Story Created:
Jun 9, 2010 at 6:05 PM PST
Story Updated:
Jun 9, 2010 at 6:05 PM PST
District Attorney Steve Cooley has launched a preliminary investigation to determine exactly where City Councilman Bernard Parks lives and whether he committed perjury when he ran for 2nd District County Supervisor in 2008, it was learned this week.
The investigation, recorded as PID Case No. 10-0120, began on Feb. 24 and is being conducted by Deputy District Attorney Juliet Schmidt. Head deputy of the Public Integrity Division, David Demerjian, said Wednesday this lengthy preliminary investigation “is still open.” He would make no further comments.
However, people close to the probe sent me copies of some of the documents the DA is working with, including the Declaration of Candidacy for supervisor that Parks signed on Feb. 29, 2008, on which he gives his residence as being on Don Ibarra Place in the city of Los Angeles. This is the document about which the DA is pondering perjury.
This is so because the DA is examining Parks’ Annual Property Tax Information Statements for 2007 and 2008 which show that the councilman took a $7,000 and $7,981 property tax exemption, respectively, on a house on Onacrest Drive in tony Windsor Hills, in L.A. County territory and outside the city of Los Angeles.
The property tax documents are said to be giving investigators pause because, by law, a property owner can claim a tax exemption on a house only if he lives in it and secondly, as a city councilman, Parks is required by law to live in the city of Los Angeles and within the boundaries of his 8th Council District. So, if Parks lived on Onacrest when he signed his candidacy papers, he may have violated two laws; and if he didn’t live there, he may have violated two other laws.
The DA is also said to be combing the certified County Registrar voting records posted Oct. 17, 2008 to determine whether Parks re-registered to vote, as required by law, when he left his Ibarra Place rental and moved into a house on Don Milagro Drive in February of 2008. At the time, accusations did fly in the community that Parks had cast a fraudulent vote — presumably for himself — in the June 3, 2008 primary election because he voted at a polling place that had not been his since February.
Parks declined to comment about the Cooley/Dermerjian/Schmidt investigation. But his wife, Bobbie, with whom I discussed this investigation and who aided me in contacting the councilman about it, made several comments, including the fact that neither she nor her husband knew anything of Cooley’s concerns about their residences and had not been contacted by the DA to prove or disprove anything.
After receiving from me a copy of Cooley’s letter announcing the investigation, Bobbie Parks expressed surprise and disbelief. “And this was back in February and they didn’t say a word to us?” she asked. “This [Cooley’s letter] doesn’t say what we’ve done wrong, and yet they want to determine whether a full criminal investigation is warranted?” Bobbie Parks continued. “We have lived in several houses and we have lots of documents, too, that show we have done nothing wrong.”
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