Convention Center Food Pact Ruled Valid

Refuting allegations that a San Diego convention center official violated conflict-of-interest laws by voting on a food contract for the facility, the city attorney’s office has said that proper procedures were used in the awarding of the pact.

In a report to be reviewed by a City Council committee Wednesday, City Atty. John Witt cleared Mateo Camarillo, vice chairman of the city’s convention center board, of conflict-of-interest allegations raised after he voted last month to award the lucrative contract to Premier Food Services Inc.

“We have developed no information which would create or appear to create a legal conflict of interest by . . . Camarillo,” Witt wrote.

McDonald’s Connection

The allegations--raised by Karl ZoBell, an attorney representing one of the two firms that lost the food contract to Premier--stemmed from the fact that Camarillo owns a McDonald’s restaurant in Linda Vista, while Ballard Smith, Premier’s co-owner, is a member of the McDonald’s board of directors.

With Camarillo backing Premier, the convention center board awarded the five-year food contract, estimated to be worth about $3 million annually, to the San Diego company on a 3-2 vote last month.

However, when the council’s Rules Committee reviewed the contract on Feb. 17, ZoBell, who represented losing bidder Service America Corp., questioned whether Camarillo should have disqualified himself, as had two other convention center board members, because of a potential conflict of interest.

“Certainly, if any member of this council or if any official on a City of San Diego board or commission were to enter into any arrangement like that, we believe it would be directly contrary to the city’s code of ethics (and would) tend to impair his independence or judgment,” ZoBell told the council members.

In disputing that charge, Camarillo’s attorney, Phil Connor, noted that the McDonald’s board has no direct financial relationship with individual franchise owners. That factor figured prominently in Witt’s ruling, because one of the major tests used to determine a potential conflict of interest is whether an individual who serves on a public board could benefit financially from his vote on an issue.

“One test is whether your vote could affect your interests in some direct or indirect way,” said Assistant City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick. “When we applied that to Mr. Camarillo, we did not come up with a positive finding, so to speak. Best as we can tell, the (conflict-of-interest) regulations don’t seem to touch on any elements of this case.”

While pleased with the city attorney’s ruling, Camarillo said Monday that the legal squabble over his vote on the food contract and the resulting publicity over the dispute have left a bad taste in his mouth.

“When I visited my mother about a week after these stories appeared in the newspapers, she asked me in Spanish, ‘Mateo, are you in trouble? You’re not going to jail, are you?’ ” Camarillo said. “I don’t think she’s at all atypical. I don’t know how you completely undo the impression that something funny or wrong went on here, even though I know it didn’t and the city attorney says it didn’t.”

Attorney Connor also suggested that ZoBell’s objections to Camarillo’s vote simply reflected Service America’s displeasure over losing the contract. In addition, Connor charged that the council committee violated its own procedural bylaws by “allowing these totally false, flat-out wrong allegations to even be made in the first place,” saying that ZoBell’s questions should have been referred to the convention center board.

“One of the purposes of the council policy is to prevent untrue or unprovable charges from being brought before the council, because of the damage that can do,” Connor explained. “But in this case, instead of following that policy, the council members seem to have kind of egged on the combatants to name names and make a big splash. And the result was some stories that were very embarrassing and humiliating to my client.”

ZoBell declined to comment on the issue Monday, saying that he had not yet seen the city attorney’s ruling and that it would be “improper to say much” before Wednesday’s Rules Committee meeting.

Convention center officials have repeatedly emphasized the importance of the food contract, noting that it will be the largest single income generator, outside of the city’s hotel room tax, produced by the convention center complex after it opens in mid-1989.

At last month’s Rules Committee meeting, council members also questioned whether one of the two companies that bid unsuccessfully for the food contract could have offered the city higher returns than Premier.

In the report submitted to the panel, City Manager John Lockwood states that the question of which company could generate the most funds for the city “cannot be answered with a simple, straightforward mathematical analysis” because each of the firms proposed different financial arrangements with the city and based their bids on different sales projections.

Despite that caveat, Lockwood stated that “under most scenarios,” Service America would generate the greatest financial return for the city. However, Premier’s pledge to include revenue from its off-site catering business in its payments to the Convention Center Corp. could ultimately produce the most income for the city, Lockwood concluded.