Republican Sen. David Brinkley objects to the legislature’s plan to impose the 6 percent sales tax on computer services, including custom computer programming, computer systems consultants and computer disaster recovery services, among others.
Lawmakers added computer services to the list of taxable sales items during a November special session called to address the state’s $1.5 billion structural deficit.
State budget analysts estimate the tax will raise $214 million in revenues statewide during fiscal 2009, the first year it is in place.
Brinkley’s first bill would repeal the move to tax computer services entirely; the second would exempt taxing services resulting from contracts entered into before July 1, 2008.
Lawmakers decided to consider taxing services because the national economy has shifted from the consumption of goods, the traditional base of the sales tax, to the consumption of services, according to a report prepared by the Department of Legislative Services.
Gov. Martin O’Malley proposed legislation at the beginning of last month’s special session expanding the sales tax to include real estate property management services, health clubs, tanning salons and landscaping.
During consideration of the bill, leading lawmakers opted to remove those services and instead tax computer services, landscaping and arcades.
As legislation moved through the two chambers, only computer services remained.
It was included in one of the bills signed into law by O’Malley last month.
Brinkley and other opponents objected that, with the last minute changes, computer services representatives were not given an opportunity to provide public comment.
“These people were hit by a ricochet,” Brinkley said. “Real estate management was out, this industry was in — overnight.”
Brinkley, the Senate Minority Leader, said he expects other lawmakers to co-sponsor his bill, though he hasn’t spoken with any Democrats about doing so.
Bipartisan support is crucial because Democrats outnumber Republicans in both the House of Delegates and the Senate. O’Malley is also a Democrat.
A Frederick Democrat, Delegate Galen Clagett, said Monday he would favor a repeal on the tax. The original House bill did not include a tax on computer services.
“The Senate put it back in, and then we were stuck with the thing because we wanted to get it passed at the end of the session,” Clagett said.
He has contacted House Speaker Michael Busch about repealing the tax, and might decide to submit a bill himself if the leadership agrees.
“I can support both of them, I think they’re good bills,” Clagett said about Brinkley’s proposals.
Brinkley expects Democratic lawmakers will introduce their own bills, possibly reducing the tax rate for computer services to 1 percent. He said many elected officials have heard from businesses in their own areas and may be having second thoughts.
“All I know is I want something to pass. I don’t care if it’s this one or someone else’s, just something has to pass,” Brinkley said.
He would support spending cuts or a reevaluation of state programs to make up for the shortfall in revenue from a repeal.
He decided to introduce the bill dealing with contracts in case the repeal doesn’t become law.
He has heard from two Frederick companies that they may be forced to move out of state because they have government contracts with profit margins of less than six percent.
Any tax increase will force them to leave the state or take a loss, he said.
He declined to identify the companies because they could be moving.
Accountant Douglas Boyle, president of Boyle & Company in Frederick, said he has at least one client who will face some tough choices if the tax stays in place.
He said a direct contract with the federal government, also known as the prime contract, would not be subject to the tax. But the tax would kick in for services provided by subcontractors, driving up overall operating costs.
The subcontractors would be taxed based on where the prime contract office is located.
“(To avoid the tax), you would have to split your business and put the prime contracting business in another state, which is what one of my clients is considering doing,” Boyle said.
The client might open an office in West Virginia, depriving Frederick County of high paying jobs, he said.
Frederick County Chamber of Commerce lobbyist Don Murphy said he expects the chamber will support a repeal of the tax. It will be discussed at the chamber’s legislative breakfast in January.
He thinks lawmakers should at least consider the exemption for previous contracts.
“Clearly, businesses are put into a bad situation here when they enter into contracts without the knowledge of this tax,” Murphy said. “At the minimum, that’s fair.”
Other Frederick County lawmakers agree with Brinkley.
Republican Delegate Rick Weldon said lawmakers need to make difficult choices to raise money for transportation and other priorities. But he didn’t like the way this tax was passed.
Laguna Beach billionaire Igor Olenicoff has agreed to plead guilty to a felony count of filing a false tax return, his attorney said, an offense that could send him to prison for up to three years, although his sentence would not exceed six months under terms of the agreement.
Olenicoff, 65, owner of Olen Properties, pleaded guilty to falsely checking a box under penalty of perjury on his 2002 income tax returns by denying he had foreign bank accounts. Court records show Olenicoff had accounts in England, Switzerland, the Bahamas and Lichtenstein.
“Why he did it, I hesitate to say,” said Olenicoff’s attorney Edward Robbins Jr., a tax attorney with the Beverly Hills firm of Hochman, Salkin, Rettig, Toscher & Perez. “It just shows the IRS is serious about checking a box on Schedule B” of tax returns, where taxpayers report earnings from interest, dividends and oversea saccounts.
Robbins said terms of the guilty plea will not require Olenicoff to pay a fine or back taxes, although the guilty plea says he must resolve disputes and pay taxes and penalties from 1998 to 2004 tax years. Robbins also said that Olenicoff, a native of Iran and naturalized U.S. citizen, is not in danger of losing his citizenship.
In May 2005, Internal Revenue Service agents searched the Newport Beach offices of Olenicoff Commercial Realty over what he told the Orange County Register was a $90 million tax dispute. Olen Properties owns about five million square feet of commercial space and more than 10,000 apartment units.
In his signed plea agreement, Olenicoff stipulates that he and his wife, Jeanne, had attempted to conceal assets as far back as 1990. The agreement cites $257 million in transactions to overseas bank accounts between 1992 and 2002. It calls for Olenicoff, prior to sentencing, to move all of his overseas money into accounts in the United States.
Olenicoff is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the chambers of Judge Cormac J. Carney. The case is SA CR No. 07-227-CJC.
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THOMAS P. O’BRIEN
United States Attorney
WAYNE R. GROSS
Assistant United States Attorney
Chief, Santa Ana Branch Office
BRETT A. SAGEL (CBN: 243918)
Assistant United States Attorney
Ronald Reagan Federal Building
411 West Fourth Street, Suite 8000
Santa Ana, California 92701
Telephone: (714) 338-3598
Facsimile: (714) 338-3708
Email: Brett.Sagel@usdoj.gov
Attorney for Plaintiff
United States of America
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
SOUTHERN DIVISION
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff,
v.
IGOR M. OLENICOFF,
Defendant.
))))))))))
SA CR No. 07-227-CJC
PLEA AGREEMENT FOR DEFENDANT
IGOR M. OLENICOFF
1. This constitutes the plea agreement between IGOR M.
OLENICOFF (“defendant”) and the United States Attorney’s Office
for the Central District of California (“the USAO”) in the
investigation of into tax violations regarding defendant and
numerous entities related to defendant. This agreement is
limited to the USAO and cannot bind any other federal, state or
local prosecuting, administrative or regulatory authorities.
PLEA
2. Defendant gives up the right to indictment by a grand
jury, waives venue, and agrees to plead guilty to the one-count
Case 8:07-cr-00227-CJC Document 11 Filed 12/10/2007 Page 1 of 17
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information in the form attached to this agreement or a
substantially similar form.
