Editor,
We have a structural problem in city government that results in our city officials placing themselves above state and federal law and anyone who would exercise their rights. Can anyone think of a right that council has not made either impossible or very costly to exercise? This year the city will have to pay out $1.4 million for violating a demonstrator’s freedom of speech because of a defective ordinance, and it paid $258,000 to the city attorney to defend the bad ordinance, which he was already paid to review before it was passed.
Recently, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric filed a federal suit against the City of Laguna Beach for violation of their contracts and state and federal law by the passage of a bad regulatory ordinance. How difficult is it to understand that the PUC has jurisdiction over utilities, not the city? Most of us don’t have the resources to fight back, as utilities do.
Sadly, none of this is new. We have witnessed, over the years, an increasingly toxic culture of control in city hall from council members elected over and over again, and from city managers and a city attorney with seemingly lifetime appointments. Control becomes hungry for more over time.
By contrast, an elected city attorney is responsible to the voters to head off illegal ordinances. In many California cities, elected attorneys publish written legal opinions of proposed ordinances for the public to evaluate. Not here. There is money to be made from bad ordinances. The attorney is only accountable to the city manager, is paid extra for litigation and the public is kept in the dark by the claim of attorney-client privilege. Aren’t the taxpayers supposed to be the clients?
No matter how absurdly the council or the city manger overstep their authority, they pay the city attorney to litigate, to assert authority that they don’t have. Who is served by this?
It’s past time to modernize and move to by-district elections with term limits for council as our neighboring towns have done. We also need an accountable, elected mayor, rather than a city manager, and an accountable, elected city attorney because we have no checks and balances in our city between legislative, executive, and quasi-judicial functions; it’s much cheaper than litigating with the imperious council. Let’s end the toxic culture of control, over-reach, and wasteful litigation.
David Pahnos, Laguna Beach
