Trial attorney Milton J. Silverman, who successfully defended the family of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe and Black community activist Sagon Penn in high-profile murder cases, died last week at the age of 80.

He is considered by many of his contemporaries as one of the best, if not the best, trial lawyers of his time. The San Diego attorney’s cases and clients regularly made headlines, beginning in the 1980s and continuing beyond.

“Milt Silverman is a lawyer the likes of whom we will never see again,” said longtime San Diego defense attorney Eugene Iredale. “For 20 years Milt had criminal and civil cases with miraculous results because of his scrupulous attention to detail and his understanding of how to tell a story with his unique voice.”

Silverman passed away peacefully on May 21. “I was so blessed,” said Silverman’s wife, Maria. “We were a team. He loved me; he loved the children. Milt treated me like a delicate flower.”

Silverman handled a wide breadth of cases in his career, but perhaps the best known were the murder of Stephanie Crowe and the arrest that resulted in Sagon Penn shooting and killing a police officer.

Crowe was stabbed to death in her rural Escondido home. There was no sign of forced entry into the home and no forensic evidence that identified the killer. Her brother, Michael Crowe, then 14, and two of his friends confessed to the killing during intense, prolonged police interrogations.

Silverman represented the Crowe family, and his actions led to a dismissal of charges against the boys. Instead, a transient who had Stephanie Crowe’s blood on his shirt was charged. And 13 years later, the Crowe family agreed to accept $7.25 million to settle a federal civil-rights case filed against the cities of Escondido and Oceanside. 

Silverman also represented Penn, a man acquitted of killing a police officer in a case that divided San Diego County. He had shot and killed a San Diego police officer, run over another officer and wounded a civilian observer after a traffic stop in Encanto went horribly awry in 1985. Silverman, argued that Penn acted in self-defense in the face of excessive force from police.

San Diego criminal attorney Bob Grimes described Silverman as “an absolute, first-class trial lawyer who excelled at getting a vision of the case with a meticulous investigation and analysis.” Grimes added that Silverman was the only lawyer he ever encountered who “excelled at both criminal and civil cases.”  

While many of his criminal cases were headline-grabbing, his legal career spanned a variety of cases as diverse as product liability, toxic torts, defamation, abuse of process, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and misrepresentation, according to his biography.

“He was deadly on cross examination,” said friend and fellow attorney Dennis Schoville. “Milt had an innate ability to really understand people” and “his trial technique and his insight into what he needed to do in cross examination was exemplary.”

Schoville said the Crowe case, which had bounced back and forth in the judicial system for 13 years, showed Silverman’s “brilliance and personal perseverance.” Schoville represented one of the boys wrongly accused of murder in a lawsuit against four Escondido police officers, an Oceanside police officer, and a psychologist, while Silverman represented the victim’s family. Both attorneys were victorious in securing a settlement.

Silverman would go back to court yet again, to have all those accused declared factually innocent, a rare ruling. “He just felt as a matter of justice needed to be done,” Schoville said

Perhaps his most impactful case was the Penn trial.

“In a city known for its conservatism and pro-police attitude, much of the public was convinced it was an open and shut case and guilty verdicts couldn’t come fast enough,” said journalist Tony Perry who covered San Diego for the Los Angeles Times. “Silverman proved otherwise and two juries agreed.” 

A book about the case, “Reap the Whirlwind: Violence, Race, Justice, and the story of Sagon Penn,” is set to release in July. Its author, Peter Houlahan, interviewed Silverman extensively over the past two years about his role in defending Penn. 

The importance of Silverman’s successful defense had a major impact on San Diego, “as the innocent verdict preceded the riots in South Central Los Angeles in 1992 which also spread to San Francisco and Oakland,” said the book’s author. The verdict proved to be a damper for potential violence here.

“We had been through our own crisis between police and the Black community years before Los Angeles did,” according to former Deputy Chief Norm Stamper, who is quoted in the book. Nine-term congressman Lionel Van Deerlin wrote in a San Diego Union editorial, “This city can add a name to America’s pantheon of legendary defense lawyers: Milton Silverman.”  

Mark Sauer, a veteran San Diego newspaperman who covered several cases in which Silverman was the principal attorney, recalled, “Milt Silverman embodied what it means to be a tough trial attorney. He was smart, relentless, legally cunning, with a great sense of showmanship and guile. Milt won multimillion-dollar civil judgments on behalf of noted clients, like Dale Akiki and the Crowe family, by successfully overcoming prosecutorial immunity as few lawyers ever have.”

“He was brash, flamboyant, and completely at ease in the spotlight. And he always was guided by his unerring sense of justice,” Sauer added.

Silverman was noted for his ability to master complex subject matters in preparing for a case.  An example was his successful defense of Dr. Maurizio Zanetti, an immunologist accused by the federal government of fraud involving research on HIV vaccines.

 “He would spend 14 hours a day working hard right beside me,” recalled Zanetti. “He quizzed me in every possible way,” noting that Silverman was “mentally and emotionally involved with what was happening.”  

The case was 25 years ago but Zanetti and Silverman developed a friendship that endured until his recent death.

Silverman was a graduate of San Diego State University in 1966 and UCLA School of Law in 1969. The son of an attorney, his first murder case, when he was 25, was in Vietnam while he was working with the Judge Advocate General’s office. 

