Council Will Go Public to Learn What Members Can Discuss

San Diego City Council members will convene a special session Monday to determine just how and when they can legally talk to each other and their constituents about city issues.

Scheduling of the unusual meeting follows allegations that council members last week violated the Brown Act by secretly meeting in their offices to carve up portions of the $644-million 1987 municipal budget. The Monday meeting also will allow public discussion of the budget.

The session brings to a head the growing frustration of council members concerning the advice of City Atty. John Witt and members of his staff that council members should refrain from discussing certain proposed development projects outside a public hearing--a legal interpretation that they say often leaves them embarrassingly mute if constituents ask about the projects.

The special session was requested by Councilwoman Judy McCarty in an open letter to her colleagues late Wednesday. The council newcomer also traded angry letters with Witt, who responded that the council only had itself to blame for “this mess.”

Discontent among council members over restrictions on their speech began bubbling months ago after Witt’s office advised acting Mayor Ed Struiksma not to vote on a controversial proposal to put a day-care center in a Scripps Ranch neighborhood after he had discussed the project with constituents.

Because the council decision on the day-care center was on appeal from the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals, it was considered a “quasi-judicial” proceeding.

Witt’s office has consistently told council members that they would jeopardize a fair hearing if they talked to anyone about “quasi-judicial” proceedings except in a properly noticed (that is, publicized in advance) public session.

But Struiksma, on a trip to the district in October for a park dedication, took a drive to the day-care center site and found himself immediately surrounded by 15 to 20 people who wanted to know how he felt about the proposed project.

“I thought this was a crazy place to put a day-care center and those people deserved to hear what I thought, so I told them,” Struiksma recalled Thursday. Because of that statement, Witt’s office said that Struiksma should refrain from voting when the project subsequently came up for approval in March.

Rules on how council members can talk to each other came into question after a furor last week over budget deliberations.

Councilwoman Gloria McColl was paraphrased in a newspaper story as saying a consensus was reached on some items of the $644-million city budget after a series of informal meetings among council members and their staffs.

McColl said council members were careful to be sure that no more than four of them were in the private meetings; five council members constitute a quorum.

She also said she held a meeting in her office with Councilmen Uvaldo Martinez, Ed Struiksma and William Jones about budget items while people waited two floors above for a budget hearing to begin. The private meeting delayed the start of the public meeting, leaving spectators and reporters waiting for an hour and a half.

The San Diego Tribune on Monday filed suit against the City Council, claiming violations of the Brown Act, which requires legislative bodies to deliberate on most of their decisions in open meetings.

Then on Tuesday, Witt met with council members in a closed session before he referred the matter to the district attorney’s office for a criminal investigation.

In her letter to colleagues, McCarty said she decided “enough was enough” after Witt, “without even bothering to conduct a proper investigation,” told her and other council members Tuesday that he believed they had “acted improperly” in their private budget deliberations.

“The next thing I know, you are asking the district attorney to conduct a criminal investigation of the matter,” McCarty complained, in a separate letter to Witt.

She also complained that Witt declined to give her some guidance on when talking to other council members is not a violation of the law.

“I need legal advice and, ‘It’s a gray area’ is not sufficient,” she wrote in her letter to Witt.

“If they are wrong, if I am wrong, then we and the city need to know what’s right. And with some specificity,” she wrote. “Can I walk down the hall and tell Gloria McColl I support her brush management program and get information from her which will help me fight for that program? Can I walk upstairs and tell Mayor-elect (Maureen) O’Connor I support her after-school recreation program and get information from her on that program?”

Referring to Witt’s earlier rulings that council members cannot discuss potential “quasi-judicial” matters with constituents, McCarty also said she encountered “disbelief and sarcasm” from constituents last weekend when she told them she couldn’t talk about the “disposition of some property” in her district.

She called for the special session to shed some light on what council members can say and “get a little black and white” on the subject.

“I refuse to be intimidated into hiding in my office on the 10th Floor of City Hall,” McCarty wrote.

Witt wrote back to McCarty on Thursday, saying he had trouble “understanding how I have become the villain in this piece.”

“It seems to me that the City Council has gotten itself into this mess and recriminations against me and the press are really not very helpful. I’m trying very hard to get the Council out of the hole it has dug for itself. Your reaction does not make a difficult task any more easy or pleasant,” he wrote.

Witt told McCarty that he doesn’t believe the district attorney will press criminal charges against the council, and that his staff is working to resolve the Tribune suit.

He said he thought a special session to discuss rules governing council discussion and comments would be a good idea.