Citron Might Still Get Wish: Doing Community Service

ORANGE — Orange County sheriff’s officials Monday interviewed former Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron to determine whether he is eligible to serve his one-year fraud sentence by doing community service during the day and spending his nights at home, his attorney said.

Citron, who reported for jail processing four days before his sentence actually begins, is diligently seeking entrance into a community work program that allows him to avoid spending time behind bars in the county jail.

The frail 71-year-old former official, whose risky investments are widely blamed for the county’s bankruptcy, reported about 2 p.m. to the Theo Lacy Branch Jail, where a member of his defense team waited in the jail’s lobby as deputies escorted Citron to a secure room for interviews and a medical examination.

“Bob was pre-booked,” said David W. Wiechert, his lawyer. “The process lasted about an hour and a half. He was questioned about his medical condition.”

Wiechert said his client is being considered for the Sheriff’s Department’s community work program, although at this time “he doesn’t have any idea what the job would be.”

The Laguna Beach Police Department, Wiechert said, has apparently expressed interest in allowing Citron to perform clerical duties there.

“Given Bob’s work at the Community Development Center” in Santa Ana, he said, “which involved more writing than physical labor, he hopes they will let him take a similar job” with the Laguna Beach Police department.

Wiechert said Citron would be told whether he’ll be allowed into the work program before Friday, when his sentence officially begins.

Deputies questioned Citron extensively about his medical problems, which have included skin cancer, prostate problems, lower spinal separation, bursitis and ringing in the ears.

Although most community service tasks involve picking up trash, washing cars or mopping floors, Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates said there are duties that are less physically taxing that can be given to people with medical problems.

Generally, prisoners are not allowed to participate in the community work program until they have served all but 45 days of their sentence, but Gates said he may make an exception for Citron.

Gates said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger, the judge who sentenced Citron, has indicated he would like the former bureaucrat placed in the community work program if possible.

“We’re going to try and fulfill the wishes of the court,” Gates said.

Before Citron reported to jail Monday, Wiechert asked Czuleger to place his client in the Laguna Beach police work detail where paperwork is the normal duty.

Czuleger denied the request, saying he wanted to wait and see what the sheriff’s officials concluded about Citron’s suitability for the community work release program.

Citron, who pleaded guilty to six fraud charges, was sentenced to a year in jail instead of prison time because of his early admission of guilt and cooperation with authorities investigating the county’s bankruptcy--the largest municipal collapse in U.S. history.

The sheriff has sole discretion over whether to confine nonviolent offenders or to put them to work on public property.

Currently, about 375 people are enrolled in the community work program.