Saint Bob : ‘Holier-than-thou’ or just holy? The city attorney, revered and scorned for his style and personality, has staked out the moral high ground while dominating the political scene.

In his heart, Robert M. Myers knows he’s right.

And anyone who disagrees better steer clear of the Santa Monica city attorney, who for more than a decade has dominated city politics with a blend of legal wizardry, piety and, some say, flat-out bullying.

To friends, Myers, 41, is Saint Bob, revered as the father of rent control and viewed as its indispensable legal defender, a legal genius of the left whose minor sins are easily forgiven in the scheme of things.

“There are people in the (renters’ rights) group who will live or die for Bob,” said former City Councilwoman Christine Reed.

Foes view Myers as only too mortal, even--or especially--as he looms over City Hall waving the Constitution and his moral compass, anointing himself the conscience of the community and the center of controversy over such touchy issues as the homeless.

Myers acknowledges that his moral principles are an essential part of his appeal.

“I was obviously hired as city attorney (in 1981) because of my values,” Myers said in an interview last week.

In his latest scramble for the moral high ground, Myers upbraided his bosses on the City Council last month for asking him to draft an “oppressive” law to control camping in the city’s parks by homeless people.

Rather than rebuke him, and without batting an eyelash at the public scolding Myers had just delivered, members of the pro-rent-control majority on the council praised him lavishly. Then they turned around and hired an outside attorney at an unspecified expense to the city to get the law they want.

Councilman Dennis Zane later took the blame for even asking Myers to write a law that might infringe on his deeply held principles.

“You don’t attack an icon,” former Councilman William Jennings said, explaining the council’s defense of their attorney. “There’s no control over Bob, no control at all.”

Community activist Sharon Gilpin, who has known Myers since he was a Legal Aid lawyer, said it is the council that is deserting Myers for political expediency’s sake, not the other way around.

Gilpin said she has learned over the years to trust Myers’ advice, because it comes from the heart, without calculation.

“Bob ain’t a politician,” she said. “A politician wouldn’t act that way.”

Even some supporters concede that it is not just principles and politics that make Myers so controversial. In part, it is his personality and style that fuel his reputation as a formidable character.

“Bob is a Catholic purist,” said his good friend, Municipal Court Judge David Finkel, a former city councilman. “He’s a very dear man. He just has this unusual presentation.”

Indeed, Myers is a physically imposing man. Tall, beefy, tightly coiled, with a hair-trigger temper that he says he’s working hard to control, Myers is shy and can be painfully ill at ease in casual social discourse. “He’s definitely missing some social genes,” said a veteran of City Hall who asked not to identified.

Eschewing the civic social scene in favor of solitary pursuits such as reading, strumming his guitar or baking his famous cheesecakes, Myers said it is fair to say that he’s not one for hallway schmoozing and party chitchat.

Many people find Myers someone to be approached gingerly. He may mumble a normal greeting, offer a barely civil hello, or explode, his face turning its trademark beet-red.

On other occasions, Myers displays a dry wit, delivered deadpan in a monotone voice. When a reporter complained good-naturedly about being chased around the City Hall lawn by a homeless woman brandishing a big stick, Myers retorted, “She’s probably been reading your articles.”

Myers is well-known as a man who practices what he preaches. He is the principal financial backer of a weekend homeless feeding program in the city, and he gives large, but unspecified sums of his $105,000 annual salary to charity.

Vivian Rothstein, executive director of the Ocean Park Community Center, described Myers’ style as intrinsically linked to his deeply rooted Catholic faith, a personal witness approach to stopping immoral acts by speaking out.

Rothstein, whose organization is the city’s largest provider of services to the homeless, praised Myers for his willingness to take moral positions, calling it a rarity among public officials.

“He challenges people to think out their moral beliefs and it drives people crazy,” she said.

On the other hand, Rothstein added, such behavior is not always productive.

