10:47 PM PST on Friday, February 12, 2010

By JOHN ASBURY
The Press-Enterprise

San Bernardino County officials may have to wait decades to be reimbursed if a former county supervisor and other officials are found to be corrupt and guilty of a conspiracy and bribery.

Prosecutors allege a $102 million legal settlement in 2006 between Rancho Cucamonga developer Colonies Partners and the county flood-control district was reached through a conspiracy of bribes and extortion between the former Board of Supervisors chairman, a current supervisor, another supervisor’s chief of staff and the developer. A conviction in the case would void the settlement.

San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos said this week he would try to recover $102 million paid to the developer.

“Our goal is to get back that taxpayer money that was extorted and stolen from the county of San Bernardino,” Ramos said during a news conference Wednesday. “We know the settlement went to the Colonies Partners. Where the money is now, I’m not sure.”

But returning those taxpayer dollars to the county remains a distant and elusive objective, state and county officials said. The district attorney’s office must prove the supervisors’ 3-2 vote was illegal, and then it would be left to the county to file a civil suit to recover the funds.

San Bernardino County is still working to recover millions of dollars involved in past corruption cases on behalf of taxpayers.

“The county is so far away from anything that might affect the settlement that no one is even thinking about how or whether to attempt any recovery, much less how much or any other specifics,” San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert said in an e-mail.

The California attorney general and the district attorney’s office Wednesday filed 14 felony charges against former Assessor and former Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Postmus and former Assistant Assessor Jim Erwin. Five unnamed co-conspirators also are under investigation but have not been charged, including a sitting board member and two of the Colonies general partners.

A lawyer for Jeff Burum, a general partner with Colonies Partners, defended the deal and said there was no evidence Burum did anything wrong.

“By any objective measure, the Colonies Settlement was a fair and appropriate compromise at a time when the county had repeatedly lost badly at trial and faced a cost-prohibitive judgment,” Burum’s attorney John Vandevelde said in a statement issued Wednesday. Subsequent phone calls and e-mail messages to Vandevelde seeking additional comment were answered with the same statement.

After the Colonies settlement, the county paid $22 million from the flood-control district’s reserves and issued $103 million in bonds to reimburse the district for the settlement and $1 million in attorney fees. The district has budgeted $7.2 million annually over 30 years, $216 million in total, to repay the estimated cost of the bonds with interest.

If the county is reimbursed, the funds would be returned to the flood-control district and used to repay bonds, Wert said. County officials would have to determine what assets Colonies Partners currently holds to cover the $102 million.

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