Action by the Victorville City Council last week has renewed longstanding criticism and suspicion with regard to the cooperative and overlapping application of the separate governmental authorities exercised by the County of San Bernardino and its 24 cities. In particular, municipal and county officials find themselves under the uncomfortable focus that has again arisen as a result of certain improprieties weaved into the fraternization amongst them at what has come to be a traditional conference that takes place in Lake Arrowhead on an annual basis.
A recurrent criticism of government is that the rights of citizens have been consistently eroded by means of what has come to be known as “agency-to-agency privilege.” While much of the information the government gathers is considered to be public, governmental officials often restrict its availability to anyone outside that governmental entity, i.e., citizens who are not employed by that particular branch or level of the government. That restriction is routinely lifted, however, if the entity making a request for the data is an employee or official with another governmental entity. This sharing of information is an example of agency-to-agency privilege. Other examples of the exercise of agency-to-agency privilege typically consist of the cooperation between governmental entities, including the sharing or lending of resources, facilities, equipment and manpower.
San Bernardino County’s annual County-City Conference, usually held at the Lake Arrowhead Resort, a luxury hotel on the shore of Lake Arrowhead considered one of the county’s premier getaway venues, involves seminars and presentations relating to governance and specific issues of note with regard to finance, infrastructure and shared interests between the county and some of the cities. The conference also typically involves a venue for social interaction between government officials in a variety of settings, including ones on a scale from the relatively formal to the progressively more and more intimate. Alcohol is commonly used as an emollient. In a good number of cases over the years, that intimacy has progressed to an ultimate conclusion, as when one year the sheriff of the county spent the night in the room of a councilwoman from Grand Terrace.
Perhaps the most famous, or perhaps infamous, of these episodes of intimacy among attendees of the County-City Conference occurred at the one held on March 23 and 24, 2006.
Mike Ramos was then the district attorney, having first been elected to that office in 2002. Two weeks prior to the conference, he had learned that no opponent had registered by the deadline to run against him in that year’s election, an indication, essentially, that he would remain as district attorney at least until 2011, as the next election for district attorney in San Bernardino County thereafter would not come until 2010. Confident in the knowledge that his action would not be used against him politically and aware as well that his position and authority as the county’s top prosecutor provided him with an even further layer of insulation, Ramos fully immersed himself in the general licentiousness the soiree entailed, drinking himself to a point of inebriation. Before doing so, however, the-then 49-year-old district attorney set his sights on the then-38-year-old Doreen Boxer, who just two months previously had been hired as San Bernardino County’s public defender. Ramos approached Boxer, who was seated on an oversized chair in hotel’s lobby near the entranceway to the hotel’s restaurant. A few minutes later, they were spotted inside the restaurant, seated closely together in a booth. Later that evening, Ramos and Boxer were seen together in an elevator. Numerous witness at the conference, including Supervisor Josie Gonzales and then-supervisors Dennis Hansberger and Bill Postmus, as well as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, saw Ramos and Boxer exiting the elevator in a state of partial undress.
The public defender’s office provides criminal defenses to county residents charged with crimes who are indigent or otherwise incapable of making financial arrangements to obtain legal representation. In this way, the district attorney’s office often squares off against the public defender’s office. The public defender almost exclusively goes to court against the district attorney’s office. For that reason, at least some of Ramos’s employees were aghast to learn that their boss had initiated some level of a romantic physical relationship with Boxer.
County officials were not particularly bothered by what had occurred, and Boxer was permitted to remain as public defender, though she was reportedly queried about her relationship with Ramos by members of the board of supervisors sometime after the conference. More than three years later, Ramos’s penchant for womanizing blew up into a full-blown scandal, including revelations of his affairs with three of the deputy prosecutors in his office, a one-time deputy prosecutor who was promoted to the specially-created position of assistant to the district attorney, an office management consultant to the district attorney’s office, a member of the training staff with the California District Attorney’s Office staff in Sacramento, two investigative technicians in the district attorney’s office and one of its paralegals. Thereafter, one of those, then-District Attorney’s Office Evidence Technician Cheryl Ristow, sued Ramos and the county, claiming she had initiated a consensual off-and-on relationship with Ramos in September 2003 that lasted three-and-a-half years. After she sought to terminate the relationship, she maintained, he continued to pursue and harass her, and she alleged she faced a hostile work environment and retaliation thereafter. When Ramos labeled her claim “false and politically motivated,” the county authorized the hiring of the law firm of Curiale Hirschfield & Kraemer, under a $75,000 contract, in an effort to absolve Ramos and the county of any wrongdoing. Attorneys acting in the role of investigators with Curiale Hirschfield & Kraemer, however, in short order confirmed that Ramos had sexual relations with at least four of his employees along with the incidental fact that the County-City Conference was, in the words of one attendee “a huge fuckfest.” By arranging to have the investigation carried out not by licensed investigators but rather by attorneys, together with the application of a $65,000 uprating of the Curiale Hischfield & Kraemer contract to a total of $140,000 for the work on the Ramos womanizing matter, the firm delivered a sanitized version of its findings for public consumption which found there was no retaliation aimed at Ristow, and that any disciplinary action leveled at her while she was yet employed with the district attorney’s office was not retaliation as she characterized it, but rather corrective action related to her job performance “based on objective, verifiable and current concerns. Whether Ramos did or did not have welcome – or unwelcome – sexual relationships” with other employees or others with whom such interaction would have been inappropriate such as Boxer or the training staff member with the California District Attorney’s Office “is irrelevant to whether or not he, or individuals at his request or suggestion, retaliated against Ristow,” the report delivered by Curiale Hischfield & Kraemer to the county stated. “Thus, while encouraged by many to delve into the muck or rumor and scandal, that was neither our charge nor an obligation necessitated by the issue presented.” As the matter had in its entirety been handled by lawyers, the investigation fell within the rubric of attorney- client privilege, eliminating any chance that the embarrassing and damning information the investigation had unearthed or had simply come across would ever be revealed.
