Rules Would Prohibit City Lessees From Politicking

New rules proposed Friday by the San Diego city manager’s office would prohibit community organizations from working on ballot propositions or endorsing political candidates if they are housed in city office space and receive financial support from the city.

The new rules represent a dramatic expansion of city policy, which prohibits city lessees from helping anyone gain elected office.

Although many of the hundreds of organizations that rent space from the city do not engage in any political activity, a wide range of others would find themselves forced to choose between taking public positions on ballot issues or moving off city-owned land.

Worked for Initiative

They might include any of the 23 cultural organizations in Balboa Park, which last year worked for a ballot initiative that sought to raise money to upgrade the park; the AIDS Assistance Fund, which opposed last year’s ballot measures aimed at AIDS patients and hopes to open a city-subsidized home for AIDS patients; and Citizens Coordinate for Century III, which has endorsed a variety of ballot measures and rents office space in Balboa Park.

“I just think that’s, quite frankly, ridiculous,” said Dick Bundy, chairman of the Central Balboa Park Assn., which represents the museums, theaters and other cultural institutions in the park’s core. “They’re telling us that, if you want to stay in the park, you can’t participate in any of the political things that come along.”

“It’s not only dangerous, it’s ridiculous,” said San Diego City Councilman Bob Filner.

Violation Charged

The proposal by Deputy City Manager Maureen Stapleton stems from a controversy that developed this summer when the San Diego Business Journal accused the local chapter of the Sierra Club of violating its lease by meeting in city-owned space to review an endorsement made by the organization’s political arm.

In July and August meetings, the council’s Public Facilities and Recreation Committee considered ousting the Sierra Club from its office and, alternately, devising a more comprehensive policy on political activity.

Don Barone, the city’s property services supervisor, said the new policy is an attempt to remove the appearance that the city supports an organization’s political positions by renting them space at below-market rates or subsidizing their activity.

“The council doesn’t want to give the impression that, by housing certain organizations that are espousing certain political positions, that the City Council, or the city itself, supports or endorses that same position,” Barone said.

Policy Outlined

The new policy would prohibit political activity in the city-owned offices and would bar activity off-site by adjuncts of that organization. Public forums, leases of less than 30 days, and leases for market rates would not trigger the political activity ban.

For many organizations, the new rules would not be a hardship. “I don’t have a problem with that, because my policy is we don’t endorse things,” said Rachel Ortiz, executive director of the social services agency Barrio Station.

“It wouldn’t affect us at all,” said Tom Fox, executive director of the Normal Heights Community Development Corp., which he said takes no positions on ballot propositions and candidates for local office.

But the Sierra Club, which has endorsed slow-growth Proposition J and has a political arm that regularly endorses candidates, would find itself caught between the new rules and its desire to continue leasing space at below-market rates from the city--even though its federal tax status as a nonprofit organization allows that form of political activity.

‘Key Issue’

“The key issue here is that many of these (past) propositions would not have passed if they did not have the support of these organizations,” said Barbara Bamberger, the Sierra Club’s conservation coordinator. “And the city does not realize this. They’re kicking themselves in the teeth.”

Filner went further, calling the proposal a specifically designed attack on the Sierra Club. Under an extension of the new rules’ logic, the same restrictions could be placed on any organization that receives any Community Development Block Grant or Transient Occupancy Tax revenue from the city, he said.

“Why does the witch hunt stop with just lessees?” Filner asked. “It stops there because the one organization they’re after is a lessee, and that’s the Sierra Club.”

Filner also predicted that the rule barring off-site political activity would lead to a torrent of claims of illegal activity by opponents of organizations taking any kind of political stand. The city would find itself constantly investigating those claims, he said.