ELECTIONS / CONGRESS : Lagomarsino Assailed Over S&L; Letter Signature

Accusing Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino of an “abuse of public trust,” Democratic congressional candidate Anita Perez Ferguson criticized the congressman Thursday for joining other House Republicans who pressured the nation’s top savings-and-loan regulator for secret records.

But Lagomarsino, a Ventura Republican, called her accusations “outrageous” and said they “have the mark of a desperate smear attempt by a failing campaign manager.”

Ferguson said Lagomarsino’s signature along with those of 15 other lawmakers on a 1986 letter asking for confidential records concerning controversial investment practices of S&Ls; ties him to influence-peddling and failed policies that led to the nation’s savings and loan crisis.

“When influential legislators get together to ask for confidential information and apply pressure on another part of the government--that is the type of activity that led to the savings-and-loan debacle in the first place,” Ferguson said.

In an interview from Washington, Lagomarsino denied any wrongdoing and said he signed the letter at the request of a friend and colleague, Rep. Charles Pashayan Jr. (R-Fresno). He said Pashayan asked him to sign the letter to help him discover if a small, Latino-owned S&L; in his district was being treated fairly by thrift regulators.

“It sounded plausible to me,” Lagomarsino said, so he signed the letter. “I wouldn’t sign that letter today because of all of the furor over the savings-and-loan thing. But I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.”

Pashayan has come under fire for circulating the letter at the same time he received $26,000 in contributions from Irvine-based Lincoln Savings & Loan and its indicted owner, Charles Keating.

And Edwin Gray, former chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, said in an interview this week that the letter appeared to have been a thinly masked attempt to pass confidential information to Lincoln Savings over possible federal action to tighten controls over the S&L.;

Gray said Thursday that he believed that Pashayan circulated the letter and that the other congressmen who signed it “allowed themselves to be duped and used by people like Charles Keating.”

Lagomarsino said he never has believed the letter had any connection to Keating. “I have never met, spoken with or accepted money from Keating and have never voted his way in Congress,” he said.

The congressman said he has received only $2,100 in campaign contributions from the savings-and-loan industry over the past four years, despite tough reelection battles that forced him to raise nearly $1.6 million.

“For Anita to suggest that I am for sale or in the pocket of the savings-and-loan industry is a gross misrepresentation of the facts,” he said.

The letter, signed by Lagomarsino, makes no mention of Lincoln Savings or the S&L; in Pashayan’s district, called Presidio Savings & Loan Assn. Presidio Savings was closed four days before the letter was sent.

Ferguson said Lagomarsino, a 16-year veteran member of Congress, cannot cast off his signature as a casual action. “This is the mark of a career that has been devoted to special interests,” she said.