NATURE OF THE OFFENSE
3. In order for defendant to be guilty of count one, which
charges a violation of Title 26, United States Code, Section
7206(1), the following must be true: (1) The defendant made and
subscribed a return, statement, or other document which was false
as to a material matter; (2) The return, statement, or other
document contained a written declaration that it was made under
the penalties of perjury; (3) The defendant did not believe the
return, statement, or other document to be true and correct as to
every material matter; and (4) The defendant falsely subscribed
to the return, statement, or other document willfully, with the
specific intent to violate the law. Defendant admits that
defendant is, in fact, guilty of this offense as described in
count one of the information.
PENALTIES
4. The statutory maximum sentence that the Court can impose
for a violation of Title 26, United States Code, Section 7206(1)
is: 3 years imprisonment; a 3-year period of supervised release;
a fine of $100,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss
resulting from the offense, whichever is greatest; and a
mandatory special assessment of $100. The Court may order
defendant to pay any additional taxes, interest and penalties
that defendant owes to the United States. Also, the Court must
order defendant to pay the costs of prosecution, which may be in
Case 8:07-cr-00227-CJC Document 11 Filed 12/10/2007 Page 2 of 17
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addition to the statutory maximum fine stated above.
5. Supervised release is a period of time following
imprisonment during which defendant will be subject to various
restrictions and requirements. Defendant understands that if
defendant violates one or more of the conditions of any
supervised release imposed, defendant may be returned to prison
for all or part of the term of supervised release, which could
result in defendant serving a total term of imprisonment greater
than the statutory maximum stated above.
6. Defendant also understands that, by pleading guilty,
defendant may be giving up valuable government benefits and
valuable civic rights, such as the right to vote, the right to
possess a firearm, the right to hold office, and the right to
serve on a jury.
7. Defendant further understands that the conviction in
this case may subject defendant to various collateral
consequences, including but not limited to, deportation,
revocation of probation, parole, or supervised release in another
case, and suspension or revocation of a professional license.
Defendant understands that unanticipated collateral consequences
will not serve as grounds to withdraw defendant’s guilty plea.
FACTUAL BASIS
8. Defendant and the USAO agree and stipulate to the
statement of facts provided below. This statement of facts
includes facts sufficient to support a plea of guilty to the
charge described in this agreement and to establish the
Case 8:07-cr-00227-CJC Document 11 Filed 12/10/2007 Page 3 of 17
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sentencing guideline factors set forth in paragraph 12 below. It
is not meant to be a complete recitation of all facts relevant to
the underlying criminal conduct or all facts known to defendant
that relate to that conduct.
Defendant is the President and Owner of Olen Properties
Corporation (hereinafter “OPC”). During the years 1992 through
2004, defendant owned, controlled, and had signatory authority
over financial accounts outside of the United States. At least
as early as August 1997, defendant listed himself as chairman of
Sovereign Bancorp Ltd. (hereinafter “SBL”) and President and
Director of National Depository Corporation, Ltd. (hereinafter
“NDC”) on signature cards for Barclays Bank in the Bahamas, which
also listed defendant as an authorized signatory on these
accounts. Defendant also had signatory authority and controlled
several financial accounts with Solomon Smith Barney, which were
held in Solomon Smith Barney’s office in London, England.
Defendant’s accounts in Solomon Smith Barney’s England offices
included accounts in the names of SBL, NDC, Guardian Guarantee
Company, Ltd. (hereinafter “GGCL”), Continental Realty Funding
Corporation (hereinafter “CRFC”), and Swiss Finance Corporation.
Defendant opened several accounts at UBS, formerly known as Union
Bank of Switzerland (hereinafter “UBS”) in Switzerland, in which
defendant had signatory authority and listed himself as Vice
President and Director of accounts under the name of GGCL and New
Guardian Bancorp APS (hereinafter “NGB”). In addition, defendant
also had signatory authority and control over several financial
accounts at Neue Bank in Liechtenstein, including an account in
the name of NGB.
Defendant directed and authorized transactions from his offshore
financial accounts, including, but not limited to the
following transactions. On or about March 9, 1992, defendant
transferred approximately $61,000,000 from an OPC account at
First Interstate Bank in Newport Beach, California, to a Bank of
Montreal account in Canada under the name of NDC. On or about
October 5, 1998, defendant directed Solomon Smith Barney to
transfer approximately $40,000,000 from an SBL account at Solomon
Smith Barney (England) to an SBL account at Barclay’s Bank
(Bahamas). On or about June 4, 2001, defendant directed Solomon
Smith Barney to transfer approximately $17,000,000, $43,000,000,
and $58,000,000 from CRFC, NDC, and SBL accounts, respectively,
at Solomon Smith Barney (England) to NDC and SBL accounts at
Barclay’s Bank (Bahamas). On or about December 10, 2001,
defendant directed Barclay’s Bank to transfer approximately
$89,000,000 from a GGCL account at Barclay’s Bank (Bahamas) to
open the GGCL account at UBS (Switzerland). On or about February
27, 2002, defendant directed Solomon Smith Barney to transfer
approximately $38,000,000 from CRFC, NDC, and CRFC accounts at
Case 8:07-cr-00227-CJC Document 11 Filed 12/10/2007 Page 4 of 17
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Solomon Smith Barney (England) to an GGCL account at Barclay’s
Bank (Bahamas).
For the calendar years 1998 through 2004, defendant filed
his United States Individual Income Tax Returns (hereinafter
“Form 1040″) with the Internal Revenue Service for the respective
tax years. Defendant signed his 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,
2003, and 2004 Form 1040s under penalties of perjury. Defendant
attached a Schedule B, Interest and Ordinary Dividends, to each
of his Form 1040s for tax years 1998 through 2004. Each of the
Form 1040s that defendant filed included Part III of Schedule B,
Foreign Accounts and Trusts, whereby the Internal Revenue Service
asked on Line 7a, “At any time during [calendar year], did you
have an interest in or a signature or other authority over a
financial account in a foreign country, such as a bank account,
securities account, or other financial account?” Line 7b stated,
“If ‘yes,’ enter the name of the foreign country.” Lines 7a and
7b of Part III of Schedule B attached to the Form 1040s called
for material information in that the requested information is
necessary for a correct computation of the tax due and owing and
has a natural tendency to influence or impede the Internal
Revenue Service in ascertaining the correctness of the tax due
and owing of the taxpayer. On each of the 1998 through 2004 Form
1040s, defendant falsely answered “No” to line 7a and left the
space blank next to line 7b, even though, as he then well knew
and understood, he had an interest in, signatory authority, and
other authority over financial accounts in foreign countries
during these years.
On or about April 15, 2003, in the Central District of
California and elsewhere, defendant, a resident of Laguna Beach,
California, did willfully make and subscribe a 2002 U.S.
Individual Income Tax Return, Form 1040, which was verified by a
written declaration that it was made under the penalties of
perjury and was filed with the Internal Revenue Service, which
defendant did not believe this 2002 U.S. Individual Income Tax
Return to be true and correct as to every material matter in that
Schedule B Part III, Foreign Accounts and Trusts, Line 7a asked
“At any time during 2002, did you have an interest in or a
signature or other authority over a financial account in a
foreign country, such as a bank account, securities account, or
other financial account?” to which said return falsely stated
“NO,” whereas, as defendant then and there well knew and
believed, was a false statement, as defendant had ownership,
control, and signatory authority over financial accounts in
England, Switzerland, the Bahamas, and Liechtenstein. When
defendant signed his 2002 Form 1040, defendant knew that it
contained false information as to a material matter, and in
filing the false 2002 Form 1040, defendant acted willfully.
