Accusations over Cotati campaign donation

<p>On Oct. 26, three days after he resigned as Cotati's mayor, John Guardino told city officials that his 2006 City Council campaign staff broke the law by accepting a larger-than-legal cash contribution and not properly disclosing it.</p><p>On the same day, Guardino's 2006 campaign treasurer, Linell Hardy, reported the violation of campaign finance laws to the state's Fair Political Practices Commission. She said a campaign worker split up the contribution and delivered it to the campaign in the names of other contributors.</p><p>The disclosures have ignited accusations and counter-accusations in the final days of a recall campaign against Guardino's former colleague on the City Council dais, George Barich — the alleged source of the illegal contribution.</p><p>Among the charges is that Guardino's campaign workers asked for the contribution in cash to conceal its source. Another is that Barich orchestrated the plan to conceal his involvement. Another charge is that Guardino knew about the contribution.</p><p>Caught up in the fray are Guardino, who said he resigned to live on a farm outside of Cotati; Barich, the controversial councilman at the center of a bitter recall campaign; Hardy, a candidate to replace Barich in Tuesday's election; and a slew of campaign supporters.</p><p>Four people say Barich made the illegal contribution: Guardino himself; Hardy, a planning commissioner whom Guardino appointed; Michelle Berman, the former Guardino campaign worker who accepted the contribution; and Phil Maher, a vocal supporter of Barich's and a recall opponent.</p><p>Barich, who said he supported Guardino in 2006 by walking for him and using his car to display campaign signs, denied making the contribution.</p><p>In an e-mail, Barich said: “I object to being implicated in anyone else's corrupt political campaigns.”</p><p>But Maher said Barich approached the Guardino campaign to make a contribution, and that staffers, including Hardy and Berman, asked for cash so they could skirt campaign finance laws.</p><p>Hardy and Berman, on the other hand, said Barich approached Berman with the cash and the idea to split it up to conceal it. Berman also said she alone was at fault.</p><p>“George Barich approached me with $1,000 in cash. That's how it happened and that's the truth,” she said. “I took it, the cash. I went ahead and did the rest.”</p><p>Guardino said he didn't know about the money until Maher, who knows Barich, brought it to his attention in mid-October. In his Oct. 26 letter to the city, Guardino said the violation was then traced to Berman.</p><p>In an interview, Berman said, “It was a big mistake in judgment.”</p><p>Berman said neither Guardino nor Hardy knew about either the contribution or how it was broken down and given to the campaign.</p><p>She and Hardy said the money was funneled into the campaign coffers through intermediaries to conceal the amount and its source. Berman wouldn't name the intermediaries, and Hardy said she didn't yet know who they were.</p><p>Guardino has given the money — $1,000 — to the city's general fund, an option allowed him under law.</p><p>“I had no prior knowledge of it until I found out about it, and I immediately reported it,” he said.</p><p>He said the matter had nothing to do with his resignation, which he said was because of professional commitments and was planned before he learned about the contribution.</p><p>Hardy said she only found out about the contribution after Guardino asked her to look into it and she, too, had no previous knowledge about it.</p><p>“I didn't know about the donation, I did not see the cash,” she said. “I did not know anything about it until October 15,” when Guardino asked her to look into it.</p><p>Berman said Barich didn't want to be associated with the contribution because he feared it would harm Guardino's chances in the election.</p><p>“My recollection is he wanted no part of it because he wanted John to be elected — ‘Here's the money, I don't want to have any part of it,'” she said.</p><p>Barich has declined to be interviewed, saying he's too busy with council matters, working and fighting the recall. But in e-mails, he denied the allegations, calling them “complete fabrications or a complete misunderstanding of the tireless efforts I made walking door-to-door in support of Guardino in 2006, on which I place a very high value.”</p><p>Maher, who opposes the recall, said Barich, a longtime critic of Cotati politics, told him he was the contributor.</p><p>However in most other ways, Maher tells what is a markedly different story than that told by Berman and Hardy.</p><p>“George wanted to support John because John's whole angle in the campaign was that he was going to be the agent for change,” Maher said.</p><p>But he said that after Barich approached the campaign to make his contribution, Berman, Hardy and another Guardino supporter, Adrienne Lauby, asked Barich for cash so they could conceal its source by dividing it in the names of other donors.</p><p>“The people handling it didn't want the association (of Barich) with John's name,” he said. “The cash was delivered in a white envelope to them and then it was filtered through.”</p><p>Hardy, Berman and Lauby dispute Maher's account.</p><p>“That's an out-and-out lie,” Berman said.</p><p>“Anything that happened, happened between Michelle and George and I was not involved in it,” said Lauby, who is listed on Guardino's campaign finance reports as a contributor of $350.</p><p>Cotati's campaign finance code prohibits contributions larger than $350.</p><p>Maher said that after he learned about the donation, he went to Guardino and Guardino indicated he knew about the money.</p><p>“I asked him, were you aware that George was your single biggest supporter in 2006,” Maher said. “And he said, ‘You mean the $1,000?'”</p><p>Guardino's attorney, Bill Arnone of Santa Rosa, said: “I strongly disagree with that and it is not consistent with the facts and it is not consistent with prior statements made by Mr. Maher.”</p><p>Barich said the real issue was possible violations of the law by the Guardino campaign. Suggestions that he was the contributor are 11th-hour “smear” attacks by people leading the effort to recall him, he said.</p><p>Hardy is one of three candidates to replace Barich in Tuesday's election. Berman previously supported Barich but now supports the recall effort.</p><p>“Connect the dots,” said Barich, who added that Maher “must have completely misunderstood me.”</p><p>What Hardy, Berman and Maher describe similarly is that the $1,000 was in cash, and that the money was split into smaller amounts and submitted to the campaign through several of the 15 people listed as Guardino campaign contributors.</p><p>That could violate at least two state campaign finance laws. Both the campaign and the contributor could face investigation for violations including money laundering, FPPC officials said.</p><p>“The money laundering statute says making contributions in the name other than the true contributor,” is against the law, said Roman Porter, executive director of the FPPC, which is charged with enforcing campaign finance laws and and investigating violations.</p><p>“The person who makes the contribution has to disclose their name, their address and their occupation; that's the information they provide to the committee,” said Porter, who would not comment on the specifics of the Guardino case.</p><p>“And the committee has the responsibility of reporting the accurate information. There is a responsibility on both sides of the transaction,” he said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com.</p>