was himself granted $20,000 by the council on Nov. 3 to pay for his legal expenses, was late to the meeting and did not participate in the discussion.

Residents said a council vote denying the request would have been more emphatic. However, they said, what council members did was good enough.

“I’m very pleased. It showed that this council has finally listened to the people,” said newly elected council member Kathryn Wiser, who led the protest against what many residents described as a waste of public funds. She will be seated on the council Dec. 1.

“He’s not a poor man. Let him pay” for his legal expenses, said resident Rose Horton.

In declining to act on Isles’ request, the council, in effect, drew a distinction from its decision Nov. 3 to grant Wedin $20,000 for his legal defense. Wedin is on trial in Municipal Court in Fullerton on misdemeanor charges of violating conflict-of-interest laws.

The council decided to help Wedin after making a finding that the charges against him were brought about as a result of his duties as a councilman and that he had acted in good faith and in the best interest of the city.

In the case of Isles, two members of the council, Mayor Burnie Dunlap and Councilman Glenn. G. Parker, said they could not make the same findings. They said there was an “intermingling” of personal and city interests in Isles’ case.

Dunlap said that Isles, by his own admission, kept his business and financial ties with a former partner after he was elected to the City Council in 1988.

Isles and a developer, Don McBride, were partners in Town and Country Partners, which built a 122-unit apartment complex and business park in Brea. Isles said he sold his interest in the partnership in 1988, but continued to put his name in the partnership for “tax reasons.”

Among the 21 charges filed against Isles, 10 were for conflict of interest, including four that focused on his role in the city’s granting of a contract to McBride Development to build an auto service center on a city-owned parcel.

After pleading guilty to seven counts of conflict of interest last month, Isles was sentenced to three years’ probation and resigned his seat on the council.