Stout needs to rethink strategy

Dennis Stout, San Bernardino County’s former district attorney, wants his old job back and says he will see whether he can rally enough enough support to run against District Attorney Michael A. Ramos.Over the next couple of months, Stout said, he will reach out to former supporters.

This page counted among his supporters in days past, but at this point we would urge him not to run for DA.

Not if he’s basing his run on what Stout called “politically motivated prosecutions and investigations into county corruption” by Ramos, referring to the district attorney’s investigations of the Assessor’s Office and the county’s 2006 lawsuit settlement with Rancho Cucamonga developer Colonies Partners LP.

Is that what Stout would base his campaign on? Is he saying it was OK for former Assessor Bill Postmus to hire his buddies and pay them taxpayer money to do political work instead of assessor work and to send them to run his personal errands and to clean his house, as is alleged? That it was OK for former Assistant Assessor Jim Erwin to accept a $13,000 watch and a trip to New York from a developer without reporting them as gifts, as is alleged?

If Stout were DA, would he drop the charges against Postmus, Erwin and other former Assessor’s Office figures because the charges are “politically motivated”?

The Postmus-Erwin camp is vigorously kicking up dirt on Ramos, impugning his motives and reputation, to try to deflect the prosecutions against them. Stout’s comments seem to validate their strategy.

Ramos may or may not have some of the alleged personal foibles, but if so they certainly do not negate the need for prosecution.

For Stout to assert that the prosecutions are “politically motivated” implies to us either that he has joined the Postmus-Erwin camp for some reason or that he will seize on anything that looks bad for Ramos in his zeal to get his old job back, even if it works against the interests of the taxpayers and citizens of San Bernardino County.

Those citizens and taxpayers deserve a full airing of various corrupt acts alleged in the Hueston report commissioned by county supervisors, in the 2008-9 Grand Jury report, and by the Public Integrity Unit of the District Attorney’s Office. That airing should come from vigorous criminal prosecution and from the county’s civil lawsuit against Postmus, Erwin and the others.

When Stout was district attorney, before he aborted his 2002 re-election bid under a cloud of his own, he used to tell service clubs how he decided when he was in grade school that he would become district attorney. We thought it, at the time, an endearing example of achieving one’s dream; but now we’re re-evaluating it in light of the way Stout announced his intention to explore another run for the office.

San Bernardino County government has plenty of officeholders and appointees who put their own interests above those of the people they’re supposed to serve. If Dennis Stout puts his own desire to be DA ahead of the good of the people – and ahead of the need to prosecute corruption – we don’t need him to seek office again.