Huntington Beach city attorney issues heat up ahead of election

There are more than 10 weeks to go until the November election, but the drama in Huntington Beach surrounding a city attorney race and tangential ballot measure is already heating up.

A pair of recently filed lawsuits challenge how a charter amendment and city attorney candidate will appear on the ballot before Huntington Beach voters this fall.

First up: an objection to Scott Field’s ballot designation as “City of Huntington Beach Deputy Attorney.”

Field faces incumbent city attorney Michael Gates this year. According to his campaign website, Field worked for the city attorney’s office for 27 years after serving as the city attorney for Mission Viejo and Temecula.

Field officially retired from his city position on Oct. 20, 2021, he said.

California’s election law allows for “no more than three words” to describe a candidate’s current occupation or profession, including “during the calendar year immediately preceding the filing of nomination documents.”

However, the legal filing argued that 2022 is the “calendar year immediately preceding the filing of nomination in this case” and asked the court to strike the ballot designation, maintaining it is “false and misleading.”

Field, who filed an age discrimination lawsuit against Gates and Huntington Beach in 2019, maintained he is allowed to use his previous position on the ballot. He called the challenge to the designation a distraction.

“I think it’s trying to throw a roadblock in front of me, making me spend my time on this rather than other things,” Field told the Register.

A hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 31.

Another legal filing challenges how the rebuttal to an argument in favor of a ballot measure related to the city attorney’s office is worded.

If approved by voters, Measure N would alter Huntington Beach’s city charter to allow the City Council to hire outside counsel if the city attorney so requests, if the city attorney or the office has a conflict of interest, or if the legal matter directly relates to the city attorney or the office.

It defines the “attorney-client” relationship by designating the city as the client, meaning the city attorney would be responsible for heeding the direction of the City Council for all legal and litigation measures.

Written by Councilman Erik Peterson, a rebuttal to an argument in favor of the measure called the proposal “dangerous” and contended it “undermines the INDEPENDENCE of the City Attorney.”

“This Amendment gives MORE POWER to City Council to secretly hire attorneys behind closed-doors, hidden from voters,” the rebuttal said.

The rebuttal argument referenced the council’s hiring of an outside firm to probe Huntington Beach’s handling of the age discrimination case, alleging it was done with taxpayer money “to produce a phony ‘political hit piece’ attacking Mr. Gates,” the incumbent city attorney.

But the petition — filed by Huntington Beach resident John Briscoe and scheduled to be heard in court on Thursday, Sept. 1 — alleged the argument “attack(ed) proponents” and “spread false information about the proponents of the ballot measure.”

In an interview, Briscoe said he supported earlier efforts to make the city attorney position an appointed, rather than elected, one — and in the meantime, is supportive of the underlying ballot measure.

“The voters are not the best way to select attorney services for the city because if that attorney is not very smart or very bright or not a very good attorney, there’s nothing they can do for four years,” Briscoe said.

But Gates said the measure would “fundamentally change” how the city attorney operates in Huntington Beach and lead to a lack of transparency in city government.

“On balance, I think it’s a far better form of government to have an elected city attorney who is constantly visible and accountable to the public,” Gates said. “If the City Council were able to hire their own attorneys, the public would never even know the names of the attorneys or how much money is being spent on those attorneys. Doing legal business behind closed doors is detrimental to the city.”

Both legal challenges were filed in the Superior Court of California in the County of Orange.

Source: Orange County Register