Riding political peaks, valleys -Postmus glad to be assessor
George Watson, Staff Writer San Bernardino County Sun
Article Launched: 08/19/2007
 
He came sweeping out of the High Desert as though borne by the fierce winds that so commonly hammer the region's barren earth.

His rise to political prominence was swift - a county supervisor at 28 and chairman of both the Board of Supervisors and the county Republican Party within a few short years.

It seemed inexorable that Bill Postmus would land eventually in Washington.

The winds that carried him seem to have diminished, however, depositing him in the office of the San Bernardino County assessor.

Postmus startled everyone last year when he announced his intention to seek the post, which already was held by a fellow Republican. He raised more than $2.4million for his campaign - more than twice what the average candidate for a seat on the Board of Supervisors usually spends - and he needed every dollar to win.

"Clearly, he was a man who had a lot of things going for him, but I don't think he has those things going for him anymore," said Bob Roberts, a longtime GOP political operative from Redlands. "He is a very ambitious young man, obviously very smart, but not very practical. If you're going to build a tower, build it with a strong base."

Since his departure from the County Government Center, and later from the local Republican Party's leadership, Postmus, 36, has come under fire from fellow Republicans who have criticized his style of leadership and blamed him for fragmenting the party.

In his first interview with The Sun in more than a year, Postmus shrugged off all doubts and said he is exactly where he wants to be.

Postmus said he chose to run for his current post because he wanted to become "the people's advocate for taxation issues."

In the early stages of his career as supervisor, Postmus said, he decided that he would seek re-election after his first term, but he never planned on seeking a third term, he said.

Now, his focus is on the Assessor's Office.

"It kind of excited me - being a tax advocate," he said. "Being a conservative Republican, what an awesome opportunity to walk into the county Assessor's Office and being able to start lowering thousands of property values. People will pay less in property taxes."

Recently, Postmus took steps toward doing just that when he implemented Proposition 8 to temporarily lower property taxes for 11,000 residential parcels, amounting to about $238million. It affected a small portion of the county - which has about 840,000 parcels - but he said more reductions will be coming next year as the housing market continues to dip.

Party of one

When Postmus first announced he would seek the county assessor post 17 months ago, the reaction by many local politicos - Republicans and Democrats alike - was a furrowed brow.

Unlike a supervisor's seat, the assessor's post is a far less public, less powerful position, which seemed a strange choice for Postmus.

After defeating incumbent Assessor Donald Williamson in November, Postmus stepped down from his position as chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Party.

According to a news release, he was simply too busy in the Assessor's Office. Plus he had moved - leaving his High Desert home for a condominium at Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga - and so could no longer serve as the party's High Desert representative.

Several committee members said at the time that Postmus needn't worry, that he would be nominated back into the party as an ex-official.

But no such nomination has been made, and according to party sources, none should be expected.

"Over the years that Mr. Postmus was chairman of the party, he used it in a very self-serving way for himself and his friends," said Barry Hartz, a GOP activist from Apple Valley. "He controlled the selection of the executive committee. He conducted most of the business by the central committee by the executive committee, and not the elected members of the central."

Hartz was once a strong Postmus supporter.

During Postmus' first run for county supervisor, Hartz and his wife hosted a meet-and-greet for the up-and-coming young Republican. But after Postmus took over the party leadership, Hartz said, Postmus changed.

First, he stacked the executive committee with his people. Then he made trouble for anyone he thought he couldn't control politically, Hartz said.

When Postmus became county party chairman in 2004, Hartz said, he changed the executive committee bylaws to give himself more control and declined to share the annual budget report with the executive committee, upon which Hartz sat.

"I had a problem with it," Hartz said. "I still have a problem with it. I wasn't able to complete my fiduciary responsibilities, which were to give oversight to expenditures."

Apparently, others are concerned, too.

With 4th District Supervisor Gary Ovitt taking over as county party chairman, an audit - or, as executive committee members prefer to call it, a financial review - has begun to take place.

Executive committee members said such reviews are commonly conducted when new officers take over, but several other GOP sources - both local and state - said there are thousands of dollars of potentially questionable credit-card expenses that need to be tracked.

Roberts said he was told the total could approach $150,000, a figure confirmed by other sources.

Some, including Hartz, questioned why Postmus paid himself as much as $1,000 a month to be chairman of the county party - a role that is usually considered voluntary.

The pay was unanimously approved by the central committee members, said Postmus spokesman Adam Aleman, who has been a campaign spokesman for Postmus and later was hired as an assistant assessor.

"That stipend only covers a portion of the work that the chairman incurs," Aleman said.

Postmus said he did nothing wrong as chairman of the county party and that he wasn't worried about the results of the audit.

"In fact, I encouraged it," he said.

Similarly, he did not seem surprised by criticism of his leadership style.

"I'm a Type A personality," Postmus said. "What more can I say? But I tried to bring everybody into the fold."

A political animal

Friends and colleagues said Postmus' current situation stems from his character.

One High Desert Republican likened him to the general manager of a baseball team - a man who builds organizations and puts people where they need to be to succeed.

"In their own negative way, they are good at organization," said Al Vogler, a GOP activist from Hesperia whose wife is mayor of the city. "And that's on Bill. He takes several levels of an organization and makes sure they are well- integrated."

Couple that with intelligence, a hunger for all things political, and what many describe as a disarming charm that makes old ladies melt and you have a man with a bold future.

Others were not so kind.

"Bill is atrocious at building relationships," said an executive committee member who has known Postmus for years. "Being a good politico and being a good relationship builder are two totally different things. A lack of balance eventually shows itself."

