City’s Suit Hands Scandal Report Questions to Judge

Hoping to resolve a legal question that has stymied its own attorneys, the city of San Diego filed a lawsuit Tuesday asking that a Superior Court judge decide which documents related to the City Hall sex-and-hush-money scandal can be made public.

In a lawsuit filed at the City Council’s request, city attorneys asked a judge to determine which documents related to a secret $100,000 settlement awarded to a former city planner who accused her boss of sexual harassment should be made public by being released to news media.

The San Diego Union and Tribune also filed suit Tuesday, seeking immediate disclosure of the settlement agreement and the sexual-harassment claim that led to it. The Union-Tribune lawsuit also asks a court order prohibiting the City Council from proceeding with a planned closed-door meeting.

Although city officials have said that they would prefer to release the documents in question, a special counsel hired by the council to investigate the matter has advised that doing so would violate a confidentiality agreement between the city and former planner Susan M. Bray, whose allegations of sexual harassment by then-Planning Director Robert Spaulding spawned the controversy.

Former City Manager John Lockwood approved payments totaling nearly $100,000 to Bray in March after she complained that Spaulding had coerced her into a two-year affair that the former planning director later told the council was consensual. Lockwood has said that the agreement, which City Atty. John Witt reviewed, was not sent to the City Council for approval because he wanted to spare Spaulding’s family embarrassment.

The city’s lawsuit, expected to be heard in a week to 10 days, names Bray, Spaulding and four media organizations seeking the release of various documents related to the case--the Union-Tribune Publishing Co., Copley Press Inc., the Times Mirror Co. and Gillete Communications--as defendants.

City attorneys said in the lawsuit that they have been unable to decide whether the California Public Records Act “compels disclosure, compels non-disclosure or if the disclosure of some or all of those records is merely permissible under the circumstances of this case.”