Alatorre Will Serve 8-Month Term at Home

Former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre was sentenced in federal court Monday to eight months of home detention for evading income taxes in 1996 on $42,000 in payments from parties seeking influence.

Alatorre, once a rising star in state politics as an influential member of the Assembly, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi to pay the $12,970 in back taxes.

This represented a plea bargain that ended a four-year corruption investigation, but Takasugi did not go along with all of it. Without explanation, he dropped a provision for three years of supervised release after the home detention is finished. He did put Alatorre on probation for that time, however.

Alatorre, 58, told the judge before sentencing that he “accepted responsibility” for his conduct, but he said nothing about apologizing for it.

Outside the courthouse, he told reporters only that “I’m happy it’s over.”

The assistant U.S. attorney who handled the prosecution, Alicia Villarreal, suggested it would have been difficult to secure a conviction against Alatorre if the case had gone to trial.

“Many of the witnesses would have been hostile witnesses who were friends of Richard Alatorre,” she explained. “And given that much of the evidence was circumstantial, the government felt this was a fair and just resolution. I believe that too.”

Villarreal took note of the fact that even after pleading guilty in April, Alatorre’s popularity with other politicians allowed him for months to stay on public payrolls.

“If the state or the city of Los Angeles want to hire a convicted felon, it’s not a crime,” she said. “It’s up to them.”

In fact, Alatorre lost, but only on July 27, a $114,000-a-year job with the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, to which he had been appointed by state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco).

From March through May, he also had a $7,500-a-month consulting position with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power--a contract that former Mayor Richard Riordan helped him secure. Since the contract was canceled, new City Controller Laura Chick has raised questions about what he did for the money and has delayed paying him the last $7,500.

Most recently, the Compton Community College District has hired Alatorre to do strategic planning and lobby the Legislature for $5,000 a month.

Once one of California’s most prominent Latino elected officials, he was a member of the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a city councilman at the time of the felony offenses. He had represented the council district stretching from Boyle Heights to Eagle Rock for 14 years.

Villarreal said that under the home detention guidelines, Alatorre will be permitted to go to work and shop for groceries.

Federal probation officials said most other trips outside the house are forbidden except by court order. Those serving such sentences are required to wear a monitoring device 24 hours a day.

If ordered by the courts, as in Alatorre’s case, people under home detention are required to pay for the monitoring device. And if the court approves travel or other time off the monitor, that time is added to the total home detention time.

Takasugi also ordered that Alatorre, who was discovered to have a cocaine habit at one point while serving on the City Council, undergo periodic drug testing.

Alatorre served in the state Assembly from 1973 to 1985 and on the Los Angeles City Council from 1985 until 1999. In the Legislature, he served as chairman of the key Elections and Reapportionment Committee, and at another time, the Governmental Organization Committee, and he was a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. On the City Council, he was chairman of such vital committees as Budget and Finance, and Rules and Elections.