She Beat the Odds in Battle With City Hall

Who says you can’t fight city hall and win?

Elsa Gomez, a tax preparer, has spent three years fighting Santa Ana City Hall, and now a state appeals court panel says her fight was in the public interest.

As a result, the judges ruled, the city must pay her legal fees, which she estimates to be more than $90,000. Fighting the city was worth every penny, she says. “I did this not just for myself, but for every [downtown] merchant.”

Gomez objected to the way the city was managing a fund set up in 1984 to promote the downtown business district, including a decision to stop using the money to support outdoor events and promotions.

She sued the city, and they reached a settlement in 2004. The city agreed to allow money from the fund to be spent on promotions and not to mix business association funds with the general fund. But the two sides have been fighting ever since about who should pay Gomez’s attorney’s fees.

City Atty. Joseph Fletcher said he thought that the appellate judges misinterpreted key facts in the suit. The city could appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court, he said, depending on what the City Council decides. He is still negotiating how much the city would have to pay Gomez.

The Gomez lawsuit struck a chord at the time among business owners who saw the events and festivals as key to their economic survival and questioned why their contributions to the business district would not be spent to promote them.

About 800 businesses pay a total of $175,000 annually into a business improvement district fund, said city downtown district administrator Bill Manis.

Gomez’s attorney, Barbara Blinderman, said her client “wanted to do this for the merchants in the area, and she just wouldn’t stop” until she won.

On April 20, the three-member panel of the 4th District Appellate Court overruled a Superior Court judge who ruled that because Gomez had not won the case, but settled, she was not entitled to attorney fees.

The appeals panel pointed to the city’s former downtown development manager’s statement that $370,000 in downtown money had been mixed with the general fund.

Fletcher said that the manager, who no longer works for the city, was mistaken. The money, he said, was always kept separate.

However, the appeals panel held that Gomez had acted in the public interest and ordered the city to pay her attorney’s fees.

Gomez’s battle was long but the list of kudos from downtown merchants is short.

Gomez has been asked to resign as president of an organization she formed after the lawsuit: the 200-member La Calle Cuatro de Santa Ana (Fourth Street of Santa Ana) Assn. Some merchants say Gomez, whose business is on Fourth Street, has not been receptive to others’ ideas.

“We thought her lawsuit would help the merchants,” said Manuel Pena, owner of Pena Insurance. “The honeymoon was short.”

Gomez, who thinks her opponents are a small group, says the lawsuit is important. “If we hadn’t had this lawsuit, all of this money would have gone to the general fund,” Gomez said.