In a city that has a 30-year history of making bizarre mistakes on pension funding decisions and faux pension “reforms,” awful real estate deals and more, the need for San Diego to have a strong city attorney who won’t bend to political grandstanding is obvious. The idea that elected leaders have learned from these mistakes is disproven by recalling the events of early 2020, when city and San Diego State University leaders were trying to finalize a deal in which the city sold its 135-acre Mission Valley stadium site to SDSU.
There was broad agreement on key parts of the deal, including the cost and major provisions of the bold SDSU West multi-use project. But despite pressure for quick approval from then-Mayor Kevin Faulconer, City Council President Georgette Gómez and many other elected leaders and special interests, City Attorney Mara Elliott stuck to her criticism of the deal. She said that as written, it would put the city at risk of legal claims over its environmental impacts, had weak provisions overseeing affordable housing requirements and wrongly exempted the project from some standard city utility fees. Elliott mostly got her way. San Diego taxpayers are better off as a result.
Now Elliott’s chief deputy city attorney — Heather Ferbert — is running to succeed her against Assemblyman Brian Maienschein. Ferbert says of course she will maintain the City Attorney Office’s “independent, arm’s-length relationship” with other parts of city government; will build on Elliott’s pioneering use of gun-violence restraining orders to prevent tragedy; and will launch a new effort to protect housing with binding affordable housing mandates from being taken off the market.
In contrast, Maienschein not only hasn’t been a practicing attorney for many years, his selling point about his candidacy has been his ability to get things done because of his closeness to the city’s political establishment. But this is a reason to vote against him — not for him. He isn’t just hinting that he would see himself as akin to the 10th City Council member; he’s making it clear.
The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board s having a city attorney whose top priority is preventing the city from making still more costly mistakes. That is why we backed Ferbert before the primary and why we back her now. Maienschein is the sort of politician that the Elliotts and Ferberts of the world have to clean up after. Ferbert for city attorney.