When he began working in San Diego in private practice he recalled sleeping on the floor in his office and teaching class and bathing at SDSU. He recounted the anecdote in an interview he gave for his Legends of the Bar Award, one in a long list of awards and recognition he received for his years of outstanding work.

In that interview Silverman advised young attorneys new to the justice system that when he began his career, he didn’t understand what noted attorney Clarence Darrow meant when he said “there is no justice either in or out of court.” But 35 years of experience gave Silverman his answer.

“I’ve seen people with righteous cases who are ground up and eaten alive by the system” and others who “should have been punished, brought to justice laugh and sneer in the faces of who they wronged,” he said at the time.

It was those “righteous cases” that motivated Silverman, said Judge Jeffrey Miller, a Senior U.S. District judge who worked in the San Diego Superior Court system for 10 years.

“He was very selective about his cases. And he accepted only those cases that he cared deeply about, that he believed in, that there was an important right to be vindicated. Or where he felt just the need for justice,” Miller said.

Miller first encountered Silverman, who was 40 at the time, in a personal injury trial in Superior Court. 

“There were things that stood out to me at that point as he had a presence in the courtroom that I don’t know I had seen from anyone else up to that point in my life,” Miller said. “He had a compelling style about him. He wasn’t bombastic. And he had a tone, a certain way that was authoritative, without being cocky, without alienating people.” 

He noted that “Milt Silverman without a courtroom was like Pavarotti without an opera.”

Judge Leo Papas said of Silverman, “Milt knew how to connect to people in a visceral and in intuitive way. He recalled talking with Silverman about his opening statement for the Crowe case. “The civil case settled but the experience was spellbinding and gripping as any murder mystery best seller,” Papas said.

Maria Silverman recalled that she and the family became part of Silverman’s law practice, working in the office with him. She became his second set of eyes. Everywhere he went on a case, she would come along. She would sit in trial court with him, making suggestions during jury selection on which jurors she liked and didn’t like. He trusted her instincts.

When he represented the parents of a daughter who had allegedly been brainwashed by a Krishna sect, the family temporarily moved to Orange County. “We rented a trailer. We stayed there for six months,” recalled his wife. “We used to come back on the weekends, going back and forth. It was always an adventure with my husband.”  

Daughter Rose Silverman recalled fear during and after the Penn trial. Her father never left her or her brother alone. It was on a nighttime grocery trip that she saw her father carrying a gun. The family had received death threats, and the San Diego Sheriff’s Department had issued Silverman a gun permit. Eventually the children were sent out of state for their protection.

But what mattered for the family was their father’s love. “We are all about the family and supporting each other and being there for each other and loving each other,” Rose Silverman said. “He was all about family, and about law and justice.”  

The family wants their friends to know that “Milt went home surrounded by his loving family leading him into the presence of God with the beautiful music of Paul Wilbur.”

Silverman is survived by his wife Maria, daughter Rose, son Richard and four grandchildren.
A memorial service is being planned at the First Church of the Nazarene in late June.

State legislation seeking to toughen sanctions for engaging in prostitution with a minor has been watered down, much to the disappointment of the bill’s original author.

Specifically at issue is Senate Bill 1414, authored by Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield, who proposed making it a felony to solicit or engage in commercial sex with a minor, carrying a maximum penalty of up to four years in prison and a $25,000 fine. That’s a big difference from current law that defines engaging in prostitution with a minor as a misdemeanor, drawing a minimum mandatory sentence of two days in jail.

Grove’s bill also would require anyone convicted of soliciting a minor to annually register as a sex offender for 10 years. The bill was a bipartisan measure, also sponsored by Democratic Senators Anna Caballero of Merced and Susan Rubio of Baldwin Park. Joining the effort as a co-sponsor is the Senate Minority leader Brian Jones of San Diego.

Grove and her supporters, including a long list of advocacy groups, say they are now unhappy with the revised language of SB 1414, saying the bill was watered down during the hearing before the senate’s Public Safety Committee. Her office complained that the committee “forced hostile amendments and voted the bill out of committee without Sen. Grove’s consent.” Grove was reportedly visibly upset and angry when she became aware of the changes.

Now, instead of making the prostitution of minors a felony, it’s a “wobbler” — a term used when a trial court can decide whether the crime should be a misdemeanor or a felony, which would keep alive the potential of a mandatory minimum two-day sentence. 

The other change to the bill would only allow a felony charge for prostitution with minors younger than 16. That means 17- and 18-year-olds would not be considered minors under the changes included in the revised version of the bill.

That revision in the Senate Public Safety Committee was part of the bill’s redo by Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, and others on the committee. They believe  the bill as written was overly broad and could have unintended consequences. They inserted the provisions that has upset bill supporters.  

Leslie Houston with the California Public Defender’s Association said the bill is flawed and that prosecutors do have the ability to use existing laws to “send those people to prison for decades.”

Ironically, this anti-trafficking legislation is a follow-up to Grove’s bill last year that increased penalties for pimps and traffickers.

That bill encountered tough sledding before the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, which tried to kill the bill before political and public protests forced a quick turnabout.   

