SAN DIEGO — This city's legal and political problems stemming from a billion-dollar pension deficit and a disputed election have morphed into a feud between the mayor and city attorney.
City Atty. Michael Aguirre has called on Mayor Dick Murphy to resign and branded him a hindrance to resolving the city's dilemmas.
Murphy has responded that Aguirre is a conspiracy buff and headline grabber who seems to delight in making reckless and defamatory charges.
The clash between the low-key mayor and the high-energy attorney has now reached a new high -- or low.
On Sunday, as most San Diegans were enjoying the sunshine or enduring the Padres' 9-2 loss to the Dodgers, Murphy and Aguirre held competing news conferences to discuss a Time magazine story that calls Murphy one of the nation's worst mayors.
Not surprisingly, Aguirre thought that the two-paragraph story vindicated his call Friday for the mayor to resign for allegedly failing to provide the leadership Aguirre believes is needed.
Murphy denounced the story as one-sided and complained that the magazine did not report the civic achievements during his term, such as a lower crime rate, cleaner bay and Petco Park.
On Friday, Aguirre called for Murphy to resign because he had refused to order his appointees to the city's pension board to waive their attorney-client privilege so that U.S. Atty. Carol Lam could get more documents for a federal probe into the pension plan.
Murphy, a former Superior Court judge, says the attorney-client privilege is sacred. Aguirre accuses the mayor of being part of a cover-up.
The mayor is not Aguirre's only target.
He also has called for City Manager Lamont Ewell to resign, blasted San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis for bringing an issue to the council without notifying him, and put out a report that lists the names of people who he alleges have broken the law in the pension controversy.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether city officials or employees broke regulations or federal law by excluding the bad news about the pension deficit when the city provided information to Wall Street before the sale of bonds.
The U.S. attorney's office is probing whether city employees and employee labor union leaders are guilty of conflict of interest for promoting lavish pension increases and a risky plan to pay for those increases that depended on an ever-booming stock market.