“He’s supposed to do what the community wants, not take moral stands,” she said. “He exerts a lot more power than is appropriate as a city attorney.” On the camping-in-the-park issue, she said, “he may have opted out and felt pure, but the community came off worse.”

One of the great ironies about Myers is the gap between his devotion and empathy for the disenfranchised and the way he relates to others on a day-to-day basis in City Hall.

“He’s like the guy who loves humanity but who doesn’t like people,” said one person who has worked extensively with Myers.

Julia Griffin, a former management analyst for Santa Monica who is now the assistant city manager in Concord, N.H., describes Myers as brilliant, eccentric and vindictive.

“People walk around that building in fear of going to see him because of the dictatorial and degrading way he treats people,” Griffin said.

City staffers say that part of the Myers’ treatment is punishing out-of-favor department heads by holding up--or refusing to do--their legal work. Because of this, few who work for the city will comment publicly about him.

“He’ll just sit on your stuff,” said Griffin.

“People go to great lengths to cajole and sidestep to get him to be cooperative or he’ll put up a roadblock--absolutely,” another City Hall insider said.

Myers denied ever retaliating in such a manner.

It is common knowledge that Myers does not participate in department head meetings or retreats and that he refuses to attend budget sessions or meet budget deadlines set by the city manager.

Asked about his refusal, Myers responded that he sends his top assistant to the meetings. Under the City Charter, he added, he reports directly to the council, so is not bound by bureaucratic conventions.

“There are some bureaucratic rules that are arbitrarily imposed from time to time that we don’t pay much attention to,” Myers said.

City Manager John Jalili offered one written comment when asked about Myers for this article.

“Bob is a very, very bright attorney. He would be more effective if he gave fair consideration to all sides of public policy issues,” Jalili wrote.

Myers is proud of his department’s record of hiring women lawyers and of having progressive policies on issues of particular concern to women, such as maternity leave and job sharing. But Griffin and some other people who have worked with him say Myers nonetheless has problems dealing with women in the workplace.

“He has a real difficult time when a woman crosses him,” Griffin said.

Not everyone agrees. Another woman who worked with Myers, but requested anonymity, said he is equally volatile to both sexes.

“I think he’s a bully but I don’t think he’s a bully just to women. He’s a bully when it suits its purposes. He’s reduced many people to tears. He abuses his power so badly and treats people worse than I have ever seen anyone treat people (in the workplace).” she said.

Myers is aware of what people say about him.

“I’ve heard in the past I’m an intimidating person,” he said. “I think that’s more a reflection of insecurity of the people making those statements than it is a reflection on me.”

As for the temper, Myers says he is a work in progress, an evolving person who has taken steps to curb his anger, but who is not perfect yet.

“I’m more flexible and open than when I became city attorney,” he said. “I lost my temper more then than currently.”

As proof, Myers directs a reporter to a legal secretary in his office, Berta Tavlin, who attest to a transformation in Myers between 1984 and 1986, the years she did not work in his office.

“I don’t want to hurt him at all,” Tavlin said cautiously. “I respect him deeply. This is the man who has gone out in the rain in the middle of the night to drive people to shelters.”

In Tavlin’s eyes, Myers’ gruff manner and struggles with communication skills pale by comparison to his good qualities. “Sometimes I don’t really care how Bob talks to people,” she concluded.

Ironically, supporter Tavlin offers nearly identical advice on how to counter Myers’ intimidating persona as critic Griffin, and numerous others who did not want their names used.

The word is: Stand up to Myers, don’t take any guff and he’ll respect you for it.

“If you send out signals of weakness, he’ll run roughshod over you,” said former Councilwoman Reed, who often tangled with Myers during her years in office.

Myers attributes his commitment to improving his interpersonal skills to principles he learned in the peace movement and is trying to incorporate into everyday life.