Many of the same groups that protested the bill’s near death are hoping for a similar turnaround with SB 1414 and the changes that were inserted in the bill. There is a widespread call for action among law-enforcement and  anti-human trafficking advocates.

The bill is scheduled to be heard on the Senate floor later this week, but there are hundreds of bills making their way through the floor. Grove’s office described it as “very fluid situation.”

There are 250,000 California residents in long-term nursing homes. Their health and safety are at possible future risk, say a wide range of experts, unless we learn from the tough lessons of the pandemic. 

Those lessons are detailed in depth in a taxpayer-funded report released last fall that found “The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact” — not just on residents but their families. The report — California Long-Term Care Facility Access Policy Workgroup — is critical of decisions made by state health officials to lock down residents in nursing homes.

The findings form the basis of proposed legislation, Assembly Bill 2075, from San Diego Assemblyman David Alvarez. The bill is now working its way through Assembly committees in Sacramento. It’s already cleared both the Health and the Aging and Long Term Care committees and is now awaiting action by the Appropriations committee. It faces some of the same  hurdles which in 2022 stopped a similar effort. 

Alvarez believes his bill addresses the problems detailed by the report. “We have learned many valuable lessons during the pandemic and since the pandemic,” he said.

“Halting visitation rights for our loved ones in long term care facilities has a major impact on their mental health and their physical well being.”  

The solution, Alvarez believes, is “the right to in-person on-site access to visitors during the public health emergency, as long as they follow the same safety protocols that are outlined by public health officials and required by staff.” This legislation would go into effect with a declaration of any health emergency declared by state or local officials. Included would be pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, bioterrorism emergencies, chemical and radiation emergencies, power surge failures, and blackouts. 

The bill’s language points out the failure of the on-again, off-again game plan conceived by public health officials to shut down access to anyone but staff. The bill’s background reads, “residents suffered incalculable loss due to prolonged visitation restrictions that separated residents from their families, friends, and essential support persons.”

Dr. Cameron Kaiser, Deputy Public Health Officer with the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency, counters that the legislation as proposed is a mistake. He spoke at the bill’s hearing representing the Health Officers Association of California (HOAC). “Maintaining visitation social connections for our most vulnerable is extremely important” but creating a law for guaranteeing access has unintended consequences because, he says, “We don’t know what the next pandemic will potentially bring.”

Also opposing the legislation is Betsy Armstrong, senior policy analyst for the County Health Executives Association of California. She says the bill mandating visitation rights doesn’t square with current “public health guidance and measures.” It’s not the way access to nursing home facilities should be handled, she says.

Tony Chicotel, attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR), believes visitors can be trained to “mask up” appropriately. The bill has a provision that would allow access for chosen support providers “who aren’t paid by the facility, so long as they follow the same safety protocols that are required of the staff. And that’s it. It’s really that simple,” he said.

Kaiser says it’s not workable, there is a major difference between outside visitors and staff because “the staff is regulated by state agencies” and is trained “in the use of personal protective equipment in a way that the public generally is not.”

Two years ago Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian (D-46) introduced Assembly Bill 25, similar legislation arguing “the visitation lockouts were increasingly ineffectual, cruel, and ultimately hurt residents more.” It failed to get enough support. It was opposed then as it is now by the HOAC and CHEAC organizations.    

A similar effort in Texas to create a right of access during public health emergencies was approved as a ballot measure in 2021. It passed overwhelmingly with 88 percent approval by the voters.

Chicotel’s CANHR sponsored that failed Califronia attempt two years ago and is adamant about the Long-Term Care Facility report ‘s exposing how the support from “outside the nursing homes’ staff” was disregarded and ignored by state officials. The proposed legislation points out that for years this kind of support provided patients with “companionship, psychosocial support, cognitive stimulation, communication assistance, assistance with daily living tasks, such as eating, dressing, and hygiene support,” among other things.  

Chicotel says the visitation restrictions ended up being a heavy emotional burden for many like Rosie Montiel who spent evenings and nights with her sister Lilly, but that all ended with the pandemic-driven shutdowns. She was forced to stand outside her sister’s room and try to communicate through a window. 

“The most I could do, when there was a friendly nurse or friendly charge nurse, at night, she would open up the window one inch so that she could hear me.” 

Lilly had Down Syndrome and also suffered, as did other residents during the closures, from “severe feelings of isolation, increasing cases of malnutrition, and depression,” according to the study. In addition, soon after leaving the nursing facility a hospital doctor found she had a dislocated shoulder and toe. 

The doctor told Montiel, “this happened at least six months ago. That was back when she was in the nursing home during the COVID.” Montiel adds, “So you can imagine the physical pain she went through, the emotional pain, the psychological pain, not understanding, afraid of these germs, whatever they were.”

The Long-Term Care Facility report confirmed another suspicion Chicotel had that “public health departments didn’t understand that staff in these situations are actually more dangerous than visitors because the staff go from resident to resident to resident throughout the day.”  

A caregiver brought COVID into the nursing home where Denise Brogan’s 96-year-old mother Gabrielle resided. It would kill her — and end her ‘horrendous suffering,” her daughter says.

Gabrielle had generally been very positive and upbeat, Brogan said, but then became very withdrawn. 

