Before moving halfway across the country to take over as chief operating officer for the city of San Diego, Eric Dargan signed a contract promising him three months’ notice if Mayor Todd Gloria planned to terminate the agreement.
The Texas transplant also was to collect three months’ pay in severance, along with benefits.
But a new lawsuit by the former COO says that when Gloria closed out of the chief operating officer position in February and personally assumed those responsibilities, he failed to meet the of that contract.
“On or about February 18, 2025, Mayor Gloria terminated Dargan without cause and refused to pay Dargan the agreed-upon three months severance with benefits,” states the lawsuit, filed last week in San Diego Superior Court.
The litigation, filed by attorney Michael Conger, also accuses the city of racial discrimination and failing to prevent racial discrimination, alleging that Dargan was targeted because he is Black.
Dargan was relieved of his duties earlier this year, when Gloria said he was slashing the city bureaucracy as part of a restructuring in the face of a $258 million budget deficit.
Now the legal dispute over Dargan’s firing could cost taxpayers more than the sum he says he is owed in severance.
City Attorney Heather Ferbert’s office said in an email that it could not comment on personnel matters.
Paola Avila, the mayor’s chief of staff, said the Dargan claim has no merit.
“While eliminating the COO position provides budgetary savings, Mr. Dargan was, in fact, terminated for cause,” Avila wrote in an email. “This will be made clear in the city’s response to Mr. Dargan’s complaint.”
When Gloria eliminated Dargan’s position, he framed it as a necessary step to balancing the city budget.
Among other moves, Gloria merged a handful of departments and closed out several top-level management jobs. He said the changes would save $5.3 million and pledged they were the first volley in an ongoing plan to tackle the looming deficit.
“This is just the start,” the mayor said at the time. “There’s a lot more work to be done.”
Dargan was serving as chief operating officer for the city of Houston’s public works office in 2022, when he was recruited by Gloria.
In his announcement, Gloria said Dargan stood out from nearly 200 candidates and would take the reins of city operations to carry out the mayor’s vision to invest in infrastructure, boost the city’s housing supply and improve services to residents.
“I am confident Eric will help drive change at the city and lead our mission to make San Diego not just a fine city, but a truly great city,” Gloria said then.
The city nonetheless experienced several setbacks.
By 2023, San Diego had spent millions of dollars on “emergency” purchases against city policies, one audit found.
A state audit the following year concluded that San Diego spent hundreds of millions of dollars on homelessness programs without effectively evaluating the spending — or even fully ing for the revenue and expenditures.
Also, in January 2024 devastating floods roared through southeastern San Diego, displacing hundreds of families and causing millions of dollars in damages. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported later than flood-control and other critical work was badly behind schedule.
Later last year, City Auditor Andy Hanau issued a report finding that Gloria and his predecessor wrongly approved millions of dollars in contracts without appropriate approval. Another report said the $5 billion infrastructure deficit would be even worse if the city had not ignored other needs.
Just this February, the city auditor reported that San Diego badly lagged other California cities in securing grant funding — a critical failure that comes at a time when the city badly needs extra revenue to balance its budget.
Meanwhile, the Gloria istration is still struggling with the vexing crisis of homelessness.
The mayor also has been sharply criticized for its implementation of a voter-approved measure to charge homeowners for monthly trash service, including for spending millions of dollars on consultants to figure out how much to charge.
The Dargan lawsuit, which was filed March 27, lays blame for the racial discrimination and breach of contract squarely on the mayor.
“The city, namely Mayor Gloria, unlawfully discriminated against Dargan based on his race by, among other things, lying to him regarding the three months severance in order to induce Dargan to leave his job in Houston, Texas, and by terminating Dargan without cause,” the complaint says.
The city has yet to respond in court to the complaint, which was assigned to Judge Robert C. Longstreth. A case management conference has been scheduled for Aug. 28.