Having dodged that bullet, county and city officials have continued with the annual City-County Conference in the years since. Unsurprisingly, the conference has evolved into a closed one, at which members of the public are unwelcome and where press participation is virtually non-existent.
For years, county and city officials have conveyed and frolicked about in Lake Arrowhead well outside the scrutiny of the public. On March 5, however, Victorville Mayor Gloria Garcia, in conjunction with council members Jim Cox and Debra Jones and City Attorney Andre de Bortnowski took action which has redirected attention to the revelry near the mountaintop. Ironically, it appears that action was intended to keep one of the better-kept secrets of the privilege of governance under wraps.
All mayors and council members in the county’s 24 cities are extended an invitation to the conference. As a matter of course all of the Victorville City Council was invited to attend. In response, city staff at Victorville City Hall prepared an action item for the March 5 council meeting calling for an appropriation of $1,959.65 to cover the tab of all five council members’ official business travel to the 2019 city-county conference, including the cost of registration at the conference, hotel accommodations and parking.
When the council took up the item, Mayor Gloria Garcia made a motion to exclude Councilwoman Blanca Gomez from the business travel expenditure authorization.
“I move to authorize council to attend the conference with the exception of Councilmember Gomez due to her continued disregard of council policy and procedures,” Mayor Garcia said.
Councilwoman Debra Jones seconded the motion but before the council could vote on it, Gomez interjected, “I create a substitute motion to include all council members. Gomez said she was doing so “because what you would be doing is you will be bringing discrimination against the city and this is not fair for a taxpayer. You can’t just arbitrarily do stuff like that. You are setting a precedence and I know that the city attorney has been following it greatly. So I would like for you to comment as well.”
“I don’t see any indication of discrimination with respect to the current motion on the table,” said City Attorney Andre DeBortnowski.
“So, then what you’re saying is it’s okay for the council members – four of them – to exclude me because they feel they have the power to exclude me, Mr. Attorney?” Gomez countered.
“I haven’t seen any vote on the discussion yet,” said de Bortnowski in sidestepping the question. “That’s premature.”
“You haven’t seen it yet?” Gomez pressed.
“There hasn’t been any action,” responded de Bortnowski.
“Well, when it takes action, I would like your legal opinion to be imported,” said Gomez.
Councilwoman Rita Ramirez-Dean seconded Gomez’s motion that all five of the city’s council members attend.
Before that vote took place, Councilman James Cox made the point that he had recently attended a League of California Cities conference on his own dime, notwithstanding the consideration that the city was on the verge of paying the registration costs and incidental costs of a room and meals at the Arrowhead Resort for the members of the council to attend the City-County Conference. “In this motion here, for Lake Arrowhead, this is a City-County Conference. It’s different from the League of California Cities. Certainly the mayor and mayor pro tem need to attend those. I think our new council needs to attend. I’ll make it easy. I don’t need to attend. If I do, I’ll pay my own way, as I usually do. We don’t point that out a lot, but this is an important meeting for those three members of the council.”
Speaking directly to Gomez, Cox, apparently acceding to a distinction that Gomez had made between “the city,” meaning the officials and employees who populate City Hall as opposed to the residents of the city, accused Gomez of being disloyal to her elected colleagues and the city’s employees. “It’s difficult, but in the council meeting you said you would never represent the city,” said Cox. “Those are your words. You will not represent the city. You represent the voters. You will not represent the city. Why would you go to a meeting if you refuse to represent the city? I can’t support you to go to a meeting and represent some other point of view. And we have a policy that says the position of the city is the mayor and the council or the whole council. If you agree to do that, I think you should go to the meeting, but as long as your position is that you will not represent the city, I don’t think that you should be there. I think you just shouldn’t.”