“There  were beautiful people that worked there that cared deeply about her. It’s just when the  pandemic hit, and they no longer let in this essential part of her care team, then the care went down,” Brogan said. “And she went down. And so did a whole bunch of her friends.”

Lynn Dedrick’s mother Petey “had Alzheimer’s and she couldn’t remember about the pandemic. She thought I had forgotten about her.” 

The health offices believed that they could minimize risk, Dedrick said, “but people were almost in solitary confinement. I mean, they’re alone. And they don’t have a voice. And they don’t know where their loved ones are. And they don’t know why they’re not visiting.”

While Petey has died, Dedrick hopes something good can come out of this difficult time.  

“I don’t want anyone else to go through what we did. And I think that anyone who’s been in a similar situation, gets it.” 

Asked if she would have been able to follow safety rules if given the chance, she was quick to say, 

“I feel like any of us, if we were a designated spokesperson visitor, we can follow the protocol just as well as a CNA, or a nurse or a dietitian.”  

Additional coverage of this story can be found on KPBS and its website. A newscast is scheduled for 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

Shelley Curtis White was a “no-nonsense kind of guy,” said family and friends who had gathered to celebrate the opening of the Little League season and the naming of a ballfield after him — the same one where he had called balls and strikes as part of his sixty year career umpiring across the country and around the world.

The talk at this opening day this month was about the joy of playing baseball and the  positive influence White had on hundreds of coaches, families and young people who played the game he loved.  

The field in Southcrest on Newton Avenue now has a large painted likeness of White — and his name in big, bold blue lettering — on the building that serves as a refreshment stand and an announcer’s booth. It was as though the late umpire was looking out over the parents and the Little League teams, as well as the former ball players who attended the event.

In all, three Little league games were played, complemented with classic ballpark food, including hot dogs, sodas and nachos. As each player came to the plate, his name was announced and it was accompanied by encouragement from coaches, cheers from teammates in the dugout and family members in the stands.

“I played here in the early 70s, Shelley Curtis White was my baseball coach and my Scoutmaster,” said  Dwayne Hill. 

And he adds, he was his godfather as well. “He was in my life before I was born, and he was in my life until his last breath. I didn’t realize love until his love was gone.” 

Hill was the most active advocate for naming the field after “Mr. White,” as the umpire is respectively called by others attending the season opener.

Hill stressed how important it was to “follow the steps of those who did this before us, to have a program where kids can come freely and be respected, handled with care, to feel love.”

Leon Monroe played on all-star teams at the field in the 1960s. He was joined on the field before the game by other former all-stars across several decades to honor White. Monroe recalls “it was a lot of fun playing on the field,  I have a lot of fond memories and one thing to remember is you got to have fun doing it.”

At one time baseball fell out of favor in the community, young men were drawn to football and basketball, and the number of teams playing ball at Southcrest dropped. White’s son, Deron, said he hopes the field renaming will bring attention to this manicured, attractive ballpark and encourage more use of the field named after his father.

“This used to be a rite of passage for young men in the community,” he said. He remembers a busy ball park, where  “after church on Sundays there might be three to five games.” But the world changed and he recalls coming to the field years later, and “it was barren but today we have the kids here again and it’s just wonderful.”

Devin White is the grandson, part of the umpire’s extended family that was in attendance.  “Oh man, it’s beautiful. This gets me excited, watching my son running around and seeing what’s going on. And hopefully he understands more when he gets older. It’s a beautiful thing.” 

He recalls how his grandfather tried to instill in him the values that sports can bring to one’s life — respect for the game, for the rules, for others you play with. 

“I didn’t understand early but now being an adult I definitely get it,” he said. “It, took a while but it’s here now. He knew something. That’s for sure.”

Joe Harris, chief of Little League District 66, which Southcrest is a part of, said honoring White as well as recognizing the all-stars from the past was “all about playing the game right. Doing it in the dirt. That’s what we’d like to do right out here in the dirt.”

San Diego City Council members expressed initial support Wednesday for a new Office of Transparency designed to vastly improve what’s seen as the city’s sluggish response to requests for public records, but they also agreed such a proposal warrants further study of the costs involved before it can move forward.

In a meeting Wednesday of the council’s Rules Committee, San Diego City Atty. Mara Elliott presented a proposal for the new office, which she says is needed to address some of the problematic issues her office discovered following a two-year study of the city’s current system for responding to formal public records requests.

It can be a clanky mechanism, she said, that is sometimes inaccurate and inconsistent in its application. Elliott is recommending centralizing all open records requests via a new office. Elliott’s chief deputy Karen Li began studying the issue in 2021 when she was asked to “focus on how we could do a better job as a city,” Elliott said.

“Our city’s biggest challenge is a lack of a coordinated response process,” she said. “Those inconsistencies may go unaddressed, putting the city at a disadvantage in litigation.” 

And there is a penalty for ineffective or poorly executed responses, she pointed out.

“Failure to comply with the PRA can be costly,” she said. Between 2019 an 2023, Elliott said her office handled 36 PRA cases, resulting in $483,168.20 in payouts either through settlement or attorney fee awards.”

Council President Pro Tem Joe LaCava recalled when he first entered public office he was “surprised by how fragmented the process is.”

