The City Council voted 6-1 to go forward with an increasingly controversial plan for the Regents Road Bridge design at the Oct. 16 council meeting, despite legal objections from the office of the city attorney. A memorandum sent to the City Council days earlier warned of conflicts of interest and violations if the council passed the project.
The council consulted with an outside attorney before deciding to move forward with the project, despite Mike Aguirre’s advice.
“We have a good-faith difference of opinion here,” said Kevin Sullivan, an attorney representing the city. “But my opinion remains the same, which is that this contract is not prohibited by any conflict of interest.”
The contract in question has been at the center of an ongoing controversy for more than three years. At the heart of the matter is a company called Project Design Consultants (PDC), which the City Attorney’s Office says is now in violation of Sections 1090 and 87100 of the California Government Code for allegedly manipulating the Regents Road Bridge design process for its own benefit.
While some officials have said that the Regents Road Bridge, which would extend the road across Rose Canyon, could essentially ease traffic on Genesee Avenue in University City, other residents, such as the Friends of Rose Canyon, have said the bridge would destroy the habitat of certain wildlife.
But the council and the city attorney are at odds for an entirely different reason.
The City Attorney’s Office sent the City Council a memo on Oct. 12, offering an opinion as to why the council would be in violation of certain sections if PDC’s proposal were adopted.
The company, which was retained by the city in 2003 to evaluate alternatives to relieve traffic congestion in University City, “was promised a contract at that time, without having any intervening competitive procurement process,” said Michael Calabrese of the City Attorney’s Office.
According to Calabrese, that was just the beginning of the conflict of interest aspect and the government section violations.
“The two code sections are similar but are in different parts of the government code,” Calabrese said. “A government official may not participate in making government decisions or in the making of contracts where he had interests in the contract.”
In addition to the promise of a contract, PDC was employed to perform a “Phase I contract and a Phase II contract” on the Regents Bridge. The first phase consisted of the environmental documentation, which “called for an evenhanded evaluation of several alternatives,” Calabrese wrote in a memo dated Oct. 12.
The violation, the city attorney contends, occurred because “this placed PDC in a position where it had the power to control the framing of the recommendations to the council and where it thus could, for example, slant the Phase I analysis toward the alternative that would generate the largest Phase II contract,” Calabrese wrote.
The city attorney sent this information to the council, including intercepted e-mails from city workers he used as evidence of a conflict of interest, but the council members continued the process they had begun.
“Nothing has changed,” said Madeleine Baudoin, from the office District 1 City Councilman and Council President Scott Peters. “The council approved moving into the contract.”
In an Oct. 15 letter, Sullivan outlined reasons why the City Council and PDC were not in violation of Sections 1090 and 87100 of the California Government Code.
“The Memorandum does not change or alter our determination, which was expressed in our July 13, 2007 Memorandum to the Mayor and members of the City Council, that the proposed bridge design contract is not prohibited by any conflict of interest laws,” Sullivan wrote.
In the City Council’s 6-1 vote to go forward with the project, District 2 Councilman Kevin Faulconer voted no and District 6 Councilwoman Donna Frye recused herself.