Hazardous Barry Groveman Spin
I read the Capitol Morning Report on Friday morning and saw that Barry Groveman was touting his own fundraising skills by claiming “campaign finance reports show a total of $621,772 raised.” Of course, the only real skill Groveman has shown here is the ability to sign a check. Looking at page 8 of his fundraising report, I see that he has contributed $253,000 to his campaign so far.
Of course, desperate times call for desperate measures, and it’s easy to see why Groveman would be desperate. After all, in his 2000 race for LA County District Attorney, he failed even to make it into the runoff against then-incumbent Gil Garcetti or the eventual winner, Steve Cooley. When endorsing Cooley, the LA Times made note of Groveman’s “penchant for grandstanding,” a description that undoubtedly makes sense to those that wonder about the motives for Groveman’s anti-smoking initiative. And now, if Groveman’s comments to Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star are any indication, Groveman is worried that this election may be slipping away, too:
Groveman reports that a telephone push-poll of unknown financing is already in the field, planting questions about Groveman’s integrity and calling into question his credentials as a pollution-fighting environmental lawyer. “People are spreading all sorts of rumors,” he said. “It’s mean-spirited.”
As I have noted elsewhere, one doesn’t need to resort to rumor to call Groveman’s environmental credentials into question. No small part of how Groveman is able to write quarter million dollar checks to his own campaign comes from the payments he has received from defending industrial polluters like chemical company LeoRonal, Inc. As covered in the LA Times, Groveman was the attorney for LeoRonal when it paid a then-state record hazardous waste fine “to settle a complaint alleging that it illegally accepted, stored and treated cyanide and other hazardous wastes for six years.”
“Illegally storing and treating hazardous waste is a serious problem,” he [Allan Hirsch, a spokesman for the state Department of Health Services] said. “They were operating entirely outside of the regulatory system and we want to make sure people know this is a completely unacceptable situation.”
LeaRonal’s attorney, Barry Groveman, said Friday that the company did not admit any wrongdoing in agreeing to pay the penalty…Groveman said the New York company was confused by California hazardous-waste laws and bureaucracy, which he said is “absolutely out of control.”
When I worked for the California Department of Corporations - while New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was cracking down on the securities industry - I took sad note of the frequency with which lawyers from the SEC and even from Spitzer’s own office would leave their government jobs for lucrative private industry gigs defending the companies they once prosecuted. It seems to me that’s exactly what Groveman did in the environmental arena. But I don’t think a securities regulator who went over to the dark side to work for an Enron or WorldCom would have the nerve to call himself a consumer activist while running for office. Groveman, on the other hand, has that kind of nerve. Still, the stunningly beautiful 41st Assembly District is unusually sensitive regarding environmental issues. “My client didn’t know the rules regarding cyanide” isn’t going to play so well in the Palisades. I think Groveman is already worried about the explaining he is going to have to do.
Whether it’s his take on his own fundraising prowess or his environmental record, the thing that is truly out of control is Groveman’s spin.
