National City Vice Mayor Marcus Bush is not happy with his city’s city attorney, Barry Schultz.
In an interview with Voice of San Diego, Bush listed a series of concerns about Schultz, who was appointed as the city’s top lawyer in 2022.
Bush said he believes Schultz gives “preferential treatment” to certain City Councilmembers and has left the city vulnerable to lawsuits by failing to “sufficient[ly] review” policy proposals. Bush said he also has concerns with how the city has handled cannabis permitting and conducted recent interactions with the Port of San Diego.
The concerns are “becoming a recurring pattern,” Bush said.
Now, Bush appears to have taken the extraordinary step of filing a California State Bar complaint against Shultz, essentially seeking state discipline against his own city attorney.
Bush declined to say on the record whether he had, in fact, filed such a complaint. But earlier this month, in a letter responding to a request for public records sent to the National City Clerk, Bush confirmed that he and his staff have been in communication with the State Bar about Schultz and referred further questions to the Bar.
“Communications from my office regarding the State Bar investigation into Barry Schultz, Esq. have been with the State Bar,” Bush’s letter states. “These communications remain confidential unless the State Bar waives confidentiality, or Barry Schultz, Esq., the respondent, waives confidentiality to make them publicly available.”
Bush sent a copy of the letter to Voice of San Diego but declined to say which of his concerns about Schultz might have been included in the Bar complaint. The public records request was sent to the city in early March by a person identified only as “jack_white_4547.” It asks for all communications by members of the City Council “regarding the State Bar Association complaint filed by Councilmember Marcus Bush against National City Attorney Barry Schultz.”
Schultz did not respond to a request for comment. In January, City Manager Benjamin Martinez authorized paying a San Diego law firm $9,409.50 for 26 hours of work on a case described in an invoice as “State Bar complaint adverse Schultz.”
An information page on the Bar’s website states that the Bar reviews complaints of attorney misconduct within 60 days of filing, at which point reviewers decide whether a full investigation is warranted.
Bar sanctions for attorney misconduct are rare. A recent report found that, last year, the Bar opened 18,156 attorney misconduct cases and took disciplinary action against 229 attorneys.
Schultz’s current Bar profile page shows no active disciplinary proceedings and just one prior disciplinary action. In 2005, Schultz’s law license was suspended for failure to pay the licensing fee and enroll in continuing education courses.
The Bar complaint against Schultz joins a series of recent disputes among National City leaders. In just the past six months, Councilmembers have sparred over their use of city expense accounts, censured one Councilmember, debated a lawsuit stemming from a controversial development proposal and, most recently, argued about whether to open an investigation into the alleged role played by the mayor and his executive assistant in the development proposal.
Last week’s Council discussion about the proposed investigation grew heated, with Councilmembers raising their voices, talking over one another and, at one point, appearing to choke up. Ultimately, the Council decided to take no action on Councilmember Jose Rodriguez’s request to open the investigation. Rodriguez and Mayor Ron Morrison were rivals in the 2022 mayor’s race.
“It is highly inappropriate to call for councilmembers to be investigating” a fellow city leader, said Councilmember Luz Molina.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Councilmember Ditas Yamane of the acrimony in the Council chamber. “I don’t like it.”
This story has been updated to include information about a public records request provided to Voice of San Diego after initial publication.
Supervisor Race Turns Negative
Early in the current race for District 1 County Supervisor, one of the candidates, a Democrat, told me she expected the race to become “a gladiator contest.”
That prediction is now coming true. Negative attack ads are piling up in voters’ mailboxes and social media feeds.
“I’m so tired of getting these,” one Imperial Beach resident said in an email to me that included a screenshot of a negative social media ad against Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre.
Most of the mudslinging appears to be between Aguirre and San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno, two top Democratic contenders seeking to take on Republican Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, who is widely expected to coast through the upcoming April 8 primary election.
Attacks against Moreno center on her alleged inaction on flood preparedness in the runup to last year’s disastrous winter flooding. Attacks against Aguirre seek to convert one of her primary strengths – her record of advocacy on the Tijuana River sewage crisis – into a liability, alleging that, despite Aguirre’s efforts, the river remains polluted.
As Axios San Diego’s Andrew Keatts recently reported, outside interests have raised at least $2.2 million in the race. Well-funded donors seeking to influence the outcome include labor unions, government employee unions, real estate interests and homebuilders.
One consolation for candidates under attack: Being targeted indicates rivals take a candidate seriously.
I recently asked one political consultant working on the race how he felt about his candidate’s chances in the upcoming primary. “Presume good if our opponents are desperately, breathlessly attacking us,” he replied.
Family Members, Activists Commemorate Homeless Death, Decry Inaction
Commuters at the Palomar Trolley station in Chula Vista last Friday evening might have noticed a small crowd of roughly two dozen people gathered to one side of the platform holding balloons and standing with their heads bowed beside a makeshift memorial festooned with flowers and candles.
The group of parents, teenagers and other residents were there to commemorate the death of 18-year-old Jaylin Perez, who died in January at the Palomar station from what her mother, Jeannette Gallardo, said was likely a fentanyl overdose.
The group said a prayer, offered remembrances of Perez and set aloft 18 lavender balloons in honor of the 18-year-old’s death.
They also highlighted an issue they said gets insufficient attention: What Gallardo called a pattern of official inaction in response to deaths of homeless people.
Gallardo said Perez lay motionless at the trolley station for five hours before police finally responded. She said she still doesn’t know how her daughter died because the county medical examiner hasn’t issued a cause-of-death report yet and police did not investigate Perez’s death.
Other moms of drug death victims at the Friday evening vigil agreed that homeless deaths remain largely ignored in San Diego County – and that resources for people struggling with drug addiction on the streets are woefully inadequate.
“People always say help is available, but it isn’t,” said Susan Shipp, whose son, Kyle, died of a fentanyl overdose in 2019.
“I would beg [my son], ‘Come get treatment,’” said another mom at the vigil, Sundee Weddle, whose son, Saxon, overdosed and died four years ago while in custody in San Diego Central Jail. “But [no treatment centers] were open…People using drugs are looked down on.”
Shipp, Weddle and other parents at the vigil vowed to keep pressing for more attention and resources. “We need to lean on each other and hold each other up and hold cities accountable so no one else has to die,” said Weddle.