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Almost as bland as Wonder Bread, John Witt owes perhaps half of his public name recognition to a community college trustee with the same name. Most San Diegans don’t know who their city attorney is, even though Witt, who's won citywide elections five times, has served beside mayors Frank Curran, Pete Wilson, Roger Hedgecock, Maureen O'Connor and Susan Golding. However, at City Hall, in local courthouses, in the American Bar Association House of Delegates, in cable communications and municipal franchise legal circles, at Southern California Edison, in the League of California Cities and at Athens Market on F Street, John Witt is well regarded "because I was his mentor," assures Edward T. Butler, who jokes a lot. Justice Butler, 78, now with JAMS and Baker & McKenzie, was Witt's immediate predecessor, leaving in 1969. "John is not a Byzantine type fellow, not filled with intrigues and machinations," says Butler. "He's a straight-forward, clean-cut moral person without the capacity for intrigue. I think that’s a quality not often seen in the City Hall precinct. He was able to carry that through his career, and in so doing he was able to keep together something we started, and that was recruiting top-flight attorneys, instead of recruiting those who couldn’t get a job elsewhere. "John is no legal genius, nor a particularly profound scholar. But he has the quality of being straight-forward without guile." Those aren’t bad qualities to lead a staff of 130 lawyers protecting the public interest. They're qualities that Witt's successor, Casey Gwinn, ought to take to heart as he takes office this month. Ideally, good character ought to be inbred, perhaps reaching the refinement stage in one's mid-30s, not under early stages of development, or, worse, of limited concern. Strike one for not being guileless: "Casey's vision of himself is not to be the world's greatest municipal lawyer, like Witt was," says a bitter colleague. Gwinn's vision is to hold some higher office, perhaps state attorney general. His chief campaign aide, Lauri Twomey, has just been appointed the city attorney's "Special Assistant for Media Relations and Community Outreach." If he were really guileless, her title might be "chief re-election officer," but you’re not supposed to conduct campaigns on the government's nickel, hence the necessity for guile. John Witt would not have put his top campaign strategist on the payroll. Strike two for not being straight-forward: Gwinn is being investigated for alleged perjury in the wrongful termination case of former deputy city attorney Nancy Higgins, a former Gwinn campaign worker. Talk about intrigue and machinations. If he doesn’t survive this, his legal career will remain brief. Strike three for introducing such intrigue: "John Witt has left a tremendous legacy for this office and I now hope to build on that record as we move forward to make the office more committed to a pro-active, early intervention strategy in our jobs as criminal prosecutors and as civil attorneys for the city," Gwinn said in announcing his new management team. Well, Witt's legacy was tremendous or it wasn’t. If it was tremendous, Gwinn might aspire to inheriting Witt's management team. If Witt's team were committed to good municipal law, one wonders how Gwinn's team could be "more committed." And what does it mean to be "pro-active." More active than full-time-plus? To be straight-forward, Gwinn might have said: "I’ve decided to dismantle John Witt's good-ol'-boy network and rebuild the office." Says a colleague, "Casey was a police legal adviser and didn’t spend much time in the civil division. He sees himself as a prosecutor. People around him are intimidated and didn’t want to tell him, 'If you do this you’re going to destroy the corporate memory.' "A city the size of San Diego has its own rules and regulations, its own charter, its own administration on how the place operates. The new team is mostly litigators who've never worked on the advisory side. I heard the other day one of them wanted to know how to file a change order on a construction contract. (John) Riess used to do that, and now they don’t know how. "He didn’t want to have John's old cronies pulling the switches, but the net result is there's probably 200 years of corporate memory gone and I’m not sure people like (Al) Sumption and (Gene) Gordon are going to stay around much longer. "There's a classic example. Gene's probably the best police civil liability lawyer in the country. He's well respected, a nationwide speaker, and he got rewarded in this transition with a smaller office. Sumption has been everywhere up to the Supreme Court. He got demoted and a smaller office. "The transition team only had one real senior person on it, Les Girard, but he'd only been in the advisory department since Ken So left (about three years ago). The ins and outs of what goes on in City Hall, it’s a different world than the litigation division." Who's gone? John Kaheny, Witt's top lieutenant as assistant city attorney, has become the Chula Vista city attorney. John Riess, perhaps not beloved by the City Council, is out. Hal Valderhaug, the city's top legal land-use and real estate mind, has been asked to retire. Mary Kay Jackson, out. Chuck Markham, Witt's workers comp guy, is leaving. Alan Sumption, head litigator, demoted, in limbo. Joe Battaglino, senior police legal adviser, is joining the sheriff's office. John Vanderslice, another police legal adviser, will retire in about six months. Curt Fitzpatrick, who retired about a year ago, continued to consult and masterminded the city's defense against the stadium expansion; count him all the way out. Add the departures due to the natural attrition of recent years Janis Sammartino to the Muni bench, then Superior Court; Ken So to Muni and the retirement of the legends, Fred Conrad, Bob Teaze and Jack Katz, and what you've got is an office entirely different from 10 years ago, and very different from a year ago. "One of the things Casey is reacting to is the management guru philosophy that everything should be flattened out without so many chiefs," says an attorney who consulted with Gwinn during the transition. "It’s a bunch of bullshit. You can’t manage without managers. He's got one level of supervisors, and everyone under that is a deputy. Whether it works remains to be seen. "His style differs from Witt's in that he is more politically oriented. He sees himself as a political, elected official. Witt always put the professional side of the job first and then tried to deal with the politics second. The reason for the change has something to do with term limitations. Anyone coming into this job now is only going to be there for eight years maximum. So it’s natural that he's going to be concerned with where he goes next. That's the trouble with term limitations, it causes these guys to bounce from job to job to job." Then there's the matter of the relocation of the city attorney's office from the third floor of the City Administration Building to the Civic Center Plaza across the Concourse. The work has not gone as smoothly as one would like, causing some attorneys to move twice within months. Gwinn will have a nice office on the 16th floor. One staffer ascribes the current depression in the city attorney's office as 40 percent due to Witt's departure and 60 percent to Gwinn's ascension. Staff was counting on Gwinn not to rock the boat, a big reason no insider ran against him. Instead, the crew is realizing the new skipper is not as guileless as the old. The ship is shuddering as it changes course. "There's some fear of the unknown," says John Witt. "Nobody knows what’s going to happen. When he decided to interview everybody and they realized that the beginning of his term was the time to get rid of people, that interview process created some heartburn. Nobody likes change. But generally it’s been a well thought-out reorganization and it hasn't been a one-man show at all. I think it’s going to work out fine." That's a classic, understated Witticism, bland, not very funny but probably right. |
