Gadfly’s Digging Unearths Second Bradbury Scandal : Search: Trash yields clues that the city manager, who has now resigned, apparently misused public funds.

Rifling through a City Hall trash bin in Bradbury, gadfly extraordinaire Robert Penney Jr. dug up more dirt to turn one of Los Angeles County’s wealthiest cities on its ear.

Only a month after Penney found that county taxpayers were picking up the tab for 24-hour private guards in an affluent enclave of Bradbury, his latest discovery has led to the resignation of the San Gabriel Valley community’s longtime city manager.

Dolly Vollaire resigned Tuesday after a partial audit confirmed Penney’s findings that she had improperly used the city’s only credit card. Penney had pieced together documents showing that Vollaire apparently used the card to buy fine china or crystal and other luxury items.

The scandal unfolded over the course of more than a year.

In December, 1991, Vollaire had drawn a $400 cash advance on the city BankAmerica credit card while visiting New York City. The receipt was misdirected in the mail. The person who received it--whom Penney refuses to identify--showed it to him. Suspecting that Vollaire was abusing her credit card privileges, he was soon digging through a friend’s law library to learn just how to petition the city for documents on Vollaire’s spending.

In response to Penney’s insistent requests for public records, Vollaire sent him a motley and incomplete collection of receipts, some of which were altered, the audit later confirmed.

Vollaire was “giving me a bunch of phony nonsense,” Penney said.

When he showed his incomplete receipts to City Council members, they agreed to conduct an audit. But that wasn’t enough for the 65-year-old retiree.

He dug through the city garbage and struck pay dirt: credit card statements, ripped up and covered in copying-machine toner. Penney and a friend dusted them off and found that they documented Vollaire’s purchases at stores ranging from Chanel in Beverly Hills to Bullocks in Pasadena to Newport Beach’s Grafton Street--dealers in fine china and crystal stemware.

The matter will be referred to the district attorney’s office, and negotiations are under way to get the misspent funds back from Vollaire, said Bradbury City Atty. C. Edward Dilkes.

Vollaire has been out of the state on stress leave since March 26 and could not be reached for comment.

Penney’s request for receipts focused on three checks, totaling more than $2,100, that had been written to the Bank of America in December, 1991, and January, 1992, as payment for credit card purchases.

The preliminary audit, conducted by the Pasadena accounting firm of McGladrey & Pullen, focused on those three checks. Although the amount of money Vollaire may have diverted to her own use is not yet known, a review of available receipts and bank records revealed “substantial irregularities of serious proportions,” Dilkes said.

A more comprehensive audit of Vollaire’s spending habits dating back two years is now under way, said Christie Kubicek, a partner with McGladrey & Pullen.

Tuesday night, with the council scheduled to decide Vollaire’s fate, irate residents crowded the three-room bungalow that serves as City Hall.

Many complained that the alleged abuses tell a broader tale of a city that has operated more like a family business than a government agency.

The city of 830 residents is one of the wealthiest in the nation, with a median household income of $105,178, according to the 1990 U.S. Census.

Vollaire, who also was planning director, city clerk and finance manager and drew a yearly salary of $69,500, controlled the city’s finances nearly single-handedly for 20 years and was the only official with access to the credit card, council members said.

Although the City Council was presented Vollaire’s lists of expenses each month, and the signatures of the part-time city treasurer and either Mayor Audrey Hon or Mayor Pro Tem John H. Richards accompanied Vollaire’s on all city checks, Vollaire’s spending habits were rarely, if ever, questioned.

“We have a paternalistic type of system, I’d guess you’d call it, because the city is so small,” Hon said. “So the warrants are presented to us at the City Council, and normally we do not ask for receipts.”

But Hon and Councilwoman Audrey Chamberlain said they never had reason to believe the expenses were not legitimate.

“We questioned (the warrants) whenever there was something we didn’t understand, and the reasons were always reasonable and plausible,” Hon said. “Whatever we asked was answered, so there was nothing that ever seemed to be out of place.”

But some residents want the council held accountable.

“I’d like to know who is responsible for not checking these bills every month. I check mine,” said an angry Dudley Duncan Dorman, 78, a 15-year-resident of Bradbury. “I’ve been trusting you and all of these people, and it seems like you let me down.”

Penney added that his crusade is far from over.

“I blame them for 90% of what happened. I still want them all to resign,” Penney said of the council. “What they did is unconscionable. They approved all this stuff. When you look at some of the . . . petty cash and some of these other expenses, it’s outrageous.”

Hon said she is shocked at the revelations in the audit but was quick to defend Vollaire.

“When she took over, there was $6,500 in the treasury, and we’re now very healthy. So she’s looked after the city’s fiscal affairs very well,” Hon said. “I’ve been here 21 years. She’s given her heart and soul to this city.”

But other council members say Vollaire’s resignation may herald a new era of openness for Bradbury.

“We’ve got a golden opportunity to start fresh,” Councilman Tom Melbourn said.

The tip about Vollaire’s expenditures led Penney to uncover the other city scandal: that nearly $500,000 in county tax money had been spent over the past 14 years for private guards at Bradbury Estates, a gated enclave of about 100 residents. Penney’s discovery prompted the council last month to stop taking the funding.

The residents had formed a special district 20 years ago, paying for the guards themselves. But Proposition 13, passed in 1978, changed the way property taxes were collected and spent, and state legislation shifted the burden of financing the special districts to counties.

Penney said his Dumpster diving was dirty and time-consuming but worth all the effort. “Would I do it again?” he said. “At the drop of a hat.”

Local Controversy

The tiny, affluent San Gabriel Valley city of Bradbury has had some unpleasant publicity in the last month, first with a controversy over private gates and now with the city manager.