In 2014, Lake Forest City Councilman Adam Nick pushed to amend the city's sign code to criminalize those who tamper with or remove campaign signs without permission.
Today, the 50-year-old was charged with petty theft, receiving stolen property and violating that same Lake Forest Municipal Code section for allegedly removing another councilman's campaign signs on public display without permission.
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Nick was Lake Forest's mayor pro tem on Oct. 9, 2014, when the incident happened, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA). Around 2 p.m., he parked his vehicle in a no parking zone at Bake Parkway and Trabuco Road and instructed a fellow passenger to get out and remove a campaign sign on public display that belonged to Lake Forest Councilman Scott Voights, the OCDA claims.
An Orange County sheriff's deputy on patrol rolled up to Nick's car, conducted a search and found 10 or so other signs belonging to Voights in the back of Nick's vehicle, the OCDA alleges. The sheriff's department then launched an investigation.
Nick is charged with misdemeanor counts of petty theft, receiving stolen property and violating the Lake Forest Sign Code that he'd pushed to make what he is now alleged to have done a misdemeanor offense. He faces up to a year in jail with a conviction, but first he must be arraigned on March 2 at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.