Magazine Pours Gas on Fiery San Diego Feud

This city’s legal and political problems stemming from a billion-dollar pension deficit and a disputed election have morphed into a feud between the mayor and city attorney.

City Atty. Michael Aguirre has called on Mayor Dick Murphy to resign and branded him a hindrance to resolving the city’s dilemmas.

Murphy has responded that Aguirre is a conspiracy buff and headline grabber who seems to delight in making reckless and defamatory charges.

The clash between the low-key mayor and the high-energy attorney has now reached a new high -- or low.

On Sunday, as most San Diegans were enjoying the sunshine or enduring the Padres’ 9-2 loss to the Dodgers, Murphy and Aguirre held competing news conferences to discuss a Time magazine story that calls Murphy one of the nation’s worst mayors.

Not surprisingly, Aguirre thought that the two-paragraph story vindicated his call Friday for the mayor to resign for allegedly failing to provide the leadership Aguirre believes is needed.

Murphy denounced the story as one-sided and complained that the magazine did not report the civic achievements during his term, such as a lower crime rate, cleaner bay and Petco Park.

On Friday, Aguirre called for Murphy to resign because he had refused to order his appointees to the city’s pension board to waive their attorney-client privilege so that U.S. Atty. Carol Lam could get more documents for a federal probe into the pension plan.

Murphy, a former Superior Court judge, says the attorney-client privilege is sacred. Aguirre accuses the mayor of being part of a cover-up.

The mayor is not Aguirre’s only target.

He also has called for City Manager Lamont Ewell to resign, blasted San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis for bringing an issue to the council without notifying him, and put out a report that lists the names of people who he alleges have broken the law in the pension controversy.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether city officials or employees broke regulations or federal law by excluding the bad news about the pension deficit when the city provided information to Wall Street before the sale of bonds.

The U.S. attorney’s office is probing whether city employees and employee labor union leaders are guilty of conflict of interest for promoting lavish pension increases and a risky plan to pay for those increases that depended on an ever-booming stock market.

The city attorney has little authority to bring charges in either the disclosure or conflict-of-interest matters. But Aguirre has a pulpit to make his views known, which he has used vigorously since being elected narrowly in November to succeed a termed-out incumbent.

To his supporters, Aguirre is often a lonely voice of reason battling to overturn a cozy arrangement between politicians and labor groups that has left taxpayers liable for a pension and health benefit deficit that approaches $2 billion.

“I think Mike Aguirre is truly a man of the people and he has the best interests of the city at heart,” said political consultant Bob Glaser. “I think he gets too zealous and hotheaded sometimes but deep down he truly cares.”

His foes find Aguirre’s desire to change the role of the city attorney’s office dangerous.

John Kaheny, a retired Marine colonel and former deputy city attorney, said Aguirre has brought chaos to City Hall by attacking his own clients and trying to usurp the mayor and council’s authority.

Previous city attorneys have functioned primarily as counsel to the mayor and council, occasionally acting as in-house defense counsel during troubled times.

Aguirre sees his top duty as uncovering illegality at City Hall, including on the council. He comes to council meetings only occasionally, usually sending an underling in his place.

Aguirre and Murphy were both winners in November.

For Aguirre, a former federal prosecutor and high-profile civil litigator, it was his first win in nearly two decades of trying for office.

Murphy was declared the winner in his reelection bid only after a judge ruled that thousands of write-in votes for Councilwoman Donna Frye could not be counted because voters had not filled in the oval next to the line where they had written Frye’s name.

In other big cities, a brief mention in Time magazine might go largely unnoticed.

In San Diego, it was front-page and top-of-the-broadcast news. Anchors clucked about how it would further erode San Diego’s image and pondered whether it would scare off tourists.

City Hall insiders -- some pro-Murphy, some pro-Aguirre, some appalled at the entire spectacle -- e-mailed copies of the story to other insiders.

George Mitrovich, founder of the City Club of San Diego, the city’s leading public issues forum, finds city government “dysfunctional” but also labels the Time magazine flap an example of San Diego’s civic need for approval. “This city has an extraordinary lack of confidence about itself,” he said.