Since joining the peace movement in the ‘80s, Myers has been arrested 17 times, mostly for civil disobedience at a Nevada test site for nuclear weapons. He said he has also been arrested locally protesting aid to the military in El Salvador and most recently for opposing the Gulf War.

During the Gulf War, Myers declined to prosecute a woman who, as a protest, threw blood on the lawn at the RAND Corp., the Santa Monica think tank that conducts extensive defense research. Myers said he agreed with the woman that the war was immoral. The case was transferred to the district attorney’s office.

During the Vietnam War, however, when protests were the norm, Myers was in an entirely different place politically.

While a political science student at Cal State Fullerton, Myers attended Young Republican meetings and even checked out, but rejected, the conservative youth group Young Americans For Freedom, he said.

In 1972, Myers voted for Richard Nixon, did not oppose the war and was turned off by those who did.

“There was probably some culture clash on my part given my upbringing,” Myers said. “As I was looking at it then, they did not appear to be disciplined people . . . or serious. . . . That initially closed my mind to some of their ideas.”

Myers said he did not learn to question authority until the Watergate scandal, probably because he grew up believing the government always did the right thing. Now, he espouses a darker view: “The history of this country is founded on repression and lies.”

Born in Pasadena, the oldest of five children in an Irish Catholic family, Myers was raised in the Orange County suburb of La Habra, where he lived at home until years after graduating summa cum laude from Loyola Law School.

After attending parochial schools through high school, Myers studied at Cal State Fullerton, where, he says, he was a better student than in high school. It was in law school that he excelled, graduating first among students in the law school’s day program, and second overall. He also was editor in chief of the law review.

He decided to become a lawyer while a junior in high school, but would not disclose what motivated him. “Next question,” he said, closing the subject.

In any event, there was no long hair, love beads or magic mushrooms for this serious Orange County young man. During his college years, Myers said he spent much of his spare time working at K mart. His mission was to save for law school.

Myers said a defining experience of his youth was his salesman father’s involvement in a church-affiliated group that helped essentially homeless people passing through La Habra with no place to stay and no money. His father was also involved in a pioneering fair-housing council in Orange County, finding homes for black aerospace workers, Myers said.

After law school, Myers was a leading force at the Legal Aid offices in Venice, where a Santa Monica resident asked him to draw up a rent-control law. The rest, as they say, is history.

Myers has defended what is often described as one of the nation’s toughest rent-control laws all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which accounts for the basis of the renter community’s faith in him.

For the record, Myers said he has never lived in a Santa Monica rent-controlled apartment and at times after the law passed has not even lived in the city.

Aside from renters versus landlords, don’t expect Myers’ allies to be easily classified. Before retiring last year, Santa Monica Police Chief James Keane described Myers as one of the most principled people he’d ever met. Despite some tension with the police over Myers’ reluctance to prosecute the homeless for certain nonviolent crimes, he generally has good relations with the Police Department and is known for spirited defense of officers accused of misconduct.

Opinion is divided on whether Myers likes being in the eye of the moral hurricane. Councilman Zane and Judge Finkel say he is tormented by it.

“I think he’s been going through hell,” Finkel said.

Rothstein, another longtime friend, disagrees.

“Feeling under attack is a validation he’s playing a moral leadership role,” she said.

Reed, who battled with Myers for years, is more critical.

“Bob likes to rub people’s noses in his holier-than-thou attitude,” the former councilwoman said. “He thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

A big question in the city is whether Myers would enforce the law against living in parks that is now being written.

Myers says that as a rule it is generally not his policy to enforce unconstitutional laws.

Judging from what he sees and hears from other local jurists, Finkel said he believes Myers’ homeless prosecution policies are in line with those in other municipalities, but he presents himself in a way that makes the public feel bad about wanting relief from the problems caused by the homeless.

“Even with people he loves, he can be difficult,” Finkel said. “But he’s a hell of a good lawyer. . . . The city is really blessed.”

For some, make that a mixed blessing.