Gotch’s Bid for Coveted Board Seat Stirs Debate

After eight years on the firing line as a San Diego councilman, Mike Gotch made it no secret that he was ready to find a quieter--and more lucrative--job with a private company.

So when it came time to clean out his City Hall desk last December, Gotch took a job as vice president for community affairs at Torrey Enterprises.

Yet Gotch couldn’t let go of City Hall altogether. And within weeks, the environmentalist-turned-lobbyist began calling former council colleagues to campaign for a coveted appointment to the Stadium Authority Governing Board.

“It would be an opportunity for me to quench my insatiable thirst for continued involvement in civic issues,” explained Gotch, who is considered a shoo-in for an appointment.

Ripe Reward?

For others, however, Gotch’s campaign for an appointment underscores how the Stadium Authority--with its enviable perk of free parking and tickets to every event--has become little more than a ripe reward for San Diego’s political heavyweights.

And in Gotch’s case, they say, it also raises the larger question of whether it is appropriate to appoint a lobbyist to a position that affords easy access to the decision makers he may someday ask for votes.

“It’s not clean,” Mayor Maureen O’Connor said about Gotch’s impending appointment in the next several weeks by the council. “It would not, in my opinion, be appropriate.”

Even if there aren’t direct conflicts, added Mark Nelson of the San Diego Taxpayers Assn., appointments to municipal boards and commissions help high-powered lobbyists, attorneys and developers--who have millions of dollars riding on decisions at City Hall--gain the confidence of and greater access to the city’s elected decision makers.

“The problem with this community is that we’re so damned small,” Nelson said. “We kind of recycle our people on committees in this town.”

The result, said one council member who asked not to be identified, is a “subtle sort of social network” that runs City Hall.

“It’s all these interconnections that determine what goes on,” the council member said. “It’s . . . a certain small group of people who are helping each other.”

The political and business threads woven through the fabric of San Diego city government, according to Nelson and others, include:

- Land-use attorney Louis Wolfsheimer--whose firm lobbies and has even sued council members on behalf of developers--is a council appointee to the Port Authority.

- William Rick, whose civil engineering firm lobbies council members, is another council appointee to the Port Authority.

- Developer Janay Kruger is on the Centre City Development Board and the mayor’s task force on growth, which made detailed recommendations to the council last year on its controversial Interim Development Ordinance. The IDO, approved in August, slapped an 8,000-unit limit on the number of homes, condominiums and apartments that developers could build during the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, Kruger occasionally appears before council members to lobby for her projects. And until this week, Kruger was pushing the City Council to lift the IDO requirements so she could build 30 townhouses on a hillside off Faye Avenue in La Jolla.

- Land-use attorney Paul Robinson, a frequent advocate for developers, was a council appointee on the city Housing Commission, which fueled construction of low-income units for years by providing favorable financing for developers.

- Land-use attorney Paul Peterson is a member of the county Water Authority Governing Board and the city’s Convention Center Corp. Board.

- Political consultant David Lewis, who has run a number of City Council campaigns, is on the city’s Civil Service Commission.

- Developer Ernest Hahn was appointed by O’Connor and heads the Centre City Task Force, a group charged with spurring redevelopment downtown. Hahn also built the downtown Horton Plaza shopping center, which not only began the redevelopment but would also benefit from the government-induced revitalization.

Municipal Judge Dick Murphy, a former council member, said it is “difficult to avoid the problem” of recycling talent at City Hall. The same lobbyists and developers who have a keen financial interest in City Hall are also the people with the kind of expertise needed for municipal boards and commissions.

“I expect that is true in most cities because the same thing that attracts council members to appoint people to boards and commissions is the same thing that attracts clients (with city business) to those same people,” he said.

Biggest Plums

As far as rewards, Murphy and others named two city appointments in particular as plums--the San Diego Unified Port District board of commissioners and the Stadium Authority.

Murphy said the port district is the biggest plum because commissioners take trips to attend trade seminars and study international ports in such exotic places as London and the Far East. Two commissioners were sent to Fremantle, Australia, to observe the America’s Cup races in 1987.

Then there’s the stadium.

“The Stadium Authority is known in the community as a plum appointment in that you get free tickets to all of the games and you have access to a cross-section of elected officials during game time,” O’Connor said.

The authority is a nine-member board created in 1966 by the city and county to sell $27 million of bonds to finance the stadium. Authority members are the official signatories on the bonds, and they hold the ultimate fiduciary responsibility for payment on the debt.

Seven of the board members are chosen by the City Council; the remaining two are selected by the county.

Each appointee serves a four-year term, with a gentleman’s agreement limiting the appointee to two successive terms.

Originally, the authority was so busy that it met twice a week, said Dr. Al Anderson, a charter member of the board who has served a total of 16 years. The board used to have absolute say over stadium matters.

But the work became so wearing that authority members eventually decided to cede their powers to the City Council and become an advisory board, Anderson said.

Despite the self-imposed limit on its powers, Anderson and others say the authority has taken the initiative to foster improvements to the stadium.