Case 8:07-cr-00227-CJC Document 11 Filed 12/10/2007 Page 5 of 17
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WAIVER OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
9. By pleading guilty, defendant gives up the following
rights:
a) The right to persist in a plea of not guilty.
b) The right to a speedy and public trial by jury.
c) The right to the assistance of legal counsel at
trial, including the right to have the Court appoint counsel for
defendant for the purpose of representation at trial. (In this
regard, defendant understands that, despite his plea of guilty,
he retains the right to be represented by counsel - and, if
necessary, to have the court appoint counsel if defendant cannot
afford counsel - at every other stage of the proceedings.)
d) The right to be presumed innocent and to have the
burden of proof placed on the government to prove defendant
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
e) The right to confront and cross-examine witnesses
against defendant.
f) The right, if defendant wished, to testify on
defendant’s own behalf and present evidence in opposition to the
charges, including the right to call witnesses and to subpoena
those witnesses to testify.
g) The right not to be compelled to testify, and, if
defendant chose not to testify or present evidence, to have that
choice not be used against defendant.
By pleading guilty, defendant also gives up any and all
rights to pursue any affirmative defenses, Fourth Amendment or
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Fifth Amendment claims, and other pretrial motions that have been
filed or could be filed.
WAIVER OF DNA TESTING
10. Defendant has been advised that the government has in
its possession the following items of physical evidence that
could be subjected to DNA testing:
Documents obtained via search warrants
Defendant understands that the government does not intend to
conduct DNA testing of any of these items. Defendant understands
that, before entering a guilty plea pursuant to this agreement,
defendant could request DNA testing of evidence in this case.
Defendant further understands that, with respect to the offense
to which defendant is pleading guilty pursuant to this agreement,
defendant would have the right to request DNA testing of evidence
after conviction under the conditions specified in 18 U.S.C. §
3600. Knowing and understanding defendant’s right to request DNA
testing, defendant knowingly and voluntarily gives up that right
with respect to both the specific items listed above and any
other items of evidence there may be in this case that might be
amenable to DNA testing. Defendant understands and acknowledges
that by giving up this right, defendant is giving up any ability
to request DNA testing of evidence in this case in the current
proceeding, in any proceeding after conviction under 18 U.S.C. §
3600, and in any other proceeding of any type. Defendant further
understands and acknowledges that by giving up this right,
defendant will never have another opportunity to have the
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evidence in this case, whether or not listed above, submitted for
DNA testing, or to employ the results of DNA testing to support a
claim that defendant is innocent of the offense to which
defendant is pleading guilty.
SENTENCING FACTORS
11. Defendant understands that the Court is required to
consider the United States Sentencing Guidelines (“U.S.S.G.” or
“Sentencing Guidelines”) among other factors in determining
defendant’s sentence. Defendant understands, however, that the
Sentencing Guidelines are only advisory, and that after
considering the Sentencing Guidelines, the Court may be free to
exercise its discretion to impose any reasonable sentence up to
the maximum set by statute for the crimes of conviction.
12. Defendant and the USAO agree and stipulate to the
following applicable sentencing guideline factors:
Base Offense Level : 6 [U.S.S.G. § 2T1.1(a)(2)]
Acceptance of
Responsibility: -2 [U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1(a)]
Defendant and the USAO agree not to seek, argue, or suggest in
any way, either orally or in writing, that any other specific
offense characteristics, adjustments or departures, from either
the applicable Offense Level or Criminal History Category, be
imposed. If, however, after signing this agreement but prior to
sentencing, defendant were to commit an act, or the USAO were to
discover a previously undiscovered act committed by defendant
prior to signing this agreement, which act, in the judgment of
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the USAO, constituted obstruction of justice within the meaning
of U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1, the USAO would be free to seek the
enhancement set forth in that section.
13. There is no agreement as to defendant’s criminal
history or criminal history category.
14. The stipulations in this agreement do not bind either
the United States Probation Office or the Court. Both defendant
and the USAO are free to: (a) supplement the facts by supplying
relevant information to the United States Probation Office and
the Court; (b) correct any and all factual misstatements relating
to the calculation of the sentence; and (c) argue on appeal and
collateral review that the Court’s sentencing guidelines
calculations are not error, although each party agrees to
maintain its view that the calculations in paragraph 12 are
consistent with the facts of this case.
DEFENDANT’S OBLIGATIONS
15. Defendant agrees that he will:
a) Waive Indictment by Grand Jury, waive venue, and
Plead guilty as set forth in this agreement.
b) Not knowingly and willfully fail to abide by all
sentencing stipulations contained in this agreement.
c) Not knowingly and willfully fail to: (i) appear as
ordered for all court appearances; (ii) surrender as ordered for
service of sentence; (iii) obey all conditions of any bond; and
(iv) obey any other ongoing court order in this matter.
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d) Not commit any crime; however, offenses which would
be excluded for sentencing purposes under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(c) are
not within the scope of this agreement.
e) Not knowingly and willfully fail to be truthful at
all times with Pretrial Services, the U.S. Probation Office, and
the Court.
f) To fill out and deliver to the USAO, prior to
sentencing, a completed financial statement listing defendant’s
assets on a form provided by the United States Attorney’s Office.
g) Prior to sentencing, abandon his claim for a refund
on the 1999 Corporate Return for Olen Properties Corporation
(“OPC”) seeking a refund based on interest income “paid” from OPC
to Sovereign Bancorp Ltd. (“SBL”), another corporation controlled
by defendant.
h) Prior to sentencing, defendant will move all money
held in foreign financial accounts, including bank and securities
accounts, which defendant has an interest in, signature
authority, or any other authority, to financial accounts within
the United States. Defendant further agrees that during the
period of supervised release or probation, that defendant will
not have any interest in, signature authority, or any other
authority over a financial account in a foreign country, such as
a bank account, securities account, or other financial account.
i) Cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service in the
determination of defendant’s civil tax liability and the tax
liability of corporations owned and/or controlled by defendant
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28 11
for the Tax Years 1998-2004. Defendant agrees:
1) That defendant will, prior to the time of
sentencing, enter into closing agreements for the years 1998
through 2004 for his Individual Income Tax Returns, correctly
reporting unreported income and/or correcting improper deductions
and credits, and will, if requested to do so by the Internal
Revenue Service, provide the Internal Revenue Service with
information regarding the years covered by the returns, and will
pay at sentencing all additional taxes, and will pay promptly all
penalties and interest assessed by the Internal Revenue Service
to be owing as a result of any computational errors.
2) That nothing in this agreement forecloses or
limits the ability of the Internal Revenue Service to examine and
make adjustments to defendant’s closing agreements.
3) That defendant will not, after entering into
the closing agreements, file any claim for refund of taxes,
penalties, or interest for amounts attributable to the closing
agreements filed in connection with this plea agreement.
4) That defendant is liable for the fraud penalty
imposed by the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 6663, on the
understatement of civil tax liability for Tax Years 1998-2004.
