The Contest for San Diego City Attorney: How ‘Political’ Is the Job?
Four years ago, I remember being excited at the prospect of ridding San Diego of then-City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. I’d watched as he provided legal cover for San Diego’s lords and ladies, making sure that nothing more than the minimum was accessible to those of us unfortunate enough to be peasants.
I remember the shaming of the city as a protester was prosecuted for drawing chalk images on a sidewalk. I fear the day when San Diego finally has to deal with the repercussions of the flawed legal theory behind the so-called reform of the pension system. I suspect, but can’t really prove, the sub rosa machinations used to manipulate the media into making his legal opponents look bad.
To his credit, Goldsmith moved the City’s legal department into the digital age and was considered to be a capable administrator. That doesn’t change the fact that the powers of the office were used to pursue an ideological agenda.
So after a winnowing down of contenders in the June 2016 primary, Democrat Mara Elliott was set to face Republican Robert Hickey. She was an underdog candidate in a contest where the Democratic party favorites had all the advantages. Her in-party challengers raised seven times more money than she did.
Despite $235,000 in unreported contributions to an Independent Expenditure group backing Hickey by the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, Elliott won the general with a 15 point margin. It was one of the few bright points I remember from the November, 2016 election.
Deputy City Attorney Mara Elliott came from the belly of the beast, winning support as a candidate who could, on day one, use her knowledge of the City Attorney’s office to make meaningful change without politicizing the office.
The promise of having the second highest elected official looking to the Mayor and City Council for direction and providing them with guidance seemed to be where we were headed.
Alas, the lure of The Power vested in the office to tinker/intervene/deceive has cast a shadow over her first term. The concept, for better or worse, of the voters being Elliott’s overseer provided opportunities for legal maneuvers now being raised as campaign issues.
There are a bunch of issues her opponents are raising in this campaign, but for the sake of keeping this story somewhat readable, I’m going to mention two.
Elliott advanced a troubling legislative proposal (ultimately retracted) on public records access whose primary beneficiary wasn’t the public even as she claimed it was. Her 'bosses’ on the council were caught flatfooted.
Now a controversy has emerged over the City’s smart streetlights program. While the initial moves towards installing new fixtures that did more than just illuminate began prior to her taking office, Elliott was the one who said “no problem” when it came time for the City Council to approve the contract. She has subsequently said the contract in question was vetted by her predecessor.
From the Union-Tribune:
Goldsmith in an interview with the Union-Tribune denied that, saying at that time he was no longer in office and was not present at the two readings city council had before their January 2017 approval of the contract.
Elliott was present for both, Goldsmith said.
"I should not have been brought into this issue and false information should not have been distributed," he said.
It turns out that these devices do more than just save money on electricity and provide data on traffic. Law enforcement can use the visual recordings to solve crimes, as long as those crimes are committed in the city’s less wealthy neighborhoods, which just happen to be where more minorities live. La Jollans need not worry about their privacy being invaded.
While nobody is against stopping crime, it only seems reasonable for that sort of power to have some protections against misuse. It’s not like the SDPD has a spotless record when it comes to this sort of stuff.
And then there is the question of what ultimately happens to all the data collected. After five days, the minutiae are supposedly automatically erased. BUT… the aggregated data is just out there in the wild west of the internet. And, as we all should have learned from Facebook’s abuses of our privacy, it’s not all that hard to deconstruct so-called anonymous data so it can be used for commercial and/or nefarious purposes.
This aggregated data is being made available to dozens of companies. Mostly it’s being used to inform smartphone apps to perform certain tasks. However, it’s a short distance between getting help finding a parking place and powering up a program allowing individuals to sell spaces to park.
There are conflicting claims about the money trail concerning this program. What we know is that the city paid $30 million to buy into smart street lights, which ultimately are supposed to cover 8000 locations.
It’s been said (I haven’t seen actual evidence) that the former General Electric subsidiary (now owned by a hedge fund) providing this system has made one billion dollars from the sale of data generated by smart street lights.
The City Attorney’s office released a statement declaring that “[n]o one outside the City has access to the streetlights footage.” Great. Except that footage is just one part of data.
On Wednesday, these issues came to a head during a meeting of the Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee (PS&LN) of the San Diego City Council. A Draft Council Policy on Streetlight Sensor Data Use was unanimously rejected.
It is no secret that we live in a technological era, and no denying the benefit of this technology in crime-solving. However, allowing technology to show up in our neighborhoods unannounced and uncontrolled erodes trust between our communities, City officials, and law enforcement,” declared Councilmember Monica Montgomery during the committee meeting.
