Volunteers, Mayor’s Twin Await Ruling

Mavourneen O’Connor, the twin sister of San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor, is working for the mayor in a City Hall office and may not be required to publicly disclose her financial holdings because she is a volunteer in charge of protocol matters, Mayor O’Connor and her aides said Monday.

Mavourneen O’Connor began working part time last week as a volunteer and works out of an office on the 11th floor of City Hall where the mayor and her staff are located, the mayor said Monday. The office is set aside for the two or three volunteers that have helped pass out mail and answer telephone calls in her office, she said.

Maureen O’Connor and two of her staff members--spokesman Paul Downey and aide Ben Dillingham--said Mavourneen O’Connor, who served as a top political adviser to her sister during the mayoral race, will be responsible for coordinating meetings between the mayor and visiting dignitaries and other groups, such as high school students. She also will field requests for meetings with the mayor, as well as arranging an itinerary when the mayor takes trips on city business, they said.

Although Mavourneen O’Connor’s role is protocol when at City Hall, she will be free to advise her sister on policy matters on her own time, Dillingham said.

“I can’t guess what the mayor and her sister talk about in their off hours,” said Dillingham, who added that the rules for Mavourneen O’Connor don’t “preclude any type of discussion” between the mayor and her sister.

“To think they will talk only about trips is stretching credibility,” Dillingham said. “I don’t know what they talk about.”

Because Mavourneen O’Connor will not be advising the mayor on city policies while working at City Hall, the city attorney’s office has indicated unofficially that she will not have to file an annual economic interest statement that lists all of her financial holdings, Downey said.

However, Maureen O’Connor, who said she intends to use volunteers more than her predecessors, sent a memo to City Atty. John Witt asking for a written opinion on disclosure rules for her sister and other volunteers.

“If the city attorney wants her (Mavourneen) to disclose, she’ll disclose,” the mayor said. “If he wants the other volunteers to disclose, they’ll disclose. Whatever he says, I will ask all volunteers, including my sister, to follow.

“We have hundreds who want to come on board, and I’ve discouraged every one of them until we get a ruling from the city attorney on how to incorporate them at City Hall,” she said. Until then, the mayor said her office is using only two or three volunteers.

Curtis M. Fitzpatrick, assistant city attorney, declined Monday to say what the city attorney’s office has concluded about the arrangement.