Lutz Rebuffed on Conflict-of-Interest Claim Against Ewin

Councilman Ernie Ewin’s role as a member of a bond oversight committee doesn’t conflict with his La Mesa City Hall duties, says the lawyer for the Grossmont Healthcare District, responding to public-agency watchdog Ray Lutz.

In a letter dated April 28, health care district counsel Jeff Scott rejected Lutz’s allegations that Ewin violated state law by holding “incompatible offices” simultaneously.

“Your letter and complaint simply do not raise substantial factual or legal issues that demonstrate a violation [of] the doctrine of incompatible offices,” Scott wrote Lutz in a 580-word letter.

Lutz—leader of the El Cajon-based Citizens’ Oversight Projects Committee—argued in a letter dated April 25 to both the City Clerk’s Office and the health care district that “holding the two offices may be incompatible and the first assumed office may have been forfeited by operation of law.”

Ewin is chairman of the 11-member Independent Citizens Bond Oversight Committee, or ICBOC, of the health care district, which is using a $247 million voter-approved bond to make improvements at Sharp Grossmont Hospital.

Lutz, the former Assembly and congressional candidate, argued that Ewin would have to vacate his first post (the City Council) to serve on the second—as City Treasurer James Stieringer did when he resigned to take an elective position on the Grossmont Healthcare District board of directors in 2006.

But Scott, a San Diego-based contract attorney for the health care district, wrote Lutz:

First and foremost, there is absolutely no clash of duties or loyalties; nor does one office have any authority to approve, disapprove or otherwise control the decisions of the other office.

It strains credulity to suggest that Mr. Ernie Ewin would somehow have to disregard the interests of his constituents in the City of La Mesa when he serves the interests of district taxpayers as a volunteer member on the ICBOC.

Moreover, the ICBOC is not a governmental agency and Mr. Ewin’s position as a member of the ICBOC is not a “public office.” The ICBOC is a group of interested community volunteers appointed by the Board of the Grossmont Healthcare District solely in an “advisory capacity” to advocate and promote the interests of district taxpayers in relation to the expenditure of Proposition G funds.

The ICBOC has no decision-making authority and does not exercise any “sovereign powers” of a governmental body, which is a prerequisite to qualify as a “public office” for purposes of the incompatibility doctrine.

Over the weekend, while Lutz was at Democratic State Convention in Sacramento, he wrote La Mesa Patch: “I submitted a formal complaint to the Attorney General's Office on this [Ewin matter].”

Meanwhile, health care district CEO Barry Jantz said the cost to taxpayers of Lutz’s allegations are a maximum $555—or three hours of Scott’s time at a rate of $185 an hour.

Scott didn’t need to do much research on the legal issues involved, Jantz said, since Scott had looked into these conflict-of-interest laws before. But the time spent  preparing the letter could total three hours.

Jantz didn’t include the value of his own time dealing with the Lutz letter—since he is salaried and not hourly. But Jantz said he did some work on the response, including exchanging information and documents with Scott.

For his part, Ewin has rejected allegations of a conflict of interest.

On Friday, Ewin said La Mesa City Attorney Glenn Sabine had no plans to prepare a similar letter to Lutz. Sabine cited state Government Code section 1099 that deals with conflicting offices and also said he would send a response “only with council direction,” Ewin said.

Last Thursday, Lutz was moving on yet another front, writing that he hoped to meet with Gov. Jerry Brown on his objections to SDG&E lobbyist Dan Skopec, whom he accuses of trying to influence the state Public Utilities Commission illegally on the Sunrise Powerlink project.

 The COPs website boasts a petition:

I hereby request that Governor Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris conduct a full investigation into the illegal lobbying activities of the CPUC by utility executive Dan Skopec, who had been a government official only 10 months earlier. After his influence, the CPUC reversed the recommendation of the administrative law judge and the EIR, and approved the Sunrise Powerlink project without any requirement that energy from renewable sources be placed on the Powerlink.

Furthermore, Skopec should be punished, the decision of the CPUC should be vacated, the decision reconsidered, and the project denied, with the nearly $2 billion budgeted for the project instead spent on in-basin renewable generation, such as with photovoltaic systems.