5) To give up any and all objections that could be
asserted to the Examination Division of the Internal Revenue
Service receiving materials or information obtained during the
criminal investigation of this matter, including materials and
information obtained through the execution of search warrants or
Case 8:07-cr-00227-CJC Document 11 Filed 12/10/2007 Page 11 of 17
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through grand jury subpoenas.
THE USAO’S OBLIGATIONS
16. If defendant complies fully with all defendant’s
obligations under this agreement, the USAO agrees:
a) To abide by all sentencing stipulations contained in
this agreement.
b) At the time of sentencing, provided that defendant
demonstrates an acceptance of responsibility for the offense up
to and including the time of sentencing, to recommend a two-level
reduction in the applicable sentencing guideline offense level,
pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1, and to recommend and, if necessary,
move for an additional one-level reduction if available under
that section.
c) Not to further prosecute defendant for violations
arising out of defendant’s conduct described in the stipulated
factual basis set forth in paragraph 8 above or tax violations
associated with moneys transferred to and held in foreign bank
accounts from 1998 through 2004, or any other conduct known to
the Government at the time this agreement is signed by defendant.
Defendant understands that the USAO is free to prosecute
defendant for any other unlawful past conduct or any unlawful
conduct that occurs after the date of this agreement. Defendant
agrees that at the time of sentencing the Court may consider the
uncharged conduct in determining the applicable Sentencing
Guidelines range, where the sentence should fall within that
range, the propriety and extent of any departure from that range,
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and the determination of the sentence to be imposed after
consideration of the sentencing guidelines and all other relevant
factors.
BREACH OF AGREEMENT
17. If defendant, at any time between the execution of this
agreement and defendant’s sentencing on a non-custodial sentence
or surrender for service on a custodial sentence, knowingly
violates or fails to perform any of defendant’s obligations under
this agreement (“a breach”), the USAO may declare this agreement
breached. If the USAO declares this agreement breached, and the
Court finds such a breach to have occurred, defendant will not be
able to withdraw defendant’s guilty plea, and the USAO will be
relieved of all of its obligations under this agreement.
18. Following a knowing and willful breach of this
agreement by defendant, should the USAO elect to pursue any
charge or any civil or administrative action that was either
dismissed or not filed as a result of this agreement, then:
a) Defendant agrees that any applicable statute of
limitations is tolled between the date of defendant’s signing of
this agreement and the commencement of any such prosecution or
action.
b) Defendant gives up all defenses based on the statute
of limitations, any claim of preindictment delay, or any speedy
trial claim with respect to any such prosecution or action,
except to the extent that such defenses existed as of the date of
defendant’s signing of this agreement.
Case 8:07-cr-00227-CJC Document 11 Filed 12/10/2007 Page 13 of 17
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c) Defendant agrees that: i) any statements made by
defendant, under oath, at the guilty plea hearing; ii) the
stipulated factual basis statement in this agreement; and iii)
any evidence derived from such statements, are admissible against
defendant in any future prosecution of defendant, and defendant
shall assert no claim under the United States Constitution, any
statute, Rule 410 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 11(f) of
the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, or any other federal
rule, that the statements or any evidence derived from any
statements should be suppressed or are inadmissible.
LIMITED MUTUAL WAIVER OF APPEAL AND COLLATERAL ATTACK
19. Defendant gives up the right to appeal any sentence
imposed by the Court, and the manner in which the sentence is
determined, provided that (a) the sentence is within the
statutory maximum specified above and is constitutional, (b) the
Court in determining the applicable guideline range does not
depart upward in offense level or criminal history category and
determines that the total offense level is 4 or below, and (c)
the Court imposes a sentence within or below the range
corresponding to the determined total offense level and criminal
history category. Defendant also gives up any right to bring a
post-conviction collateral attack on the conviction or sentence,
except a post-conviction collateral attack based on a claim of
ineffective assistance of counsel, a claim of newly discovered
evidence, or an explicitly retroactive change in the applicable
Sentencing Guidelines, sentencing statutes, or statutes of
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conviction. Notwithstanding the foregoing, defendant retains the
ability to appeal the conditions of probation or supervised
release imposed by the court, with the exception of the
following: standard conditions set forth in district court
General Orders 318 and 01-05; the drug testing conditions
mandated by 18 U.S.C. §§ 3563(a)(5) and 3583(d); and the alcohol
and drug use conditions authorized by 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b)(7).
20. The USAO gives up its right to appeal the sentence,
provided that (a) the Court in determining the applicable
guideline range does not depart downward in offense level or
criminal history category, (b) the Court determines that the
total offense level is 4 or above, and (c) the Court imposes a
sentence within or above the range corresponding to the
determined total offense level and criminal history category.
COURT NOT A PARTY
21. The Court is not a party to this agreement and need not
accept any of the USAO’s sentencing recommendations or the
parties’ stipulations. Even if the Court ignores any sentencing
recommendation, finds facts or reaches conclusions different from
any stipulation, and/or imposes any sentence up to the maximum
established by statute, defendant cannot, for that reason,
withdraw defendant’s guilty plea, and defendant will remain bound
to fulfill all defendant’s obligations under this agreement. No
one – not the prosecutor, defendant’s attorney, or the Court –
can make a binding prediction or promise regarding the sentence
defendant will receive, except that it will be within the
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Case 8:07-cr-00227-CJC Document 11 Filed 12/10/2007 Page 17 of 17
ENCINITAS - The following local Farmers Insurance representatives have been inducted into the Farmers’ “Topper Club” of Farmers’ top sales producers: Daniel Inskeep, San DeLegge, Thomas Krynicki, Michael Davis, Kraig Heiland, Doug Kyle, Craig Davis, Keith Roby, Steven Sellin, Kim Chance, Pierre Tardif, Hal Wilson, Marie Milliman, Gerry Butler, Douglas Dixon and Daniel Wallace.
Holland opens Holland Business Services Inc.
CARLSBAD - Dr. Michael Holland, former vice president and general manager of SPARTA Composites, has left the company to start a new business, Holland Business Services, Inc., which specializes in business development, brokerage, merger and acquisition services for small to medium size composites and aerospace companies. Go to http://www.HollandBSI.com.
Monzet elected to ad board
RANCHO BERNARDO - Sean Monzet of Rancho Bernardo, digital account manager with NBC 7/39, has been elected to serve on the San Diego Advertising Club’s board of directors for the 2007-08 term. Monzet will assist the club in expanding membership with digital and interactive media companies.
Siaca joins California Community Bank
ESCONDIDO - Terry Siaca has joined California Community Bank as vice president for commercial lending at its Escondido main office. Siaca is a veteran business lender in the North County marketplace and has a strong background in lending and relationship management.
Forrester appointed president/CEO at LEAD
SAN DIEGO - LEAD San Diego has announced the official appointment of Judy Forrester to the position of permanent president and CEO. Forrester joined LEAD San Diego in July 2006 as a consultant serving as interim CEO.
ABD adds three to team
CARLSBAD - ABD Insurance and Financial Services has added three professionals to its property and casualty risk management team. James C. Peasley has been named vice president and broker/producer in the risk management/major accounts practice; Dena Williams is senior vice president and broker/producer; and Lynn L. Dalman is vice president/account executive in the risk management and major accounts practice.
McCartney joins Johnny Rockets
LAKE FOREST - Johnny Rockets, franchisor of the retro-themed restaurant brand with 217 restaurants operating in 29 states and seven countries, has announced the appointment of Valerie McCartney as director of franchise sales. She will be responsible for overseeing the franchise development efforts of the reemerging brand in the western region of the United States.
