CANDIDATES FOR CITY ATTORNEY TRADE BARBS

Challenger calls incumbent Mara Elliott corrupt

SAN DIEGO

The two candidates battling for San Diego city attorney are attacking each other’s character and debating an array of issues, including short-term vacation rentals, police reform and the purchase of a downtown highrise filled with asbestos.

Challenger Cory Briggs says incumbent Mara Elliott is corrupt and incompetent, while he describes himself as ethical, competent and transparent. He also calls himself a far superior advocate for ordinary taxpayers.

Elliott says Briggs is chaotic, emotional and a bully, while calling herself steady and reliable. She also disputes his claim that he’s a taxpayer advocate, contending the roughly 80 lawsuits he has filed against the city in recent years have mostly cost taxpayers money and made him rich.

Elliott easily finished first in the March primary, receiving 209,000 votes compared to 72,000 for Briggs, who made the Nov. 3 runoff because he finished second in the three-candidate field.

She also has dominated in fundraising and endorsements. The last campaign disclosures showed her with a war chest of $132,000, compared to $2,800 for Briggs. And she has been endorsed by most labor unions, the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and the county Democratic Party.

A Union-tribune/10news Surveyusa poll in late August showed Elliott with a solid lead over Briggs of 30 percent to 20 percent, but with 50 percent of likely vot

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ers still undecided. Briggs has attacked Elliott on a variety of fronts, claiming she has lost the confidence of the City Council, and criticizing her policies on enforcing wage laws and not revealing the names of police officers accused of misconduct.

While she has defended herself, Elliott has focused her campaign mostly on her own accomplishments.

They include gun control legislation that has gotten national attention, new programs for domestic violence victims and a crackdown on retirement homes to protect the city’s senior citizens.

She also has focused on legislation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including crackdowns on price gouging and policies allowing restaurants to reopen safely in parking lots and on sidewalks.

Briggs says voters should focus on Elliott’s deteriorating relationship with the

City Council, which boycotted a closed session meeting she scheduled in August based on a dispute over access to confidential documents.

“The council and the mayor don’t trust her,” he said.

Elliott says the boycott was based partly on a misunderstanding by some council members that the meeting had been canceled. She said new COVID-19 document policies have since been adopted to solve the problem. Briggs also has focused on six of the council’s nine members expressing support this spring for a ballot measure that would have significantly shrunk Elliott’s job, eliminating litigation and policy advice from her duties.

Elliott said San Diego isn’t the first city where council members have expressed interest in having the city attorney be appointed

and accountable to them, instead of being elected and accountable to the voters.

She said the council later abandoned the proposal because “it was a bad idea.” Briggs also attacked Elliott for the city’s purchase of a high-rise office building at 101 Ash St., which the council approved just before she took office in late 2016.

“Ash Street was a done deal when I got into office, and I don’t think there’s any dispute about that,” she said. “I plan to spend coming years figuring out what happened and helping the taxpayers however I can.”

Briggs said Elliott and her staff of lawyers had opportunities during subsequent steps taken on Ash Street to alert the council to red flags in the agreement.

“There are things that should have been caught, and a city attorney looking at things from a taxpayers’ lens would have helped,” said Briggs, contending some documents are too important not to comb through. “Buying a skyscraper is clearly on the side of the line where you read the contract front to back.”

Briggs has also attacked Elliott on short-term vacation

rentals, contending she refuses to enforce laws already on the books or to launch proactive code enforcement efforts.

Elliott says she is handicapped by the city’s lack of legislation.

“We have no regulations that even define what a short-term rental is,” said Elliott, noting that the council retreated from such legislation two years ago when Airbnb threatened litigation.

She said the only methods the city currently has for shutting down scofflaw short-term rentals take about 18 months, which is too slow when estimates put the size of the problem at 14,000 to 16,000 potentially illegal rental units.

On police reform, Briggs complains that Elliott won’t reveal the names of potentially “bad” police officers even though she knows their names. Elliott says it’s not her choice, contending that California has strong privacy policies for law enforcement.

Both candidates are 51 years old. Elliott lives in Scripps Ranch, and Briggs lives in Point Loma.

david.garrick@sduniontribune.com