City attorney will sit out ethics review

Two separate ethics complaints were filed last week challenging the appointment of Steve Miesen to seat 4 of the Chula Vista City Council.

Russ Hall filed a complaint requesting the attorney general or outside counsel to review the Miesen appointment.

Helen Prosser, a Chula Vista resident, also submitted a complaint saying Miesen presents a conflict of interest as a councilman while working as the division manager of Republic Services.

The Chula Vista Board of Ethics has 30 days to hear both complaints.

The Board of Ethics will convene on March 11 to decide if it will hire outside counsel.

Seven members sit on the board, but only four are needed for a quorum.

Once a municipal complaint is filed, two letters are sent out. One letter goes to the person who filed the complaint, acknowledging that their complaint was received. A second letter is sent to the person whom the complaint was filed against, notifying them of the complaint.

The chairman of the Board of Ethics is also notified about the complaint.

Usually the City Attorney’s Office conducts a review into the alleged facts to see if the complaint constitutes a violation of the code of ethics and then prepares a report for the board.

Since the City Attorney’s Office is mentioned in both complaints, it will not be involved in the investigations.

‘The city attorneys are going to recuse ourselves,” said City Attorney Glen Googins.

“But we can’t leave our client unattended.”

In cases like this where the City Attorney’s Office has to recuse itself, there is a process for hiring outside counsel.

The board has a panel of five attorneys that the commission has vetted. Those attorneys are typically on standby for complaints regarding campaign finance, said Board of Ethics chairman Chris Shilling.

“I’m going to recommend that we randomly select one of the already prescreened attorneys that we have,” he said.

“But that doesn’t mean that’s what the board is going to do.”

Funding for outside counsel will have to come out of the city manager’s budget, Shilling said.

Outside counsel will then get assigned the task of looking over the city’s municipal code, examining the complaint then preparing a staff report on their recommendation.

After that a prima facie hearing is held, which is basically the ethics board looking at the facts of the compliant and reviewing the code of ethics to see if the ethics meet the minimum standard to move forward to the next step.

“The code of ethics is very specific because you can’t have something too ambiguous because then complaints could be filed all the time and what do you hold people accountable for?” Shilling said. “The first step (of hearing a complaint) is just looking at it and seeing if it is necessary to move forward.”

Board of Ethics meetings are held in public and somewhat run like a city council meeting. Items must be agendized and public comment must be held.

Shilling said the meetings must comply with the Brown Act.

Shilling said the commission doesn’t receive ethics complaints often, he said maybe two or three complaints a year.

If the board of ethics does deem someone to be in violation of an ethics code, the commission will send their findings and recommendations to the City Council, which will then decide what they want to do.

If the commission doesn’t find someone to be unethical, the complaint is dismissed, Shilling said.

Shilling also said in his six years sitting on the Board of Ethics there has never been a complaint deemed unethical.

“That’s been one of the criticisms of the Board of Ethics is that complaints have been filed and nothing’s ever been found. But since I’ve been on there, none of the complaints that have been filed have had merit related to the code of ethics.”

Shilling is in litigation with the city of Chula Vista over alleged Brown Act violations in regards to the appointment of Steve Miesen.

He said he doesn’t think he needs to recuse himself from hearing the ethics complaints.

“I don’t think that I would recuse myself from the meeting,” he said. “The complaint is specific to Mr. Miesen getting appointed because of a conflict of interest that he may have.

“My issue is specifically with the process that was used and the Brown Act violation that went into that process. So really it has no bearing on what I’ve done, whether or not it was Mr. Miesen or anybody else (who) was appointed.”

When asked whether or not Shilling should recuse himself from hearing the two ethics complaints, Googins said “No comment.”