But he also voiced some concern about the potential costs.

“I’m a little nervous about whether some of the predicted savings actually can become captured into funding a new office or new positions,” he said.

Elliott said she believes it’s possible to make her proposal budget neutral by using in-house employees if an effort is made to reorganize and train staff.

The committee ultimately voted unanimously to have the City Attorney’s office confer with the city’s Independent Budget Analyst to confirm whether the proposed transparency initiative is “budget-neutral.” It also wants them to look into the best way for implementing the proposal. The matter will then return to the Rules Committee for further consideration, the committee agreed.

Council member Vivian Moreno said she has had concerns for some time about the city’s system for responding to public records requests. She thinks the city’s Outlook email system combined with the ‘Next Request’ system used by the city may not “efficiently respond to the public records request” and is “unnecessarily cumbersome.”

She recalled one records request when “Outlook crashed five times causing all work to be lost, and requiring council aide liaisons to start from scratch.” She said “the IT department needs to look at this entire process from beginning to end.”

From outside city government, the process is “incredibly difficult,” said Clifford Weller, a retired public sector attorney with 40-plus years of experience.

“Any entity especially at this size needs a central office to coordinate the process,” he told the Rules Committee.

San Diego is on track to process up to 10,000 records requests by the end of the calendar year, according to data provided in the City Attorney’s report, which represents a huge increase over the past decade.

Elliott proposes “creating a new office that would receive, assign and respond” to requests. “The function, she said, could also be placed within an existing department.”  

Her report revealed there are several different response systems used by the city and there is a repeated problem of lack of communication among various departments that may be responding to the same request for information. It could be a case where one city agency might be able to provide one answer and another agency refused to answer because they felt it was, for example, a personnel issue and not releasable. This in turn creates mistrust among the public, and for city employees it’s a burden of anxiety,

She noted that most inquiries are about crime or development on our streets or a nuisance property located near their child’s school, or whether neighborhood businesses are registered with the city.

But even simple requests get tangled up in the system. No one, she said, wants to “wait for months to get this information nor should they and they also want to know that the records we produced are comprehensive and accurate. If we hold records from production, they want to understand why.”

This is Sunshine Week, a celebration of democracy and the transparency that keeps it alive in this country — and you don’t just have to be a journalist to join the celebration. It’s for civic groups, government employees, and anyone who cares about maintaining our rights to access public information so that we can keep an eye on our government at all levels.

The California Public Records Act is  one of those powerful “hammers” the public can use to find out what the government is up to. It’s part of the state constitution, and without it the inner workings of government would largely be hidden from the public’s view. 

As written, it states that all records, except personal confidential information or ongoing investigations, are yours for the asking. But the constitutional amendment only details a long list of items a government agency can claim as a reason to not provide records. That means our Sunshine protections require ongoing vigilance.

City Attorney Mara Elliott warns that the city of San Diego’s current CPRA system is “inadequate and has led to frustration, criticism, and costly litigation.” And the problem is getting worse, she says.

Elliott has previously recommended upgrades to the system and just released a new report that reveals troubling trends and issues with the system for securing public records. Elliot is proposing a new, centralized “Office of Transparency” to handle requests.

 San Diego journalist Arturo Castañares, publisher of news site La Prensa, says that he has experienced the problems with the system, noting that he is repeatedly denied records for what “should have been rightly provided.” He has been forced to take the city to court and wonders,, “Why do I have to sue to enforce the law?”

His publication has filed nearly a dozen lawsuits to “enforce our rights under the California Public Records Act,” he said, and has a perfect record — 11 suits and 11 wins.

Not every journalist has the option to sue, but Castañares believes in “government accountability through radical transparency, meaning we stand ready to sue, if necessary, to force disclosure when public agencies fail to follow the law and our state constitution.”

The threat of costly litigation is one of the conclusions found in a report recently completed by the city attorney’s office. Elliott’s findings will be presented at a March 20 meeting of the San Diego City Council Rules Committee. They support, she says, a recommendation to create a separate entity to process CPRA requests. 

Just the number of requests is a growing problem, those number have grown exponentially. In 2020 alone, the report notes that there were 5,824 CPRA requests, and the latest information available — for the summer of 2021 — shows 4,355 requests.  Ten years earlier, in 2011, the city handled 683 requests.

She says the city is often accused of lack of transparency and incompetence because “departments do not coordinate when a CPRA request implicates several City departments, which can lead to inconsistent Information Technology (IT) searches, redactions, and applications of exemptions. One department may respond with no records, another may indicate there are records, but they are exempt in whole or in part, while another may release the same records.”

The proposed office would “restructure the intake/response processes.” Currently the council districts and mayor handle responses to their offices and the administrative side of city government hands off requests to each department. 

She also points out that the city employees who are responding do not have law degrees but “are expected to understand and interpret the public records act to protect the city from litigation.”

The city attorney’s research findings align with what many journalists have said about their experience in trying to access public records from city government. Following several interviews I conducted with journalists and attorneys experienced in open records work, I was asked to share my findings with the city attorney’s staff.  

Attorney Jerry Flanagan of Consumer WatchDog gives the city a poor grade for its responsiveness to public records requests.

