Ex-Costa Mesa worker in another flap over campaign signs

A former city employee walked into the Costa Mesa City Council chambers Tuesday night armed with irony.

Steven Charles White worked in Costa Mesa’s maintenance department until he was pulled into a controversy over campaign-sign vandalism two years ago.

During the heated 2012 City Council race, White allegedly was caught on video ripping up a sign that supported a slate of candidates that included now-Mayor Pro Tem Steve Mensinger.

In January 2013, the Orange County district attorney’s office charged him with misdemeanor vandalism based on the video. Days later, City Hall announced that he was no longer employed but did not specify why. It was never made public whether his job loss had anything to do with the sign incident.

A jury decided that it couldn’t be proved that the man on the tape destroying the sign was White, and in March this year, White was acquitted of the vandalism charge. He was not rehired by the city.

On Tuesday, White confronted the council with his own recording, apparently showing a city employee removing a sign from his lawn.

“The funny thing is, I have a video of your employee coming onto my property, stealing my signs and going across the street stealing their signs,” White said.

The video, which the Daily Pilot reviewed, is from White’s home security system. It shows someone pulling up three campaign signs from White’s lawn on Sept. 22. The person then walks across the street and starts pulling signs from a neighbor’s lawn.

White alleged Tuesday that someone close to Mensinger or Mayor Jim Righeimer directed the action.

White said he has felt targeted by the two politicians since being accused of destroying signs supportive of Mensinger and his slate mates in the 2012 campaign.

City officials, however, say there’s a simpler explanation.

The person shown in White’s video works in city code enforcement. The worker had been dispatched to remove signs that were illegally placed in a public right of way, according to a city statement.

“While collecting those signs, the code enforcement officer — who doesn’t normally perform this duty — mistakenly picked up six additional signs that were on the private property of two residences,” city spokesman Bill Lobdell said in an email Thursday.

Typically, political-sign issues are handled by an independent contractor brought in by the city during elections, Lobdell said.

Costa Mesans for Responsible Government, or CM4RG, the political advocacy group that gave White the signs supporting council candidates Jay Humphrey and Katrina Foley, confronted the city about the signs’ removal.

“We actually had to show them [the video],” CM4RG President Robin Leffler said Thursday.

The city returned the signs, and the code enforcement officer received additional training, Lobdell said.

CM4RG and White aren’t pursuing criminal charges.

“He doesn’t, and we don’t, want to see that happen to anybody else over a sign that cost at most $5,” Leffler said.

Staff writer Bradley Zint contributed to this report.