Thieme named for online articles
Jennifer A. Thieme recently earned three No. 1 slots at Ezinearticles.com, which tracks the most viewed and most published articles for all submissions. Articles statistics are tallied for the most recent 90 days. Thieme’s articles climbed to the top in the Accounting-Payroll, Taxes and Software categories.
Listing special offered
TEMECULA - Temecula V.I.P. Real Estate & Mortgage is running a special called “The $500 Listing Special” to help homeowners who need to sell their homes but who cannot afford the high cost of the average commission most agents charge. Information: (951) 201-6449.
Mercurio promoted to executive vice president
SAN DIEGO - The San Diego Association of REALTORS has promoted Michael T. Mercurio to executive vice president. Mercurio will oversee accounting, communications, education, government affairs, human resources, information technology, membership, retail operations and risk management. He also will serve as a liaison for the California Association of REALTORS and the National Association of REALTORS.
BRIDGE awards scholarships
SAN MARCOS - BRIDGE Housing, the state’s leading nonprofit developer of affordable homes, has awarded scholarships to Melodee Celise and Kimberly McArthur, both of San Marcos. Celise is a single mother pursuing a degree in Montessori education. McArthur is studying biology and hopes to attend medical school.
Grand Del Mar adds two to culinary team
SAN DIEGO - The Grand Del Mar has added Jason McLeond as ececutive chef and Thierry Delourneaux as executive pastry chef to its growing culinary team. McLeod was most recently executive chef of the Four SEasons Resort in Great Exuma, Bahamas. Delourneaux was most recently executive pastry chef at The Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.
Travature Inc. releases beta site
SAN DIEGO - Travature Inc., a startup internet travel company based in San Diego, publicly released its beta site Travature.com, recently. The site includes many free services such as flexible airfare searching, open and editable “wiki-style” travel guides, a travel deal of the day, community-driven restaurant reviews, both domestic and international, as well as city “mash-ups” and a combination of all of their features on one simple page.
Lia sophia names two top achievers
RAMONA - Anne Mazzola of Ramona and Kelli Wiltbank of San Diego recently have won top honors in lia sophia’s Excellent Beginnings Program Achievers for their outstanding sales accomplishments and professionalism. Lia sophia is direct-sale jewelry company offering personalized in-home demonstrations.
Murphy joins San Diego National Bank
POWAY - John Murphy has joined the San Diego National Bank as vice president and manager of the Residential Mortgage Division. His responsibilities will include the development of the residential lending sales staff and product line to help SDNB meet the needs of the bank’s homeowner/buyer clients and prospects in its Poway office.
Bronte joins McRae Agency
SAN DIEGO - Vanessa Bronte has joined the McRae Agency as its newest account associate. Her responsibilities include writing news releases, creative brainstorming, story development, media pitching, client research and maintaining client relationships.
Wells Fargo names three managers
SOLANA BEACH - Wells Fargo & Co. has named John Hamot and Aaron Marsaw community banking district managers in North County. Hamot will oversee banking operations for the North Coastal Market along the I-5 corricor from Solana Beach to Encinitas. Marsaw will manage the El Camnino market, which includes seven stores in Carlsbad and Oceanside along El Camino Real.
Jeff Reed has been named executive vice president and manager of Wells Fargo’s Real Estate Group, Southwest Division and will oversee offices in San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Graham named senior VP of Jack in the Box
SAN DIEGO - Terri Funk Graham has been named senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Jack in the Box Inc. She will assume oversight of the company’s research and development group, which includes a team of culinary experts and project managers who are responsible for menu development.
Chamber names Top 10
SAN DIEGO - The San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce has named its “Top 10 Lifetime San Diegans.” They include developer and philanthropist Malin Burnham; San Diego County Supervisors Greg Cos and Dianne Jacob; hotelier Ann Evans; local politico Kirs Michele; restaurant mogul Ralph Rubio; football great Junior Seau; American Indian gaming leader Daniel Tucker; former Port Commissioner Frank Urtasun and Congressman Brian Bilbray.
Spyke named dean at USD
SAN DIEGO - David F. Pyke has been named incoming dean of the University of San Diego’s School of Business Administration, effective Aug. 1, 2008. Pyke is currently the associate dean of the MBA Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and the Benjamin Ames Kimball Professor of the Science of Administration.
Breining named to Top 25
SAN DIEGO - MeetingNews has named Concepts Worlwide CEO and founder Terri Breining one of “The 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry.” Breining was previously named to the list in 1004.
Heiserman joins CPA firm
ESCONDIDO - Nic Heiserman has joined the firm CPA firm of Dunlap, Dunlap & Peck as a staff associate and has entered the firm’s two-year track to obtain his CPA designation. Heisman received a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in accounting from Cal State San Marcos.
Stepka joins CEA, LLP
CARLSBAD - Mark Stepka has joined CEA, LLP, a full-service accounting firm, as a partner. He is responsible for overall management of all aspects of client engagement including audits, reviews and compilations of annual financial statements, tax return preparation and tax advisory services, financial forecasts and budgeting.
San Diego honors Doyle
SAN DIEGO - Mayor Jerry Sanders, right, declared Sept. 18 as Stephen P. Doyle Day in the city of San Diego. Sanders and the San Diego City Council honored Doyle “for his many leadership positions and numerous contributions that have resulted in the longterm advancement of homebuilding in California.” Doyle is president of the San Diego/Riverside division of Brookfield Homes.
English joins Concepts Worldwide
CARLSBAD - Lisa English has joined Concepts Worlwide ad director of operations and Gregory Spire has joined as national account executive. Concepts Worldwide specializes in strategic meeting management around the world.
Jazzercise founder earns award
CARLSBAD - Judi Sheppard Missett, founder and CEO of Jazzercise Inc. was the 2007 recipient of the Empowered Woman Award presented by the Columbus, Ohio chapter of the Women’s Presidents’ Organization. The annual honor is reserved for WPO members who have achieved remarkable accomplishments with an entrepreneurial endeavor, given back to other men and women in business as a mentor and role model, and are dedicated to their community.
Lorenz joins real estate sales team
SAN MARCOS - Carl Roy Lorenz has joined the real estate sales team at Web Pacific Realty and Web Pacific Commercial. He has more than 30 years of sales and management experience in property/homeowner association management and real estate sales.
Two tie for top sales honor
Ming Marcum and Michael Rossi tied for top sales honors for the month of September at Mercedes-Benz of Escondido. This is the first time in the dealership’s 19-year history that a first-place tie has occurred.
Aaron named executive director
The Moonlight Cultural Foundation has appointed Diana Slaughter Aaron as executive director. In her new role, Aaron will be responsible for promoting philanthropy for Moonlight Stage Productions while representing the foundation in Vista and North County.
Muranaka joins Foley & Larnder LLP
Aaron Muranaka has joined Foley & Lardner LLP as a new associate in its San Diego office. A member of the firm’s General Commercial Litigation Practice Group, Muranaka’s practice will focus on a variety of areas in corporate and commercial litigation.
Gov. John Baldacci is racing around, rearranging the government furniture, faster than the eye can follow. State administrative functions first, elementary and secondary schools next, now county jails, natural resource agencies soon to come, and who knows what’s after that?
