A heat wave of scandals

David Allen, Staff Writer
Article Created: 07/15/2008 06:50:41 PM PDT

Things are heating up, and I'm not just referring to the temperature outside or global warming.
How hot is it? We've had hanky-panky by Ontario's mayor, an Ontario and Upland car dealer hauled into court for his political donations and a district attorney probe of the bizarre dealings in the Assessor's Office.

And this is only mid-July!

Welcome to the Inland Empire's Summer of Scandal.

Unless you've been vacationing on the moon, you know all about how Ontario Mayor Paul Leon confessed obliquely to an affair, which involved liaisons at the DoubleTree Hotel and the (irony alert) Healthy Ontario offices.

Of course, Leon is hardly the first politician, or the first pastor, to stray off the straight and narrow, and maybe that's why the citizenry's reaction so far is a big yawn.

Arguably juicier is who is behind the disclosure. Remember, somebody paid a private eye to tail the mayor of Ontario, photograph him with a long-lens camera and go through his trash, as if he were Britney Spears.

Who would do that, and why? No one's talking, but various political enemies are suspected, and the whole thing may be a bigger scandal than Leon's behavior.

That's one, or maybe two, scandals down.

Then there's Mark Leggio. He's the car dealer who is a political power in these parts thanks to big donations to the right people.

The problem is that his donations were apparently a little too big.

Prosecutors say Leggio donated the $3,300 maximum to six Republican campaigns, then slipped $50,000 to employees and associates so that they could donate the maximum under their own names, thus avoiding disclosure rules and finance caps.

Q. How did state Sen. Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, a beneficiary of Leggio's largesse, describe Leggio sympathetically after his indictment?

A. "Extremely giving."

Let's let that stand without further comment.

So that's a third scandal down before July even began. Talk about June gloom.

Next came the grand jury report blasting Bill Postmus, San Bernardino County's assessor, for rewarding unqualified friends and cronies with top-level jobs and paying for the college education of two employees.

One of those employees, Adam Aleman, resigned after he was arrested and charged with six felonies, including altering documents and destroying evidence.

Specifically, destroying the hard drive of his boss' laptop, which might have revealed Postmus' whereabouts in June and July of 2006, which is apparently a closely guarded secret.

The District Attorney's Office is investigating all this and perhaps more.

Postmus, meanwhile, emerged from behind his stone wall last week to give a meandering interview to The Sun, the Daily Bulletin's sister newspaper in San Bernardino. The unshaven assessor insisted that the grand jury gave his office "a clean bill of health" and that his office was "moving in the right direction."

Really? That's an interesting, um, assessment.

Oh, and while the DA is on the case, here's an idea.

Could you guys investigate why the once-politically promising Postmus left a seat on the Board of Supervisors in 2006 for the no-profile job of county assessor? Thanks. It's been bugging me.

So that's Scandal No. 4. Is there a No. 5 yet? It might be the infighting between the Filippi brothers for control of Rancho Cucamonga's Filippi Winery, which resulted in a court filing in which one brother accused the other of using cocaine, stealing money and having an affair with a winery employee.

Ooo-la-la.

Someone fire up the grill and open the cooler. The Inland Empire's Summer of Scandal could be long and hot, but news-wise it's anything but dry.