[quote=paulflorez]Filner should resign. Even if he didn’t do any of the things people accused him of doing, he didn’t handle his response well. When you stand up to established power brokers in the city, you’re going to make enemies and they will do things to hurt you or simply give you enough rope to hurt yourself. Once he admitted acting inappropriately, he lost my support…[/quote]
paulflorez, I agree that Filner did not handle his response well. He should have chained multiple counsel to his ankle very early on (upon the first allegation leveled against him) and had his counsel speak for him at all times. He should have done this even if he had to pay their initial retainer out of his pocket. A CA public official, whether elected or appointed has a right to taxpayer-paid counsel when or if they are accused criminally or civilly of behavior which occurred while in the line of duty.
I looked again carefully at the “to-and-fro” e-mail messages between City fiscal employees over this (petty, in the big picture) issue of the mayor’s office lacking receipts for roughly $3K of expenditures over a 3-4 month period. They are unusually polite and professional (when their writers have likely known each other for many years, if not decades) and their language appeared to be carefully “couched” to each other to make it appear as if the mayor’s office had committed some kind of crime. If truth be told, the City Attorney’s office could have very well put the writers up to this stunt in order to “create” a paper trail for their “witch hunt.” I believe the City attorney’s office OR the writer(s) (with the CA’s permission), “leaked” the msgs to the press. I believe this because of what Goldsmith said on the Roger H show today. He even appeared to me to be mildly amused when Roger played the devil’s advocate and asked, “Well, what if he doesn’t step down? He doesn’t have to, you know,” or something like that. This stunt was as transparent as a pane of glass to me.
I’m disappointed that Goldsmith has morphed from a no-nonsense civil judge in East County to a political animal virtually overnight.
If Filner’s attorney(s) ever get a chance to depose or cross-examine the writers of these e-mail msgs it’s going to get REALLY UGLY for them and everyone else they end up implicating when backed into a corner, IMHO. Being an ex-bureaucrat myself, I’ve seen a LOT in my day and am ever-cognizant that the character of a witness/deponent who is testifying is ALWAYS fair game, ESP gubment witnesses. Some of these longtime City employees (rank not necessarily important) and the City’s “power brokers” could very well be one and the same person. We must remember that these witnesses “histories” with the rest of the players in this saga go back a l-o-o-ong way, much of it memorialized in black and white, only to be dredged now up by those in the Filner camp possessing l-o-o-ong memories. Don’t for a minute think it won’t happen.
’nuff said. If this thing morphs into court in another month or so, it looks like more than just Filner will be forced to step down or “retire” … it’s all the same thing.
It’s such a dirty shame that City is so political that it can’t get anything else done right now .. but given its entrenched players, not the least bit surprising … at least not to me.