Initial discussion about being host to a Super Bowl started with the stadium board, Anderson said, and its members have been instrumental in suggesting other changes--a new color scheme, more efficient use of stadium space, the replay screen in center field, landscaping in the parking lot, an expansion of stadium seating, construction of 69 skyboxes, an improved sound system.

sh Time Spent Is Not Taxing Yet the time stadium board members put in is not considered a strain, especially when compared to what some other city appointees must do. Karon Luce, the current chairman, said she is busy on authority meetings an average of five hours a week--less time than, say, the city’s planning commission may meet in one day.

“To give anybody an impression that it would be a great sacrifice to family and job, that would be inappropriate,” Councilman Ed Struiksma said.

So the job, everyone concedes, is a low-stress reward for the well-connected.

Luce, for instance, is the wife of Great American Savings Bank President Gordon Luce, a prominent local and national Republican. She was nominated by former Councilman Bill Cleator.

“He felt I was a responsible person,” Luce said. “I had worked on his campaign and he knew me. And I had some time and he felt I had some qualifications and I would bring a fresh look, perhaps.”

Before her appointment, Luce said her involvement in stadium matters amounted to attending “sports events there . . . That’s basically all I can say.”

Anderson’s appointment to the Stadium Authority, however, came after his deep involvement in nurturing professional sports in San Diego.

As chairman of a Chamber of Commerce committee, Anderson spearheaded a drive that began in 1960 to find a pro baseball team. He was instrumental, along with the late San Diego Union sports editor Jack Murphy, in luring the Chargers to town.

Yet Anderson has political credentials as well. He has been U.S. Rep. Bill Lowery’s campaign chairman for years, is a supporter of U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson and is the first vice president on the board of trustees for the Zoological Society of San Diego.

Both Luce and Anderson will be leaving the stadium board, having served two consecutive four-year terms. Two other board members--John Carlson and Oscar Padilla--are finishing their first terms and are expected to be reappointed.

Four Nominations

That means there are two openings on the coveted board, and so far there have been four people nominated for the positions.

O’Connor has nominated attorney Donald McGrath, who has served on her campaign finance committee. McGrath’s political connection to the mayor has prompted some council members and their aides to say privately that O’Connor is also using the stadium board as a political reward.

Councilman Wes Pratt has nominated attorney Bea Kemp. And Councilman Bruce Henderson has nominated the Rev. Ellis Casson, head of the Southeast Ministerial Alliance.

The odds-on favorite to capture one of the seats, however, is Gotch, who was nominated by Councilman Ron Roberts.

If confirmed, the former 6th District councilman, known for his environmental and slow-growth stances, would become the latest in a line of former council members to jump to the stadium board. The others include former council members Sam T. Loftin, Ivor DeKirby, Gil Johnson and Tom Gade.

“I think that fellow council members probably find it difficult to turn someone down who they recently served with,” said Lewis, the political consultant. “They’re going to be in a difficult position to say no to Mike.”

O’Connor said that even before Gotch left the council in December, he mentioned to her that he was interested in a position on the stadium board. O’Connor said she gave a noncommittal answer.

Shortly after his return to private life in early December, Gotch began calling his former colleagues to drum up support, council members said.

One of those who received a call was Struiksma, a longtime council foe of Gotch.

“I don’t need a hard sell from Mike to convince me that he would be an asset on the Stadium Authority,” Struiksma said.

Other council members who have publicly committed to Gotch are Ron Roberts, Abbe Wolfsheimer, Gloria McColl, Judy McCarty and Bob Filner. The six-vote majority virtually assures Gotch the position.

Gotch said that aside from his strong desire for public service, he wants a position on the board to help reduce the stadium’s deficit of nearly $1 million--a deficit that is made up in city revenues from leases of land around the Sports Arena.

He also said his desire for the job has nothing to do with free tickets. “Tickets are incidental because Torrey Enterprises has a skybox located three boxes from the city box,” Gotch said. (Stadium board members are not paid for their work.)

Denies Conflict

And the former councilman said he wouldn’t consider his appointment a conflict of interest. “We build hotels,” he said. “We don’t build stadiums.”

Gotch said a seat on the authority wouldn’t be an undue advantage because he already has ample opportunity to mix with council members.

“I socialize with the council members frequently, at least as often as I did as a member of the council, and we continue to relate to each other as peers,” Gotch said. “Would the council members consider it a problem? They are the ones who have to confirm their appointment. It was always my impression that council members avoid being put in a position where there is a potential conflict of interest, and I always steered away from a conversation that appeared to compromise me.”

Political consultant Lewis agreed that Gotch’s ties to council members are already so strong that his position on the stadium board might not be that much of a benefit.

But, he added, other lobbyists would be jealous.

“It’s certainly a position that every lobbyist in the city would like to be in,” Lewis said. “It’s a very congenial atmosphere to sit there over the course of two or three hours with eight or 15 of the people in the city that you would most like to be around.

“It gives you access in a good, casual way, where you are building relationships in a subtle way,” he said.

O’Connor said she won’t be voting for Gotch because his appointment to the stadium board doesn’t look right. She suggested the former councilman “quench (his) appetite for public service” by serving instead on the homeless task force or helping neighborhood groups lobby the council on environmental concerns.

“Mike’s a decent human being, and there are a lot of good ways to keep in public service without having, in my opinion, a bad message being sent back to the community from the council--if you don’t know somebody, you don’t get an appointment,” she said.