Moraga Councilman Ken Chew improperly steered a town printing contract to a supporter not long after he was elected, one Moraga Town Council member says.
Chew counters that nothing was improper about it; he said all he did was suggest it to the town manager. He said the claim of impropriety, which originated in an anonymous mass e-mail, is "trash."
"This is one way to make something out of nothing," said Chew, who said he was disturbed by the e-mail's racial connotations.
Moraga Councilwoman Rochelle Bird said this week that in early 2007, then-town manager Phil Vince told her Chew pushed town staff to shift the printing contract for business cards and other materials to the business of one of his contacts. Bird — whose account of pressure by Chew was repeated by another Moraga source — said she told Vince the selection of the printer should be done via a competitive bid process.
Vince, now city manager of Martinez, did not respond Thursday and Friday to messages seeking comment.
Chew said he didn't pressure anyone. He said he only told Vince that his graphic designer, Cedric Cheng, had done a good job, and that a new printer could provide better town business cards for less money.
The town still has its contract with Cheng. Between April 2007 and this week, the town has spent at least $1,026.25 on materials from the Cheng's Walnut Creek-based company, according to public records of the town's bills. Records for a Advertisementhandful of the months were not available Friday.
The new cards are three-color and glossy; the old cards had one color and were not glossy.
Ethically, the questions are how hard Chew pushed town staff and whether the newer cards are of superior quality, said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles.
"An official can always make suggestions to improve efficiency or effectiveness," Stern said. "It seems to me it's almost much ado about nothing ... it really depends on sort of the context of it, and how much pressure the staff felt."
The anonymous mass e-mail, first sent Thursday, also links Cheng and Chew to council candidate Karen Mendonca, who also has used Cheng's design services for her campaign materials. The e-mail's authors responded to an e-mail from the Times but declined to identify themselves. The Internet address used to send the e-mail, moragansforgovtintegrity.org, is registered to a Burbank man.
That e-mail also repeatedly says that Asian-Americans make up 15 percent of Moraga's population, and that the Chinese American Political Association — of which Cheng and Chew are members — encourages them to block-vote for candidates it supports.
Mendonca wrote in an e-mail to the Times that her only connection with Cheng is contracting with him to print campaign materials. She went to Cheng, she wrote, in part because he had designed Chew's earlier materials, which impressed her.
The anonymous e-mail suggested a link between Cheng and Mendonca because Mendonca was endorsed by the Chinese American Political Association, of which Cheng is a board member. But Cheng said he was not at that endorsement meeting. Even if he had been, he could not have swayed the board — endorsements require a two-thirds vote of the board, he said.
Mendonca wrote that she has not made any deals with Cheng or Chew about what she would do if elected.
In 2006, Cheng was listed as endorsing Chew. On that endorsement list, Cheng was identified as the chairman of the Community Education Fund of the Chinese American Political Association. Chew joined the board of the association's Community Education Fund, with Cheng, in February 2007, according to the association's Web site. That was just as the printing company's contract with the town was beginning. Cheng said he considers Chew a friend. He heard that Moraga might need someone to make business cards, so he called Vince to pitch his prices.
"My expectations were, if I get it, great. ... If I don't get it, that's not the end of the world," Cheng said.
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