“They’re getting 50 percent, just like most cities in California,” he said. “Average in responses to public records is not being transparent, it’s a failing grade. They’re withholding records, but they don’t need to withhold those records. We waste so much time and energy and undermine our democracy by fighting.”

Attorney Tim Blood of Blood Hurst & O’Reardon says that how an agency responds to a request depends on who is providing the information.   The responders, he says. often view the requester as the enemy, “which is really just absolutely the wrong way to view it,” he said.

“They’re not the enemy, they’re a citizen asking for what they are entitled to. If the mentality is that the requester isn’t really entitled to these documents, that’s the wrong attitude from the get-go.”

The city attorney’s report concurs with Blood.  “The general attitude among City employees toward handling CPRA requests is negative.  It can be a thankless, unrewarding, and often times overwhelming job.  It is often seen as punishment,” she says. 

Elliot adds it’s a “low priority duty” for employees who are also tasked with other jobs.

The legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, David Loy, says the perspective of those responding for San Diego is: “We are inundated with record requests, and we don’t have the staff time to process them quickly.”

He says the providing timely responses is “as critical a public service as every other public service — police, fire, water sewer — because transparency is the oxygen of accountability.” 

Paul Krueger, a former longtime producer at NBC San Diego and  now a neighborhood activist and volunteer, echoes the sentiments of many journalists frustrated by difficult access to city records.

“My experience with the city’s CPRA system has been uniformly disappointing and frustrating,” he said.

“It takes a very long time to get documents, and they seem to arrive in my inbox willy-nilly over the course of weeks, months, even years. I have pretty much given up on filing PRAs with the city and try to find the information elsewhere. I know that many journalists and neighborhood activists share my frustration.”

The comments from journalists and attorneys we interviewed concur with a key conclusion of Elliott’s report: “The biggest challenge/risk for the City is created by inconsistent responses among responding departments.”  Different departments, she said, interpret exemptions to the CPRA differently.

 “Innocent or inadvertent mistakes,” she said, make the City appear “incompetent or purposely avoiding transparency.”  

She warns that failed responses “undermine the credibility of City leaders,” as well as “deteriorate public trust and confidence in the City.”

The San Diego City Council created the Ethics Commission more than two decades ago to assure the public that our city leaders, administrators and candidates for elected office are behaving ethically and following the law.

Outgoing City Atty. Mara Elliott says it’s past time to increase the commission staff’s independence to conduct investigations and issue larger fines when warranted. She plans to ask the City Council to consider a series of upgrades to the commission. Some would be a ballot measure, others would require council action that would change how the ethics commission is constituted and funded.

Recent history has shown the commission is hampered by funding issues as well as the sometimes slow-to-act mayor and City Council when it comes to supporting the commission.

One weakness, critics say, is while the commission does not report to the council or the mayor, these elected leaders  control the budget for their watchdog body.

Carl Luna, the Director of the Institute for Civil Civic Engagement, says the question that should be asked is:  “Who benefits from the status quo?” 

He added, “What’s the good reason for not changing to the City Attorney plan if not to simply insulate the council from effective oversight?”

One of the key changes Elliott is proposing relates to how the seven volunteer members of the commission are chosen.  Currently, the mayor picks his favorites from a pool of nominees submitted by council offices. The council then approves his choices.

With such an appointment process, Elliott says the “Commission is not truly independent from the entities it is charged with overseeing.”

The Ethics Commission has the authority to fine elected officials, lobbyists,and others if they violate ethics, campaign or lobbying laws. It also recommends revisions to the laws if it discovers unethical tactics being used or if the state and federal government have revised their own election laws. It also refers cases to law enforcement or the appropriate agency as needed.

Midway Rising, a planned 48-acre redevelopment project in the Midway area, is a recent case that points to the importance of the commission. The development team picked to redo the site failed to report all of its lobbying as required by law. It did eventually, the day after the city had chosen the development team for the job. That omission meant San Diegans didn’t know who was engaging in lobbying to influence public opinion and the council before the vote. 

It turned out it was a lobbyist, a “paid political consultant to advise respondents and to prepare external public communications regarding the development.” The lobbyist received in excess of $200,000. For this, the commission fined Midway Rising $5,000, the maximum fine that could be charged.

Sharon Spivak, executive director of the commission, has said that citizens need the information to understand who is trying to influence the decision makers at the city. 

“Even if they are caught,” says Elliott, “it’s a small price to pay.”

Other city’s have the ability impose larger fines. The Ethics Commission of Los Angeles civil enforcement fines have the potential to make violators pay a heavier price — as much as the amount not properly reported.

Elliott’s proposed change would remove the politics in the choice of the ethics board, instead having the decision guided by a screening committee of three retired judges from the Superior Court, the Appellate Court, or the U.S. District Court.  The commission’s board, in turn, would appoint the executive director. The director’s job would be the same as the current director, including initiating formal investigations and complaints.

Open-government advocate Donna Frye, who formerly served on the City Council, notes that this selection process “is how the Redistricting Commission does it.” She added, “It makes sense that the people doing the appointing are not the ones who may be the subject of an ethics complaint or investigation.”

