City Discovers Its Plea Was No Bargain

“Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?”

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That’s what Charlie Brown plaintively wanted to know in the 1959 novelty song by the Coasters. It’s what Huntington Beach must be wondering these days.

Surf’s out in Surf City. They’re not hanging 10 at City Hall, they’re hanging their heads.

You’d be bummed, too, if you were on five years’ probation.

Imagine that. An entire city on probation.

I live in Huntington Beach and am embarrassed to leave the house. I’m not even sure I’m allowed to leave the house, now that my town had to show up in court with a lawyer last week and plead guilty.

I hear Seal Beach is changing its welcoming sign to, “Seal Beach, Not on Probation Like a Certain Town That Borders Us.”

I wouldn’t mind if we’d committed a classy crime, like spying on Costa Mesa or stealing high-tech secrets from Irvine. No, we got nailed for not reporting underground sewage leaks.

But our Charlie Brown day didn’t stop there. Our luck is so bad that our mayor and council thought the city was pleading to a misdemeanor and instead may have pleaded to a felony. I know, you’d think we’d get a detail like that straight ahead of time, but when it rains it pours.

Council members say they’re not crooks. Or at least not felons. At week’s end, they were saying that if what they pleaded to last week is a felony--which seems to be what the district attorney is saying--they might withdraw their guilty plea.

As if Huntington Beach news hasn’t been bad enough recently:

* Councilman Dave Garofalo is being investigated by the D.A.’s office and a state commission to see if he’s violated conflict-of-interest rules.

* Opponents of the city’s plans to build a Wal-Mart on an abandoned school site got a measure on the ballot last year but lost.

* The city’s plans to build an upscale shopping mall were scuttled when a discount clothing store wouldn’t move out, and the developer wouldn’t build the mall with the store in place.

* Despite the city’s insistence to the contrary, various agencies taking part in beach-closure sessions in the summer of 1999 say the city was muted in discussing its sewer problems. The city says it’s convinced the leaks had nothing to do with the beach closures; others aren’t totally convinced.

Busted

And now we’re on probation. The specific charge is for failing to tell the state about the sewer leaks in recent years. The city has acknowledged that mistake and thought it was putting the matter behind it with its plea last week.

Council members went to sleep Wednesday night thinking they were mere misdemeanants. They still had a chance to turn their lives around and make something of themselves. You can understand their shock Thursday morning to read in the paper that the district attorney was saying they’d basically pleaded to a felony.

It’s not like the city is now going to jail. In the big picture, it probably doesn’t make any difference, other than it looks worse on your application for All-American city to say you pleaded to a felony instead of a misdemeanor.

What’s kind of nutty is that there are some classy people on the Huntington Beach council. It’s not like this is a clueless group of nincompoops.

That’s why I figure they’re sitting around wondering why bad things keep happening to them. Or when it’s all going to end.

Or why they ever ran for City Council in the first place.

As a loyal resident of the seaside burg, I hope things get straightened out soon. I hate it that Stanton can lord this over us.

Can it really be that much of a brain-teaser to determine if the city’s plea was to a felony or a misdemeanor? Put five minutes on the clock and any two semi-intelligent people should be able to figure that one out.

And if the district attorney insists it was a felony plea, what should the city do?

Should it retract its plea and take the matter to court?

Uh, the way our luck is going, I hope not. Let’s take the five years’ probation and get on with our lives.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821; by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626; or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.