NORTH COUNTY (California) TIMES

May 22, 2006

No fines or citations for Horn

By GIG CONAUGHTON – Staff Writer

NORTH COUNTY ---- County code enforcement officials said Monday that Supervisor Bill Horn would not be cited or fined, despite his admission last week that he had let his longtime ranch hands live in a non-permitted trailer for at least the last five years.

Code Enforcement Chief Pam Elias said enforcement officers visited Horn's Valley Center ranch Monday morning and the non-permitted trailer was no longer there. Horn aides said the ranch hands were moved to one of the supervisor's apartments.

"There will be no citation, not even a warning," Elias said. "When we got out there it was gone. The way the law is written, it requires us to issue a warning if we observe a violation ... You really can't issue them a warning if there is nothing there."

Horn, who is running June 6 for a fourth consecutive term, admitted to reporters Friday that he never got the proper permits for the trailer because he never intended it to be a permanent home.

Sixty-four-year-old Dolores Soto said Friday that he had worked for Horn for 25 years, and became a legal resident during the 1986 amnesty for illegal immigrants. Horn representatives said Monday they were "researching" to determine if it was legal for them to release records proving that Horn, as the employer of Sotos and his adult son, Israel, had followed the law and collected Social Security and workers' compensation taxes for them out of their paychecks.

Among other things, county permits would have required that the trailer be hooked up to a septic system.

Horn said he intended to build a county-approved building for the Sotos but "hadn't gotten around to it."

Horn said the Sotos had lived in the trailer at different times for the last five years. However, Dolores Soto said through an interpreter Friday that he had lived in the trailer for 15 years.

Horn allowed reporters onto his Valley Center ranch Friday to head off election-year rumors and whispers that he had hired illegal immigrants to work his ranch. Both Soto and his son had green cards showing their legal residency.

However, Horn admitted that the shabby trailer was never permitted when asked if he had followed county regulations to get permission for his farm housing.

The trailer had electricity, a microwave, two televisions and hot and cold running water, but no bathroom or shower facility ---- which were located elsewhere on Horn's 34-acre ranch.

Horn said that Soto and his son did live for a while in apartment buildings that Horn owns, but that the men preferred living in the trailer.

Delores Soto brushed aside suggestions that the trailer was "poor." But Horn sheepishly objected when a photographer tried to take pictures inside the old trailer, and said that it could have been "nicer" and "newer."

Horn did not return phone calls Monday.

But in a written statement, Horn repeated what he said Friday, that when he bought his ranch in the 1970s he jointly owned some adjoining property with his now-deceased business partner that had a county-permitted farmworker house. He said the housing was connected to septic lines and was properly graded.

"When my partner passed away and the lot was subdivided a few years back," Horn said in his statement, "my two workers decided to live in a trailer that had been on my property for years. The trailer on my lot was meant to be temporary until a more permanent residence could be built."

Horn said Friday that he had already notified county code enforcement officials about the illegal trailer, and said he intended to take it down and offer the Sotos a room in his house, or a place at one of his apartment buildings.

Job Nelson, Horn's campaign consultant, said the supervisor reported Monday that the Sotos had moved to one of Horn's apartments.

Horn, a multimillionaire who has multiple real estate holdings in addition to his ranch, said that he respected the Sotos, was friends with their families and had helped them with financial loans, and by letting them live in the trailer free of charge.

Horn said he had been in the agricultural business for decades and suggested that it was normal for farmworkers to live in meager conditions.

Horn said Friday he knew he "would get slaughtered" for the trailer situation, but that he was willing to do whatever was necessary to come into compliance with county regulations.

Elias, meanwhile, said that although the county issues the permitting for farmworker housing, and there are a huge number of small farms in the region, San Diego County does not do any pro-active, routine reviews to see if farm housing is up to code.

"We just don't have the resources to do pro-active actions like that," she said. "The way this program runs, it's not pro-active ----- it's reactive. We wait for a complaint to come in."

Elias said that Horn's representatives told code enforcement officers Monday that the supervisor was still interested in building a county-permitted structure on his property. But she said officers were told that Horn would probably not submit any applications to do that right away.