Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor and City Attorney Brian Doyle have come up with another scheme to fool residents. This one, which is like the last one, is another attempt to cover their unclean hands.
Attorney Doyle has pronounced that City money paid to outside attorneys will no longer be publicly disclosed. His interpretation of the law is: This is confidential information and “protected” by attorney/client privilege.
Really? Doyle is the only public attorney we know of in California to make such an interpretation. If Doyle is “as correct” on this item of the law, as he was on the California Voting Rights Act, Santa Clara is in a heap of trouble.
Residents and most City Council Members have got to see why he should be terminated immediately.
The last time Attorney Doyle and Mayor Gillmor made a major legal interpretation, it cost the City millions. They decided they could overturn the California Voting Rights Act and argue their case in court. They lost, and Santa Clara was ordered to pay the CVRA plaintiffs’ attorneys $3,000,000 and were instructed by the court to form six Council districts.
Then Gillmor and Doyle tried to convince voters to create three districts by using City money to promote Measure C. They lost again.
Gillmor and Doyle weren’t happy with the court’s decision on the CVRA case, so they filed an appeal…and lost again, raising the award to $4,000,000.
Six days before the appeal went to court, Doyle received an offer letter from the CVRA attorney offering a MILLION DOLLAR reduction to the $4 million court award if Santa Clara dropped the appeal. Doyle DID NOT share the letter with the City Council and proceeded with the appeal, which Santa Clara lost. What arrogance is possessed by Doyle and Gillmor?
With the City bleeding from a $30 million deficit, stratospheric salaries, dubious lawsuits, questionable legal advice and wrong legal interpretations, Doyle has to be terminated. Because Mayor Gillmor was elected as Mayor…her turn will come in the 2022 election.
Meanwhile, you have Doyle’s latest interpretation of the law that outside legal expenses are not to be disclosed. If this isn’t another lawsuit just waiting to happen, it would be shocking!
Keeping Santa Clara residents in the dark is just dead wrong. The millions being paid because of bad legal decisions and money paid to outside attorneys defending these bad decisions is an abomination. No wonder these two public “servants” don’t want residents to know how much is being spent on outside legal expenses.
The first order of business for Santa Clara City Council upon their return from summer break should be termination and replacement of City Attorney Brian Doyle.
That decision alone would be a great start toward balancing Santa Clara’s budget and putting Santa Clara on the highway to recovery.
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Wow, I had no Idea about the 30M deficit. I thought SC was flush with good fiscal management. What in the world is going on? Have these guys been taking lessons from the LBJ administration? This whole episode smacks of those movies where the crooked lawyer takes a buck from everyone and calls them his client so that they can conduct diabolical schemes under the cloak of "privilege". What a farce and shame!!