Council Bloc May Seek Ouster of Port Panelist : Politics: Larsen is under fire for changing his stance on naming Convention Center in honor of Dr. King.

Members of the emerging majority coalition on the San Diego City Council are preparing an attempt to oust Port Commissioner W. Daniel Larsen, who infuriated some of them in July when he reneged on his promise to vote for renaming the San Diego Convention Center for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But Larsen said Wednesday that he will refuse to step down, even if the entire nine-member council votes to ask him to resign.

“I just wouldn’t be willing to step down,” said Larsen, who was reappointed in January to a four-year term on the powerful board that runs the San Diego Unified Port District. “So they would have to force me out.”

An attempt to remove Larsen could spark a legal battle and put the council members at odds with their own city attorney, who has consistently advised them that they lack the authority to recall a port commissioner without demonstrating malfeasance.

“I think if they went to the mat on that subject, they’d lose in the courts because what he’s doing is exercising his judgment . . . as to what is best as a port commissioner,” City Atty. John Witt said Wednesday. “And that’s what they hired him to do. So there’s nothing close to malfeasance or misfeasance.”

A 1982 amendment to the San Diego Unified Port District Act states that “a commissioner may be removed from the board by a majority vote of the City Council which appointed the commissioner.” But Witt said that case law supports his position.

Three council members said Wednesday that they will bring up Larsen’s tenure on the Board of Port Commissioners on Jan. 8, the first council meeting after Christmas recess. On that date, the council is scheduled to discuss the departures of longtime Port Commissioners William Rick and Louis Wolfsheimer.

“I would welcome a chance to ask Mr. Larsen to step down,” Councilman John Hartley said Wednesday. “I will make that motion, or second that motion on the 8th.”

Councilman Wes Pratt, who said his staff is researching the council’s legal authority to remove Larsen, also promised to bring up the Larsen removal issue Jan. 8.

“I’m willing to support a new member on the Port Commission,” Pratt said. “I think (Larsen) has demonstrated a lack of responsiveness to the city of San Diego, a lack of desire to work with the city of San Diego on a number of issues.”

Councilman Bob Filner, who has called for Larsen’s resignation since Larsen reneged on his public Jan. 17 promise to support the tribute to King, also said that he will use the previously scheduled agenda item on Rick and Wolfsheimer to call for Larsen’s departure.

“I called for his resignation months ago. I see no reason to alter that,” Filner said.

Larsen became the target of resignation calls from Filner and supporters of the King tribute in April, when he announced that he had decided against honoring the pledge he had made at a City Council meeting to support re-naming the new bayfront Convention Center for the late civil rights leader. Filner extracted the promise from Larsen during a reappointment hearing that came a week after the council voted, 7 to 2, for the tribute to King.

With Rick, Wolfsheimer and National City Port Commissioner Delton Reopelle in favor of the tribute, Larsen’s vote was crucial to creating a majority on the seven-member Port Commission. Concurrence of the Port Commission, which built the $165-million Convention Center, was required to change the name given to the edifice in 1985.

Filner, Pratt and some activists also have been calling for appointment of a minority to the Port District board, which is now made up of seven white men.

Larsen also has angered Councilman Ron Roberts by pressing for high-density development on Port Commission-controlled tidelands along San Diego Bay.

Roberts, however, said he will not support a move to oust Larsen, leaving open the question of whether Hartley, Filner and Pratt can put together the five votes needed to make their gambit succeed.

“I wouldn’t vote to remove Dan if that vote were to come up today,” Roberts said Wednesday. He added that he would “hate to see a Port Commissioner that was being intimidated by a gang on the City Council. They have to call it as they see it.”

Newly elected Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt and District 1 Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer have joined Filner, Pratt and Hartley in two key votes this month that have suggested the emergence of a new majority coalition on the council, but neither could be counted among Larsen’s opponents Wednesday.

Wolfsheimer could not be reached for comment, and Bernhardt said she had not even considered the issue.

“I honestly don’t know,” Bernhardt said, when asked her position on Larsen. “I honestly don’t have sufficient information to make an intelligent decision.”

O’Connor was unavailable for comment, and her spokesman, Paul Downey, said he could not speculate on how the mayor might vote on the issue.

The lack of five votes or a contradictory legal opinion from Witt’s office might preclude a council discussion of the issue, but Pratt said that, “as a principle, I might do it anyway.”

The council, at Filner’s urging, scheduled the Jan. 8 debate at its Dec. 11 meeting. At the time, Filner intended to discuss the timing of Rick’s and Wolfsheimer’s departure from the Port Commission. The pair had promised to depart the commission after the opening of the Convention Center, but earlier this month wrote a letter to Mayor Maureen O’Connor suggesting that they might stay on for as long as nine months to help respond to an expected multimillion-dollar legal claim by the Convention Center’s contractor.

Rick and Wolfsheimer have subsequently said, however, that they will step down when the council requests their departure.