Councilmember Vivian Moreno expressed concern about the data collected by the Streetlights being given to ICE by GE, among other concerns, since “we [the City of San Diego] don’t house the data. GE houses the data.”
The TRUST SD Coalition, which is made up of 30 community organizations, has been negotiating with officials to create an overarching ordinance providing policy and oversight for all surveillance technology that the City currently uses and will use in the future.
This street lights program has become THE issue in Mara Elliot’s re-election campaign, and passions are running high in all quarters. She’s accused the TRUST SD coalition of working on behalf of her opponent Cory Briggs; they say it ain’t so.
San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott called a press conference held in front of the Alpha Project Shelter Bridge where she used the recent death of a security guard as the basis for an attempt to discredit TRUST SD Coalition as a “small group...telling a bunch of lies about Smart Streetlights to try to shut them down.”
In response to the City Attorney’s attacks on the TRUST SD Coalition, freelance reporter Seth Hall, admitting that he was scared by Elliott because she has “enormous position and power and is using it” to threaten community members, asked Elliott:
“can you please act like you’re a powerful government official and de-personalize your messages? We don’t want anything to do with your political campaign, we don’t want to be threatened with lawsuits. If you disagree with our 2016 concerns, refute us. Don’t use the power of elected office to try to bully and silence a bunch of individual community advocates and nonprofits. Not easy to get any city leader to collaborate on this topic, but gosh, we’d love to win your support for some fixes rather than get your lawsuit threats. Thanks.”
So, excuse the pun here, but in 2020 we’ve come to the place where we’re being asked, “Do we trust City Attorney Mara Elliott enough to give her another four years?”
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The Union-Tribune has done an admirable public service in publishing interviews with candidates for all the major offices in San Diego, giving readers the opportunity to see where those seeking to serve the public stand on a variety of issues.
I’ve included links in each candidate’s profile and I urge you to read them. The transcripts include “uhs and ums” so there would be no misunderstanding about context.
(The term “money quote” in my listings of candidates means I’ve picked something out from the UT interviews that seemed to characterize the candidate.)
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Now, on to the meat and potatoes of covering the election for this position. (In alphabetical order..)
Democrat Cory Briggs is a high profile attorney, who’s made a good living off litigating with corporate and government entities his clients believe have violated environmental rules and regulations, particularly when it comes to development.
This has made him some powerful enemies, particularly among San Diego’s landed gentry. “Many people say” (LOL) that you either love Cory Briggs or you hate him. The truth has much more to do with which media accounts have said or not said about him in the past.
Jan Goldsmith’s office is reputed to have orchestrated the most high profile campaign, which essentially accused Briggs of inventing his clients. Given that the government entities getting sued often end up paying attorney’s fees, that sort of thing would seem to be illegal. But “seem to be” and “evidence” are two different things, and Briggs has emerged unscathed.
The basis of Briggs' campaign, decided upon after he withdrew from running for mayor, is the central accusation that the city is not getting good legal advice from the incumbent.
Why he’s running:
if you want more government transparency --
If you want to hold elected officials accountable --
If you want a lawyer rather than a politician leading the City Attorney's office --
And if you think that the mass surveillance of San Diegans is unconstitutional --
Then JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN
Link to Union-Tribune Interview
Money quote:
...It’s the lawyer’s job to point stuff out to the client. I’ve read hundreds if not thousands of agreements in 25 years for clients. I can count on one hand the number of clients who come in and said, I read this now I want you to read it. Right? Most of them say, I scanned this and can you tell me what it says and I need to know the pitfalls. I need to know the big issues. I need to know whether my ass is exposed. Okay.
Nobody mentioned that the city is giving GE total ownership of every data point gathered through the surveillance equipment. Now, it’s entirely within the purview of the mayor and the city council, to say, we’re getting a discount. They’re going to monetize the data. If they didn’t, it would cost us $100 million, but instead we’re getting it for $30 million, so we’re going to do it. That’s their call.
City attorney gets to say nothing about that. City attorney should say, these are the civil rights implications, if we don’t have a good policy with the police, this is what you are giving up, right? Because there’s a fiscal consideration in the city’s analysis, right? You’ve seen these hundreds if not thousands of times, fiscal considerations in the staff reports. Here’s how much it’s going to cost.
Organizational Endorsements: Martin Luther King, Jr. Democratic Club, Downtown Democratic Club, Save San Diego Neighborhoods.
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Incumbent Democrat Mara Elliott has become famous in some circles thanks to the nationally-recognized Gun Violence Restraining Order program to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.