He’s creating an uproar. School officials are gathering petition signatures to overthrow the consolidation. Even his brother, a county commissioner in Penobscot County, thinks he’s lost his senses.
But Baldacci is not the first to reorganize government, nor the first to create an uproar.
Forty years ago, Gov. Kenneth Curtis arrived in office to find himself facing 200 independent agencies, commissions and boards. Many of them were run by administrators appointed by the Legislature (then controlled by the other party).
Often the administrators were captives to the industries they were supposed to regulate (such as the paper companies running the Forest Service). This was not unusual at the time — and, in fact, Texas still has this kind of state government.
Curtis didn’t like it. He set up a commission headed by Muskie protégé Don Nicoll and staffed by the talented State Planning Office Director Alan Pease. They consolidated bureaus into 15 departments and created a straight line of accountability from the cabinet commissioners to the governor. It is the same structure we have today.
But Curtis wasn’t done. He wanted to increase aid to local schools and ease the property tax burden (sound familiar?). As sales tax revenues were insufficient for these purposes, Curtis proposed instituting an income tax. Naturally, the Republican leaders of the Legislature (including a young Senate majority leader named Bennett Katz) were skeptical.
But bipartisanship was possible in those days, and the Republican leaders eventually improved Curtis’ proposal and passed it. It took courage on everyone’s part. Curtis was re-elected by only 500 votes in 1970. The income tax nearly did him in.
In his second term, Curtis took another step. He set up a cost-cutting commission and appointed as its chairman an insurance salesman from Lewiston named James Longley. Longley assembled 42 volunteer business people who worked full time on the commission for 12 weeks, looking for savings in state government operations.
The other day, I happened to run across a copy of Longley’s 1973 “Maine Management and Cost Survey” in a used book store. The introduction is amusing. Longley notes with alarm that total expenditures in state government had doubled in the last four years, to “almost $483 million.” This year’s budget is $3.2 billion.
No function was too small to escape notice by the commission. Its 807 recommendations included the elimination of a copy machine in the law enforcement unit ( being used at only 30 percent of capacity), the cessation of filing of resident hunting licenses, creation of a typing pool in the Department of Education, holding off on buying an electric typewriter at Arts and Humanities, subletting space at the Board of Hairdressers, buying economy rather than standard automobiles for the State Police, ending the practice of news clips in Transportation.
Everything had a dollar savings attached. No new electric typewriter, savings of $500. Set up a typing pool, save $12,400.
But it was hard to tell where some of the numbers came from. The establishment of “optimum staffing” by conducting a consultant study on measurable work tasks was projected to save $2,170,000 a year. The utilization of “program budgeting to control expenditures” was projected to save $2,640,000 a year.
The final report claimed a potential of $24 million in savings (and $5 million in new fee revenue). Before Curtis left office, Pease reported that about half of the 287 legislative recommendations had been enacted, and 90 percent of the administrative recommendations were either enacted or under study.
To my knowledge, no one ever saw $24 million in savings in state government. At minimum, state agencies had a hard time buying copy machines and typewriters for the next four years. But the commission did have a lasting effect, in that it proved to be a launching pad for Maine’s first independent governor, James Longley.
What lessons does Curtis’ experience offer for Baldacci?
It’s good to work in a bipartisan fashion. It’s good to have a good state planning director (which he does). And be careful whom you appoint to head your commissions. You may be picking the next governor! Rent Manitoba Vacation Properties
In the market for a retirement home last spring, design engineer Douglas Knapman says he looked at 20 communities before deciding on The Settings at Mackay Point in Yemassee, S.C.
What tipped the balance wasn’t the golf course, swimming pools or fitness center. It was a presentation at an open house by developer Richard McWhorter, who invited people to take part in a fishing tournament he was underwriting to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. In addition to donating $15,000 to the foundation — an employee has two children with the disease — McWhorter offered to cover the $1,200 entry fee for any resident or home buyer who would take part in the fund-raising tournament.
Several people in the audience that day took him up on his offer. The presentation also convinced Knapman that The Settings was where he wanted to live. “Too often, developers just take their profits and leave,” he says.
The latest strategy for selling homes isn’t to give something to potential buyers — it’s to ask buyers to give something back. In a shaky housing market that continues to be wracked by credit turmoil and rising foreclosures, developers and builders have been piling on incentives like free basement upgrades, and adding showy events like wine tastings. Now, they’re hoping that home buyers jaded by self-indulgent amenities will be impressed by activities that have more depth. The annual rate of new-home sales was down 23.3 percent in September from a year earlier, to 770,000, according to the latest data from the Commerce Department.
In recent years, developers have created communities for residents with a common interest, such as flying, boating or organic farming. But these new developments pitch philanthropy as a lifestyle. Some focus on a particular theme, such as local children’s charities, protecting the environment, or raising money for cancer research. Others promote a broader message of civic involvement. In a few places, donations are mandatory: Every homeowner is required to pay a fee, which then goes into a nonprofit foundation run by the residents to fund local charitable works.
Entries to the National Association of Home Builders’ annual award for builder charity work have more than doubled, to 56 in 2006 from 21 in 2005. Though some developers sponsor one-time events, others are making charity a long-term obligation or part of a marketing effort touting philanthropy as a way of life.
Focus Property Group, the developer of Providence, a 1,200-acre, 7,500-unit development in Las Vegas, is hosting fund-raisers to combat illiteracy, including storytelling festivals and cowboy-poetry readings. The Georgia Club, a new 1,300-acre golf-course community in Statham, Ga., 56 miles northeast of Atlanta, started a 501c3 nonprofit last December that has raised $26,000 and expects to raise $23,000 more this year from its Christmas tour of homes. Daybreak, in Salt Lake City, has raised nearly $50,000 for cancer research during a two-year span, and has sent 2,000 pairs of shoes and a van of holiday gifts to the needy.
Daybreak’s civic commitment was an eye-opener for Kevin Dudley, a state tax investigator, his wife and five children. The family had never volunteered much before moving there two years ago, but now they participate eagerly in charity races and other activities. In fact, Dudley says, his 16-year-old daughter, Jessica, insisted on choosing a needy teenage boy to sponsor in a holiday gift-giving event because she feared he was too old to attract another donor. Before they lived in Daybreak, he says, “my children weren’t thinking that way.”
The timing is right for such programs in the housing industry, says Boca Raton, Fla., sales-and-marketing consultant Bob Schultz, who has been advising developers and home builders for 25 years. In part, that’s because the population in general is aging and becoming less acquisitive. Schultz says civic involvement is also resonating because of highly publicized disasters of recent years such as Hurricane Katrina and the California wildfires. “People want to do something more meaningful with their lives than bat a tennis ball around,” he says.
Some developers are promoting their own pet charities — and their involvement in them. John Ritter, chairman and chief executive officer of Focus Property Group, has given each of his three developments a charitable theme and identified a community partner. At Mountain Edge, a 3.500-acre, 14,500-unit community in Las Vegas Valley, the theme is the outdoors and a healthy lifestyle, and the partner is a local troop of Boy Scouts, who win merit badges for building trails and parks in the development.