Luna says just this element of the proposal “creates greater accountability, builds public trust, and increases transparency in city governance. The  proposal to change the City Ethics Commissioners from a mayor/council (appointment) to being appointed by a nonpartisan, apolitical screening committee is an effective way to increase the autonomy, legitimacy and effectiveness of the Commission.”

Elliott also suggests that the revised commission retain a special prosecutor to handle complex ethics cases. And the ballot measure would ask to increase the penalties for violations, particularly if they were deliberate or there was an effort to conceal the violation.

Under the proposal, the executive director could initiate an investigation without first obtaining an approval from the board. Also suggested are funds to hire a special prosecutor if needed. 

As to the Ethics Commission’s funding, it should be “guaranteed” adequate resources. Currently, the executive director must ask for financial resources from those whose conduct she monitors and at times punishes.

The budget is currently just under $1.6 million for California’s second largest city, which is about the same amount allocated for Oakland’s ethics board. That’s less than the current funding for both the San Francisco and Los Angeles boards.

A review of the San Diego commission’s annual report revealed that one of the body’s six staffers handled more than 441 requests for technical legal advice.

“I am more concerned that the repercussions associated with the law are diminishing,” Elliott said..”There’s a very good chance that those violating the laws will not be caught” 

Luna adds, “Their every action, indeed, is tainted by the perception of undue council influence of their oversight conduct, reducing transparency and calling into question the legitimacy of council and Ethics Commission actions and undermining public trust in governance. To be effective, trusted and transparent, therefore, the City Ethics Commissioners must be like the proverbial Caesar’s wife – above all reproach.”

Elliott was scheduled to present her proposal to the San Diego Ethics Commission on Thursday evening. She hopes she can  get it before the City Rules Committee in April.

Says Luna, “There may be a good argument for keeping the current plan but the council needs to explain it. “

Full disclosure: August was nominated but rejected for a position as a commissioner on the Ethics Board.

Following the success of her bill targeting human traffickers, Sen. Shannon Grove has introduced companion bi-partisan legislation aimed at those who solicit sex with a minor.

The Bakersfield Republican’s Senate Bill 1414, which is jointly authored by Democratic Senators Anna Caballero of Merced and Susan Rubio of Baldwin Park, seeks to strengthen protections for children by making the act of soliciting, agreeing to engage in, or engaging in any act of commercial sex with a minor, a felony.

When Grove’s Senate Bill 14 passed, increasing the punishment for pimps and other traffickers, she hinted that more was coming to target the sex trade in minors.

“It takes two criminals to commit the crime of child sex trafficking, a buyer and a seller,” said Grove. “With the passage of SB 14, we went after the sellers and now we are going after the buyers, those who are purchasing sex from children.”

“Anyone who pays to commit brutal crimes against children should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she said.

This new bill targets those who prey on children. It’s part of an evolving sex trafficking equation, picking off another element of the sex trade. 

Traffickers will not be able to claim innocence because of the victim’s appearance, or similar defenses. If they claim no knowledge or suspicions about the victim, it’s still a felony charge.

If Grove’s new bill passes, the penalty for the crime will go from a misdemeanor to a felony, with more severe sentencing possible.

Political observers described the bill as a “no brainer” that is expected to become law.

After its last meeting was disrupted by antisemitic hate speech, the La Mesa City Council on Tuesday will consider an end to live phone and Zoom participation during the public comment period.

At the Feb. 13 meeting, the council was forced to listen in silence as anonymous caller after caller denigrated the Jewish religion and culture with vile accusations and conspiracy theories.

The Anti Defamation League in San Diego condemned the racist calls, saying “we know these callers are part of an extremist network and do not represent ordinary La Mesans.”

Similar attempted hijackings of local government meetings with hate speech have occurred repeatedly in communities across California.

The council does not plan to discuss the public comment changes during the Tuesday meeting. The plan is listed as a consent item on the agenda, which means it passes through along with other items like street resurfacing and curb painting.

The item is listed as “Public Comment For City Council and Board and Commission Meetings” and explains how and why La Mesa has decided to stop accepting live calls and Zooms during the public comment period. Among the reasons listed is the city “experienced numerous technological problems related to this format resulting in the disruption of meetings and inconvenience.”

Two years ago in January, the city first offered remote public comment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But item 10.4 for Tuesday’s meeting notes that “in the aftermath of COVID, remote public comment is no longer necessary,” adding “staff recommends the public comment portion of all council meetings revert back to the pre-COVID format, which did not include remote public comment.”

Councilmember Colin Parent believes it’s a  smart move.  

“Our recent experiment with remote testimony has created a lot of challenges for conducting our meetings, and it is appropriate to pause that practice while still maintaining opportunities for in-person public comment,” he said.

But he added that “it is important for the local government to follow our obligations for freedom of speech, and to follow California’s open meeting laws.”

La Mesa is not the first city to react to the hijacking of a public comment period during council hearings.  Last October the Walnut Creek City Council announced it would stop taking remarks remotely via phone and Zoom after antisemitic callers hurled insults at a Jewish councilmember. Similar attacks on Jews during public hearings have occurred in San Francisco, Sacramento, Fremont, Redwood City and Sonoma County.