It’s a no-brainer. When someone appears to be a threat to the community, a domestic partner, or themselves, go make a case before a judge about taking firearms out of their reach. This, of course, has driven the gun nuts crazy, since they’d be deprived of their only safeguard against big gubmit, illegal aliens, and antifa.
From Voice of San Diego:
Since 2017, mostly because of Elliott, San Diego County has issued more than 300 such orders, more than any other county. They have been used in cases of domestic violence, to prevent potential suicides and with people grappling with mental illness. Police have seized more than 400 weapons and nearly 80,000 rounds of ammunition.
She has become something of a traveling performer, explaining how to implement the law to departments across the state. The New York Times took note, as the debate about these “red flag” laws raged across the country. Sheriffs in some states are refusing to abide by the laws. Other law enforcement leaders are embracing them. Even President Trump flirted with endorsing them before backing away under intense pressure from firearms advocates.
In all those conversations of 2019, you can find Elliott.
Elliott is also a favorite with local union and political associations, something it’s easy to lose sight of in the face of the criticism she’s faced recently.
Why she’s running:
Mara Elliott’s job is protecting San Diego – our families, neighborhoods and values.
As City Attorney, Mara launched the nationally-recognized Gun Violence Restraining Order program to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. She’s stepped up support for victims of domestic violence, prosecuted polluters to preserve our environment and safeguarded precious taxpayer dollars to meet our communities’ needs.
Money Quote:
We’ve got an epidemic, I think, in our nation with gun violence. And I feel like I need to do something to prevent that, even if it’s just local, but never ever could I have predicted that it would take off like this. But what I think we’ve been able to show is we’ve created a model that anybody can do. You can replicate this anywhere. Of course you have to have the right parts and make it work, and I want others to do that.
I want them to see that it’s not, um, it’s not an exhaustive effort. It doesn’t take a lot of staff. Once you learn how to fill out the papers, it’s actually pretty easy. And the first time we ever went and filed one, we sent an attorney down to the business office because they’d never seen one before. Nobody was using it.
So now we’ve really demystified it. And I’m really proud when we get calls from people and jurisdictions, we’ve trained that say, Hey, we’ve started a program but we don’t know how to file or we we just stopped this from happening, “we read about it on Facebook and somebody was going to show up at a school,” that feels really good. We’ve had quite an impact.
Organizational endorsements: South Asian Bar Association of San Diego, Run Women Run, Black Mountain Democratic Club, San Diegans for Gun Violence Prevention, Mexican American Business and Professional Association, Local 221 SEIU, San Diego Democrats for Equality, San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, IBEW Local 569, UA ( Plumbers and Pipefitters Union) Local 230, Pan Asian Lawyers of San Diego, National Women’s Political Caucus, Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood...
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Democrat Pete Mesichis a private practice attorney who has past experience working in both the criminal and civil divisions of the city attorney’s office.
Why he’s running:
I have a transparent VIEW (Vision, Integrity, Experience/Education, Will) for the City Attorney’s Office, in the spirit of the great City Attorney John W. Witt, to restore the office’s reputation as one of the most effective, diverse, and respected public law firms in the United States. My VIEW for the City Attorney's office reflects that transparency, limited only by professional ethical boundaries, is the cornerstone of my campaign. San Diego will have a consistent, reliable, and dependable City Attorney. My goal is to finally get politics out of the City Attorney's Office.
Money Quote
One of the issues is when it comes to the oversight of the office. Um, there are 150 attorneys in that office and each one of them has tremendous capabilities as an attorney. And we are seeing, mostly on her social media platforms, is a focus on her as opposed to a focus on those attorneys.
For instance, some examples that I have, is basically Charles Bell, deputy city attorney, Charles Bell won an award with the San Diego County Bar Association for service by public attorney and this is in 2019, and there was no notice of that. In 2018, deputy city attorney Han Hershman won an award from for the Ocean Beach Main Street Association for her tireless service to the OB community with excellent communication and follow up. So we mention that.
There’s 150 attorneys in that office, each working in different areas and there was a focus on what comes out of the office, which is demonstrated also by the fact that one of the first things she did do is elevate Gerry Braun, a spokesman, to the second in command in the office that says that the substance doesn’t value so much as the message and many attorneys may like being in the paper and being in the public eye, but there are many, many more that do not.
It’s also a municipal law firm, which means that there can be a very high quality of life. There can be enjoyment in doing the work within itself, but then there’s fear that either one of my projects might end up in the paper in a bad way or that a supervisor isn’t paying attention because what’s more important is the message that’s coming out and not the substance.
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