Ritter spends between $10,000 and $30,000 per event for tents, food and staff. But since he’d host promotional events anyway as part of his corporate marketing plan — and since residents wind up supplying much of the manpower — the fund-raisers don’t really increase his costs. Meanwhile, the return has been substantial, both in terms of neighborhood goodwill and exposure. A recent walkathon for the American Heart Association drew 5,000 participants and supporters to Mountain’s Edge, and resulted in a sales spike that lasted for three weeks. The development was the second fastest-selling community in the country last year, according to Robert Charles Lesser & Co, a real-estate advisory firm in Bethesda, Md. “Philanthropy isn’t entirely altruistic,” Ritter says.
That doesn’t bother Libby Parker, 29, an education-services manger who is impressed by the level of involvement of Mountain Edge’s residents in service-oriented causes. “There’s not too much of that” in Las Vegas, says Parker, who bought a $435,000 home in the development two years ago. In addition to the good works they engender, charitable activities also foster a sense of community, residents say, important in places where everyone is a newcomer. In August, retired sales executive Robert Cullerton bought a $926,000 home at the Georgia Club. He made the decision to move there after reading about the community’s charitable foundation.
“I wanted to be part of the social fabric,” says Cullerton, who recently drove the lead car in a 5k fund-raising race for special-needs children and plans to take part in caroling at nursing homes this holiday season. Participating in these developer-sponsored events, which take place two or three times a month, has helped Cullerton put down instant roots. “I’ve made more friends in the past three months than I made in seven years at my old home in California,” he says.
The Georgia Club Foundation is underwritten by two nonprofit trusts, one funded by homeowners when they sell their homes — 3/10ths of one percent of the sale price of each home goes to the fund — the other by a $500 donation that developer Jim Vanden Berg contributes from each new-home sale. The foundation is run by a volunteer board of five club residents, Vanden Berg and a representative from Statham, and has distributed $4,425, supporting special-needs kids, the Boy Scouts, the library and a college scholarship. Since the three-year-old community started its program last year, sales in the development have increased 25 percent — a noteworthy rise in a moribund market.
Not all homeowners are happy with giving mandates. In a program similar to the one run by Georgia Club, residents of Mediterra in Naples, Fla., are required to pay a transfer fee of one-quarter of one percent of the sale price when they sell their home, which goes into the development’s nonprofit, Mediterra Fund. But since the transfer fee — which is disclosed in settlement documents when buyers purchase their homes — is a mandatory fee, not a voluntary contribution, it’s not tax-deductible. That’s caused some of the 724 homeowners there to grumble, according to Dottie Vanderford, who oversees the program for the developer, the Bonita Bay Group. Since homes cost between $600,000 and $7 million, she says the outlay “can be sizable.”
Marc Owens, a Washington, D.C., tax attorney and former director of the exempt organizations division of the Internal Revenue Service, says there’s nothing wrong with developers setting up foundations to help charity, as long as they don’t use the money to benefit their businesses directly — for instance, by building swimming pools that can only be used by residents in their developments.
Nor is it illegal to direct money to developers’ pet causes, or to assess fees as part of a community covenant, as long as the groups benefited don’t have a racial or religious focus. Homeowners who feel uncomfortable with particular charitable activities can always buy somewhere else, Owens says.
In fact, while the Mediterra Fund has acted on some of the developer’s charity suggestions that they award money to children’s charities, education and environmental groups, the board has also acted more broadly in its bequests. Since the fund began making disbursements last year, more than $345,000 has been awarded to local organizations, including a homeless shelter, a food bank and an adult day-care center. As board member Paula Powers, a businesswoman who owns a 12,000-square-foot home in Mediterra, puts it, the point of giving is to help where it is needed the most. “We look at organizations that are really in need,” she says.
The single-race special election is in danger of becoming an afterthought. In Burlington, for example, local officials planning a Town Meeting session had to be reminded recently not to schedule it for Dec. 11. “The silence has been deafening on the race,” said Michael Goldman, a Boston political consultant.
The district covers all of Arlington, Billerica, and Burlington, as well as most of Lexington and Woburn. The Democratic nominee, state Representative J. James Marzilli Jr. of Arlington, won a hotly contested four-way primary Nov. 13. He now faces Republican Brion M. Cangiamila, who had no primary opponent, and Thomas E. Fallon of the Constitution Party.
Marzilli holds an advantages in name recognition, funding, party affiliation, and address in a district that elected another Arlington Democrat, Robert A. Havern, to the Senate in each of the last nine elections. But he is not taking Tuesday for granted, he said.
“I’ve been engaged in a real grass-roots effort to mobilize voters,” said Marzilli, who has a team of volunteers making phone calls and sending notes and e-mails to friends. “We’re doing everything we can to remind voters that there’s an election, and like every election it’s important for them to vote.”
The Democrats spent heavily in the primary - Marzilli raised and spent roughly $100,000 - but the three general-election campaigns have not engaged in a multimedia message blitz.
“That means there’s not a lot of public attention being paid to this mid-December, holiday-season election. It’s a real shame,” Marzilli said. “The budget for Massachusetts is $27 billion, and almost every penny of it comes from the taxpayers of Massachusetts. The Legislature is spending your money, and you should exercise your Democratic right to take control of that by choosing who will represent you.”
Marzilli, 49, is an Arlington native who has spent 17 years in the House. He is particularly interested in energy and climate change and was named Environmental Legislator of the Year by the Environmental League of Massachusetts in 2001. He is working on energy-reform legislation aimed at reducing consumption of fossil fuels and encouraging renewable energy. In the past, he led successful House efforts to increase the minimum wage, abolish Middlesex County government, and provide a so-called circuit breaker program in which the state refunds a portion of the local property tax bill for low-income seniors.
Cangiamila, 45, is a lifelong Billerica resident who served as a selectman from 1993 to 1999 and previously spent one term in the House, joining the Legislature the same year as Marzilli. He left in 1992 to run for Senate - at the urging of former governor William Weld, he said - in a nearby district. After he lost, he challenged Havern unsuccessfully in 1994, after the Senate district was redrawn to include Billerica.
“This district is tipped. It’s very disproportionate,” said Cangiamila, who is a mortgage lender and previously worked in the electronics field. “Arlington has controlled the entire electoral cycle in this district for 17 years now, and so I’ve just been sitting back, waiting for Bob Havern to step aside so I could run.”
Cangiamila has been critical of Havern, who resigned to join a lobbying firm. His midterm departure triggered a primary and general election that could cost the towns in the district a combined $200,000-plus to stage. “I think it’s wrong,” said Cangiamila, who says he perceives a “moral vacuum” on Beacon Hill.
Cangiamila and Marzilli disagree on a range of social and fiscal issues. Among other reasons, Cangiamila says he is running because he thinks the Legislature should have given voters a chance to weigh in on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, instead of rejecting it outright. He also wants to reduce taxes and eliminate the waste he said he observed as a legislator and during a stint as a state employee.
Cangiamila says his biography and beliefs - such as his opposition to in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants - make him a good fit for moderate, middle-class voters. After he lost his first Senate race, he moonlighted at Legal Sea Foods to pay his campaign debts, rather than solicit from supporters, he said.
Republicans, who hold five seats in the 40-member Senate, are excited about Cangiamila. “He is a fantastic candidate. He’s a great person,” said Rob Willington, executive director of the state Republican Party. “The more he’s out on the campaign trail, the stronger his campaign has become.”