The rule changes haven’t  stopped  hate speech in council chambers. At the Feb. 21 meeting of the Walnut Creek council, a man attending in person and wearing a shirt with swastikas lashed out at the board with an antisemitic attack. Calling himself “Scottie,” he was angry that the council had shut down remote public comments.    

“I came here to discuss the attack on free speech and our First Amendment rights being stripped away by Jewish supremacists,” he said, according to media reports. “You shut down Zoom comments at the behest of the [Anti-Defamation League] because some Jews’ feelings got hurt.” 

The California Department of Justice tracks incidents of hate speech, but Deputy Atty. Gen. Britton Lacy said local officials may be best-positioned to deal with disruptions at public meetings.

Politics and journalism have always had a symbiotic relationship. Whether that’s good or bad depends on who you are talking to. As we approach the March primary, that intersection of reporting and campaigning is coming into full focus with two San Diego races where former journalists are seeking public office.

Kate Callen, a former United Press International bureau chief, is a candidate for the District 3 seat on the San Diego City Council, facing incumbent Stephen Whitburn, who is endorsed by the Democratic Party, and two other challengers.

Jodi Cleesattle, a senior assistant attorney general who early in her career held positions as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor, is facing off against a Republican party challenger in her effort to become a Superior Court judge.

Both believe their time as professional journalists provided them experiences that will help in their efforts to win the public’s support and trust.  

“Journalism is such a good training ground for politics and the law,” said Cleesattle. “You’re researching, you’re studying, you’re trying to get all the facts, learn everything you can, and then break it down and tell the story in a way that people can understand.” 

She’s a communications graduate of American University in Washington, D.C., who focused on print journalism

Her professional career began at the Lancaster Eagle Gazette in Ohio covering politics and legal affairs. 

“I went to law school with no intention of becoming a lawyer; I was planning to go back into journalism,” Cleesattle said.

While pursuing a law degree she would be the co-founder and executive editor of the National Jurist Magazine, which still publishes and has circulation about 100,000.  

“After clerking I applied to journalism jobs and law firms that had a media law practice and ended up getting an offer at a media law firm,” she said.

For the past 17 years she’s been with the California Department of Justice and currently is the senior assistant attorney general for the tort & condemnation section.

Callen describes herself as a second-generation activist and finds her passion driven, in part, by her life as a journalist.

“Journalism is about bringing the sunlight into the darkness,” she said. “That’s what we’re doing. You’re an advocate for the facts, and you’re an advocate for the public’s interest. You will be surprised at the number of people who are on the campaign trail who have said to me, ‘I liked that you were a journalist, I think that’s what we need in City Hall.'”

While both journalism and the courts have taken hits in recent years, Cleesattle believes that “in San Diego, we have a pretty good bench, it’s pretty solid.” Criticisms aside, she believes that both the media and the judiciary play an important role in preserving democracy in our community.

Callen’s path to activism is rooted in journalism, and she uses that background to write news commentaries about the challenges District 3 faces.  With a masters degree from Columbia University in writing, she initially covered public health, focusing on scientific research.  While living In Washington, D.C. she moved over to  United Press International, eventually moving to San Diego to be the bureau chief here.

She would ultimately move into public relations at the University of San Diego, during which time she became a board member of the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists as well as a member of the SDX Foundation, which provides support for the journalism in the community. 

“As a journalist, you develop the radar for knowing when you’re being played, or when you’re being diverted or distracted,” said Callen. “As a journalist, you have an assignment and you must be laser-focused on that assignment. And there will be people who come in and say, ‘You need to say this, or you need to say that’ or they try to intimidate you. So you have to have a very thick skin. And just keep yourself steady.”

The same applies for her candidacy, said Cleesattle.

“Judges are at the disadvantage where, if they get reamed, like in the newspaper, people are quoted saying all kinds of nasty things about them, but they can’t really respond. So you just have to have a thick skin,” she said.

Callen said the money angle of running for office is tricky business

“People have approached me to talk about endorsements, any large organization, whatever,” she said. “And it’s all quid pro quo. I mean, I had one conversation with a lobbyist. And I appreciated his candor. And I said to him, ‘You know, I don’t think I want to get your endorsement.’ But he said, ‘Look, it’s all about what we give to get, we will support the people who will give us what we need.'”  

Cleesattle said she’s had a different experience. “I haven’t experienced that sort of quid pro quo. Some other candidates have asked me if I might endorse, but judicial candidates are not allowed to  endorse others. We can endorse judges but not other political candidates.”

Both women face fundraising hurdles but don’t seem overly concerned that it will hurt their chances for a victory. 

“My opponent has raised at least four times as much money as I have,” Cleesattle said. “In my case, though, I have the numbers, you know. He might have the money, but I will have the numbers.”  

Callen shares that same optimism.

“Between Jan. 16 And Feb. 17, I outraised the other candidates,” she said. “I brought in three times more contributions than they did and this is pretty shocking because I’m running against an extremely well-financed incumbent.”

Callen and Cleesattle both believe if the public was better educated on the roles of judges and journalists, the community would be a better place for it.

 Said Cleesattle “As in the legal work, the general public often doesn’t understand what journalists do. They don’t understand what lawyers do. They don’t understand what judges do. And I think it’s important for us to let people know, to shine the light, and let them know how each of these positions functions and how important they are to our community and to society.”