City May Ask Judge to Rule on Scandal Papers : City Hall: City Atty. Witt questions Councilman Henderson’s decision to show his attorney the sex-and-hush-money report.

Under pressure to release documents related to the City Hall sex-and-hush-money scandal, San Diego city attorneys are recommending that a Superior Court judge decide precisely what can be made public.

Representatives of media organizations have requested documents related to a secret $100,000 settlement made with a former city planning department employee who accused her boss of sexual harassment.

Council members have been following the advice of Special Counsel Josiah Neeper, whose investigative report on the details surrounding the settlement and other documents have been kept confidential at his request.

Neeper has said that any release of information about the incident would open the city to a lawsuit because it agreed to keep the matter secret.

But Councilman Bruce Henderson announced Friday that he has turned over a copy of Neeper’s report to his private attorney for review. His action brought a sharp rebuke from City Atty. John Witt.

“Your unilateral decision to release documents to ‘outside counsel’ is most regrettable,” Witt wrote Henderson Friday. “The effect of such a release may well bear results which will be beneficial to neither you, nor the city.”

City attorneys said Henderson’s action might violate a confidentiality agreement between the city and former planner Susan M. Bray, whose allegations of sexual harassment by then-Planning Director Robert Spaulding are at the core of the controversy that is dominating news at City Hall.

Former City Manager John Lockwood approved payments of nearly $100,000 in March after Bray complained that Spaulding coerced her into having an affair. The agreement, which Witt reviewed, never was sent to the City Council because Lockwood wanted to spare Spaulding and his family embarrassment.

Spaulding has told council members that the two-year affair with Bray was consensual.

But Patrick McCormick, Henderson’s attorney, contended that no breach of confidentiality has occurred.

“I cannot use that information without the authorization of Bruce Henderson and probably the City Council,” McCormick said, adding that he might ask to see additional secret documents.

City attorneys developed the strategy of asking a judge to review the documents at the request of some council members, who are eager to make the information public. They expect to present the recommendation to the full council for a vote Tuesday morning.

“We are going to seek declaratory relief from the court about which documents we can release without liability,” Assistant City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick said.

Within the past week, several council members suggested privately to members of the media that they should sue the city to force the release of the report.

Attorneys for the Union and Tribune newspapers, who sought to open last week’s closed-session hearing on the Bray-Spaulding matter, are considering whether to file a lawsuit against the city to make public Neeper’s report, the settlement agreement and other documents.