Council OKs Resignations, Delays Port Replacements

Over the objections of the mayor, San Diego City Council on Monday accepted the resignations of two veteran port commissioners, but put off for two weeks the politically volatile issues of naming replacements and seeking the ouster of recalcitrant commissioner W. Daniel Larsen.

In a surprise move, Mayor Maureen O’Connor vowed not to support any nominee to the Board of Port Commissioners, because, she said, new commissioners should be elected officials rather than political appointees.

Calling the 1962 state law that created the San Diego Unified Port District obsolete, the mayor said the city should push for changes to abolish political appointees on the powerful seven-member board and to give San Diego a majority on the commission.

The city has three commissioners and the cities of National City, Coronado, Chula Vista and Imperial Beach each have one, a condition O’Connor called unfair because San Diego has by far the most people.

Although her sentiment about the need for fundamental change seemed to win favor from the rest of the City Council, it was, on this day, the solitary item of unanimity about the Port District.

A council majority led by Bob Filner pushed through a vote to accept the resignations of Port Commissioners Louis Wolfsheimer and Bill Rick, effective Feb. 7, and set Jan. 22 as the date to appoint new commissioners. Both Wolfsheimer and Rick had offered to stay on temporarily until the new Convention Center is finished and an expected lawsuit by the center’s general contractor against the Port District is dealt with.

The majority--consisting of Filner, Wes Pratt, John Hartley, Abbe Wolfsheimer, Judy McCarty and Linda Bernhardt--also called on the council’s Rules Commission to analyze and make recommendations on changes to the Port Act, such as electing representatives. Any changes would require action by the Legislature.

Lastly, the majority delayed until Jan. 22 the question of whether to replace Larsen, who has angered several council members by reneging on his promise to vote for renaming the Convention Center for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Larsen, who was reappointed to a four-year term last year, has said he will not step down, even if the council unanimously moves for his ouster.

As part of the vote, Filner, who along with Pratt and Hartley has publicly campaigned to recall Larsen, asked City Atty. John Witt to furnish the council by Jan. 22 with a written opinion about the council’s power to remove Larsen, although he never mentioned Larsen by name.

Witt has consistently advised council members that they lack the authority to recall Larsen without demonstrating malfeasance on Larsen’s part.

Although part of the debate included glowing kudos for the work Rick and Wolfsheimer have done as commissioners over the years, another part was punctuated with a venom-laced exchange between Filner and the mayor that surprised even City Hall veterans.

The mayor suggested that all nominees for the Board of Port Commissioners face a rigorous conflict-of-interest test. Filner, his voice rising and cracking with anger, responded by saying that no one has yet been officially nominated and that, by bringing up conflict-of-interest questions now, the mayor was “slurring” the reputations of those who will be nominated.

O’Connor denied the accusation and tried to cut Filner off, but Filner wouldn’t be stopped. He told the mayor that, if she is interested in having a conflict-of-interest policy, then it should be applied to the range of agencies with City Council appointees, such as the Centre City Development Corp.