But Democratic analysts say it’s hard to conceive of anything but a Marzilli victory.
“I just don’t see how a Republican wins that district,” said Goldman, a longtime adviser to local, state, and national Democrats and who is friends with Marzilli but not affiliated with his campaign. “It would be larger than a miracle.”
Meanwhile, Fallon, 41, is trying to convince voters to eschew both major parties. The former champion amateur boxer owns a local tanning salon and works with Caregiver Plus, which provides emergency response systems for the elderly. He said he has never run for office before, because “my back’s never been up against the wall before.”
Fallon said the Legislature’s rejection of the marriage question prompted him to run. Generally, he said, he supports lower taxes, smaller government, and a movement away from the “moral-less and ethic-less” leadership he perceives on Beacon Hill.
He said he considers the Constitution Party - which draws on the Bible and calls for a government limited to the role spelled out in the Constitution - to be the party of the founding fathers.
Wouldn’t it be convenient to reinvent himself far from Dallas, where people didn’t know the complicated and sometimes painful history of the Hunt family? As a wealthy young man and natural leader, Mr. Hunt could have scaled the social and political rungs of any city.
But even as a 22-year-old SMU grad, that was not Mr. Hunt’s style.
Ray Hunt has lived life far differently from his father, H.L. Hunt, an eccentric oil mogul who built an empire in Dallas but remained detached from civic life.
“A lot of people feel they have to move to a more exciting city or affiliate with dynamic people, and Ray turns around and creates a dynamic city and becomes a dynamic person,” said his sister, Helen LaKelly Hunt, an author and philanthropist who left Dallas as a young adult. “He just looks at what is around him and transforms what is right in his orbit.”
Over four decades, Mr. Hunt has helped remake Dallas from an estranged American outpost to a cosmopolitan city at the crossroads of commercial and political life. His low-key personality and insistence on privacy have sometimes masked his impact on the city where his father, the eccentric oil mogul H.L. Hunt, built an empire but remained detached from civic life.
Mr. Hunt’s national reputation has swelled in the past three months, owing mostly to his decision to go to Iraq in search of oil. Hunt Oil Co.’s contract raised questions about Mr. Hunt’s close relationship with President Bush and prompted allegations that he stands to profit from the spoils of war.
But talk to Mr. Hunt’s friends and advisers, and a less sinister portrait emerges of the blue-eyed Texan who has been called a Bush crony. Most of Mr. Hunt’s free time has been spent raising a family and shaping institutions that define Dallas, not working to elect Republican politicians.
In addition to serving on one of Mr. Bush’s intelligence committees, Mr. Hunt has recruited a new, widely praised president to the Dallas Federal Reserve and led negotiations to secure hundreds of millions of new dollars for Dallas County hospitals. He also has pushed to build Mr. Bush’s presidential library at SMU, where some leaders think the institute would boost the university’s profile despite Mr. Bush’s polarizing legacy.
“He does not take on a lot of projects, but a few projects, and sees them to success,” said Carl Sewell, a Dallas car dealer and civic leader who has known Mr. Hunt since high school.
As a businessman, Mr. Hunt’s motives are foremost financial. His earliest involvement in health care was intended to make Dallas into a medical referral center, hoping to strengthen a health care industry that was losing ground to Houston.
But Mr. Hunt also speaks about a responsibility to help the uninsured, friends and associates said.
“Ray is about Dallas being strong,” said Margaret Jordan, a longtime health care executive whom Mr. Hunt recruited to Dallas. “He’s a dyed-in-the-wool Dallasite to the hilt.”
That feeling has prompted Mr. Hunt to find talented problem-solvers, hoping to recruit them to Dallas or get them more involved in the community. Some of them have worked for Mr. Hunt, fostering a sort of constellation of business and civic stars who have multiplied his impact on Dallas and North Texas.
Richard Fisher, an Oxford-educated investment banker, said Mr. Hunt was one of the first to welcome him after he married a Dallas woman in 1973. Later, when Mr. Fisher was working in Washington, Mr. Hunt lured him back to become president of Dallas’ Federal Reserve Bank.
“This city is not afraid of competition,” Mr. Fisher said. “I see Ray as a personality that symbolizes that. There are others, but Ray is the grand kahuna.”
Rise to the top
Few would have predicted Mr. Hunt’s rise to the top of Dallas’ social pyramid.
Ray Hunt was the youngest son of H.L. Hunt, a wildcatter who was once the world’s richest man. H.L. Hunt had three families by three women; six sons were older than Ray Hunt.
H.L. Hunt was a peculiar mix of intuition and intellect, with a gift for sizing people up. He lacked a formal education and made his first living playing cards. His fortune came from oil bonanzas in East Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.
For the most part, Ray did not grow up around his father. H.L. Hunt met and wooed Ray’s mother, 28 years his junior, in Shreveport, La., in the early 1940s. When Ruth Ray became pregnant, the married oilman sent her north, to New York City.
Ray Hunt was born there on April 6, 1943. His mother soon moved to Dallas.
While H.L. Hunt continued to live in a White Rock Lake mansion with his first wife, his new, secret family lived in a house in Lakewood. The children were given the last name Wright.
“I don’t think Dad went the extra mile for Ray,” Helen LaKelly Hunt said. “Ray’s qualities were very quiet, and I’m not aware that Dad noticed them until he [Ray] became a young adult.”
H.L. Hunt didn’t become a household presence in Ray’s life until his teenage years. After his father’s first wife died in 1955, H.L. Hunt agreed to marry Ruth Ray, at his youngest son’s urging, according to Texas Rich, a biography of the Hunt family.
“You will marry my mother,” Ray said, according to the book. “She is a good, religious person, and you will marry her.”
For some of the children, it was a complicated reunion. In her recent memoir, Swanee Hunt, one of Ray’s sisters, wrote that H.L. Hunt could be distant and continued to have affairs with other women.
But the youngest son did not seem troubled. Ray appeared to embody a saying on a plaque that his mother hung in the kitchen: “Bloom where you are planted.”
Mr. Hunt, who agreed to a brief interview for this story, has spoken only in glowing terms about his father. In 1999, he called his father ” ‘exhibit A’ as someone who accomplishes enormous things without the training and attributes you would expect.”
“I never heard him say one thing that was [about] disappointment or frustration,” Helen LaKelly Hunt said. “He’s just a problem-solver.”
‘Straight-arrow’ guy
Ray Hunt didn’t evince any disappointment when his father, an anti-communist zealot, forbade him to go to Stanford. Instead, Ray Hunt agreed in 1961 to enroll at Southern Methodist University, where at least he’d be close to home.
On campus, Mr. Hunt was quiet yet affable, becoming president of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.
Close to his mother and her family, Mr. Hunt went out of his way to visit his maternal grandmother during the winter break. While most students hung out with friends, Mr. Hunt drove to Idabel, Okla., to put up his grandmother’s Christmas tree.
“He was a very straight-arrow kind of guy, yet he was liked and nobody made fun of him for it,” said W. Clark Hendley, a professor at Saint Joseph College in Connecticut who was a classmate of Mr. Hunt at St. Mark’s School of Texas and SMU. “His values were set.”
Mr. Hunt’s SMU connections would last a lifetime. There