At the same time, most agree that few are better than Postmus at sealing deals to make things happen.

According to a state official who has known Postmus for years, a defining moment came during his first campaign for supervisor, when he gained the endorsement of the San Bernardino County Safety Employees' Benefit Association - one of the political powerhouses in the region.

"That was when Bill, in his mind, decided that his political future depended upon his ability to cut a deal," the source said. "Now you have a man who is going into politics under the presumption that the way you get ahead is to cut deals.

"Part of that is the realities of politics. But there is a place when you cross the line - it becomes not about getting a better deal for the area, but for your own political desires."

Postmus scoffed at such notions.

"In order for me to be successful as a 1st District supervisor, and I was, I had to cut structured compromises that didn't benefit my district but benefited other districts," Postmus said. "I would say that I was able to successfully use deal-making to assist the High Desert in bringing more resources to them."

Secrets and scandals

As a county supervisor, Postmus was embroiled in a number of scandals, ranging from secret negotiations with a major developer that was suing the county to investigations of county land transactions.

Efforts by Postmus and Supervisor Paul Biane to settle a lawsuit filed by The Colonies Partners LP, a major Upland developer, were criticized by county attorneys who claimed they were asked to leave a meeting between the county and the Colonies.

Once the lawyers were out of the room, Postmus and Biane negotiated a $77.5million settlement with the developers. County attorneys objected in a letter to the rest of the Board of Supervisors, claiming the deal was not in the county's best interest.

The lawsuit was eventually settled for more than $100million.

Other county officials criticized Postmus and Biane for conducting the negotiations in secret.

The rift among top county officials brought out allegations of misconduct related to county land transactions.

The county hired a top Los Angeles attorney to investigate, touting its commitment to open government and accountability, but when the report was finally turned in, Postmus and County Administrative Officer Mark Uffer announced no criminal wrongdoing had been uncovered and declared the case closed.

For months, Postmus refused to authorize the release of the report. When the report finally was released, the findings raised questions about the county's purchase of a High Desert jail - a project Postmus had backed.

Postmus criticized the report and the investigation, claiming it overreached and was full of hyperbole.

In the past year, questions regarding Postmus' whereabouts during the Sawtooth and Millard fires in July 2006 prompted The Sun and the California First Amendment Coalition to sue the county seeking his calendars and communications with other county employees.

County officials have given differing accounts of Postmus' involvement in coordinating the county's response to the fires, with some saying he was intimately involved and others saying he was missing in action.

His calendars, released under court order, included no entries for a vacation, and county attorneys say there are no records of any communications at all between Postmus and other county officials in July and June of 2006.

In his recent interview with The Sun, Postmus denied being too secretive, and for the first time in a year, addressed the question of his whereabouts during the fires.

"That first week of the mysterious disappearance of Bill Postmus, when I was on vacation, we were actually with my family burying (my grandmother's) ashes in Wisconsin," he said.

His grandmother, whom he lived with for a time, had died in January, and it was the first chance the family had to gather together, he said.

Where he was during the second week and whether he had any contact with county officials during the fires remains unclear.

Postmus did not say, and Aleman expressed exasperation when asked later.

No more answers would be given on the subject, he said.

In recent months, Postmus has retreated to focus on his work as assessor. He has rarely answered questions from the media, and many local officials say they have struggled to speak with him.

Mostly they hear from him via text messages sent from his BlackBerry.

"People have asked for a year and a half, `Where's Bill?"' said Barbara Stanton, a High Desert radio personality who was highly critical of Postmus.

The road ahead

If Postmus is down, he's definitely not out, according to local politicos.

"Assessor Postmus remains one of the highest-ranking politicians in the county," said former Republican state Sen. Jim Brulte, who is still considered a political king-maker in the region. "Within any political career there are cycles. Very few political careers go up in a straight line. I can't think of many political leaders in our community who haven't suffered setbacks from time to time.

"The true test of a leader isn't whether or not you win all of your battles because no one wins all of their battles. The true test of a leader is how you react to the losses."

Postmus himself is optimistic. He talks about plans he has for the county party, even though he doesn't serve on it, while laying out plans for his office.

In the coming weeks, he said, he intends to announce that his office will continue reducing property values on thousands of homes because of the sagging market.

"The bottom line is I am jazzed and I have many, many more years of life ahead of me," Postmus said. "As doors open, I will take a look at them, and then go down that road."
At center of controversy

As a San Bernardino County supervisor, Bill Postmus was no stranger to controversy, which included:

GUMPORT INVESTIGATIONS

As chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Postmus was a key decisionmaker in the county's handling of an investigation into county land deals. The county hired Los Angeles-based attorney Leonard Gumport to investigate allegations of misconduct related to county land transactions.

When Gumport submitted reports on his investigation, Postmus and County Administrative Officer Mark Uffer, both of whom were named in the reports, said there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing and declared the case closed.

When the county eventually released the reports, Postmus dismissed the investigation and its criticism of the county's purchase of an Adelanto jail as full of "hyperbole, loaded wording, and in some cases unsupported statements."

EMPLOYEE LAWSUIT

In 2006, a county attorney claimed Postmus meddled in the county's handling of a lawsuit filed against the county by a former employee. The employee, Elizabeth Sanchez, had represented the county in labor negotiations with the county's safety employees union but resigned after revealing she had become romantically involved with Jim Erwin, then head of the union. Erwin, a longtime friend of Postmus', now works in the Assessor's Office.

The county's attorney claimed Postmus undermined the county's case by pressing for a settlement with Sanchez.