Cox is a creature of government, particularly in Victorville. He began as a mid-level staffer with the city in November of 1967 and was elevated to the city manager post in December 1969. He led the city for thirty years, retiring in December 1999. Cox subsequently served as Apple Valley town manager in an extended interim capacity, when he was lured out of retirement in 2008. He subsequently came back as Victorville city manager in 2009, remaining in that position for more than two years.
The item on the agenda consisted of a staff recommendation that “that the city council authorize official business travel to the 2019 city-county conference for all council members in the total amount of $1,959.65 for registration, hotel and parking.”
Gomez said she thought that altering the recommendation to exclude her was tantamount to a violation of the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law which requires that issues to be voted on must be advertised on the agenda 72 hours ahead of the vote. The council’s impromptu alteration of the item changed what was being voted upon, she asserted. “If we want to add to the agenda, and not pass this one, that is what we should do,” she said.
Bortnowski said, “Ms. Gomez, I respectfully disagree with you. Right now, the recommendation before the council is to consider whether or not to fund all members going. Any council member can make a modification of that and submit a motion that differs from that. It’s related to the exact same subject matter. Totally appropriate.”
City Manager Keith Metzler said, “I’ve attended this event a couple of times representing the city and it’s an opportunity certainly for not only Victorville representatives to go but also be among the other representatives within the county. So, you’ll get an opportunity to, of course, network and work with your peers in other communities. But they also have an agenda that is largely educational as to things going on in the county, issues of particular interest to the county, and it also allows you to in some cases see best practices from some of your peers as to how they’re tackling or handling issues in their community.”
The vote was taken and Gomez’s substitute motion failed 2-3, with Garcia, Cox and Councilwoman Debra Jones voting against it.
The council then took up Mayor Garcia’s initial motion to have the four members of the city council excluding Gomez attend the conference and adjust the funding accordingly. “I’m happy to second it,” said Jones.
Recognizing the vote was not going to go her way, Gomez said before the vote was taken, “So, for the public that’s watching: They say they have the power to oust one because I don’t represent the people in terms of the city. Who is the city? You or us five? Who do we represent? Do I represent the people outside these four walls or do I represent four other council members’ ideologies?”
The council then voted 3-to-1 with Gomez in opposition and Ramirez-Dean abstaining in support of Garcia’s motion.
Since being elected to the Victorville City Council in 2016, Gomez has attracted controversy. She has crossed swords with virtually everyone on the council, current and former, with the exception of Ramirez-Dean. She has, on occasion, expressed reservations about action the council has taken in both public sessions and in closed executive sessions outside the scrutiny of the public. This has led to charges that Gomez has violated confidences and confidentiality. While much or most of what a governmental decision-making body such as a city council does is considered to be public action, cities are permitted to hold closed sessions to discuss items relating to real estate sales or purchases; the hiring disciplining or firing of city personnel; employee contract negotiations; and pending or ongoing litigation.
There was concern expressed that Gomez lacks the necessary discretion to avoid embarrassing the city, which in the context of preventing her attendance at the City-County Conference has been interpreted as worry that she would not keep her mouth shut about the orgiastic ongoings in Lake Arrowhead, thus ruining the good time that would be shared in not only by the solons from Victorville but the county’s 23 other municipalities and county officials as well.
de Bortnowski’s interpretation notwithstanding, there is some question as to whether the city council has the authority to disinvite Gomez from the conference.
According to David Wert, San Bernardino County’s official spokesman, “The county handles the invitations and reservations, and we email an invitation to each mayor and city/town council member individually, and a reservation including payment has to be submitted by or for each mayor and council member.”
Wert said, “The county does not concern itself with whether a mayor or council member’s reservation is made and/or paid for by the individual mayor or council member or their city/town on their behalf. There is no process by which a city/town must endorse or pay for a mayor or council member’s participation.”
It would thus seem that the county’s invitation to Gomez yet stands, whether or not the City of Victorville will pay for her registration and attendance, and she is free to register on her own. This leaves open the possibility that some person or entity interested in having Gomez’s eyes and ears present at the conference may sponsor her attendance.
With regard to the unrestrained and libidinous carousing that hase been a feature of the conference, Wert said, “I’ve attended all but maybe a couple City-County Conferences during the past 30 years and have never witnessed or even heard of anything that could be described as ‘unbridled licentiousness.’ Definitions of the ‘wild side’ may vary, but nothing more ‘wild’ than a few people relaxing at the hotel bar after the day’s events have concluded currently takes place at these conferences.”