{"id":254658,"date":"2019-07-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/cory-briggs-why-im-running\/"},"modified":"2019-07-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T07:00:00","slug":"cory-briggs-why-im-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/cory-briggs-why-im-running\/","title":{"rendered":"Cory Briggs: Why I\u2019m running"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By CORY BRIGGS | City attorney candidate<\/p>\n<p>Since 2002, I\u2019ve been fighting for the taxpayers of San Diego \u2014 working hard to protect their interests against the insider power brokers who\u2019ve dominated City Hall for decades.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Always the taxpayer advocate, I\u2019ve spent my entire career standing up to the donor class who\u2019ve made lucrative deals at taxpayer expense.<\/p>\n<p>If elected as San Diego\u2019s next city attorney, I\u2019ll bring my energy and experience from those battles and put it to work for taxpayers from the inside.<\/p>\n<p>One of the reasons City Hall has racked up so many legal failures over the years is the City Attorney\u2019s Office has been run as a political shop looking out for its leaders\u2019 personal agendas, not as a non-political law firm.<\/p>\n<p>I will change that.<\/p>\n<p>Cory Briggs for City Attorney 2020 is a campaign about getting politics out of the City Attorney\u2019s Office and reforming it to function as a law firm that does nothing more than provide top-notch legal advice to the mayor and City Council as they work to serve their constituents.<\/p>\n<p>What would a non-political City Attorney\u2019s Office look like? Here are just a few examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No more attempts to gut the California Public Records Act and prevent the public from getting information from the government. If I am city attorney, you will see the city\u2019s compliance with disclosure laws improve significantly.<\/li>\n<li>No more leaks of criminal complaints of child abuse by city contractors to tip off their lawyer before law enforcement has a chance to investigate. If I am city attorney, cooperation with law enforcement will be above reproach.<\/li>\n<li>No more lawsuits against voters to prevent them from weighing in on decisions like the future of the Qualcomm Stadium site in Mission Valley. If I am city attorney, you won\u2019t see the office waging court battles against the voters. You will see voter-approved initiatives vigorously and tirelessly defended.<\/li>\n<li>No more criminalizing the homeless population. If I am city attorney, you will see the office providing solid, proactive legal advice that helps the nayor and City Council implement solutions that help people get off the streets while simultaneously reducing crime.<\/li>\n<li>And, the city attorney would not solicit political endorsements and donations from litigants while they are suing the city. If ever there is potential for a conflict of interest while I\u2019m the city attorney, it will be avoided altogether, or the office will step aside so that the mayor and City Council can bring in outside counsel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With the right leadership, the City Attorney\u2019s Office plays a vital role in protecting the public\u2019s interest and San Diegans\u2019 quality of life. It can do this by ensuring that government officials operate within the boundaries of the law. Competent, unbiased, non-political legal advice for the mayor and City Council is therefore essential.<\/p>\n<p>Bad legal advice from the current city attorney has cost San Diego taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and contributed to a deterioration in our neighborhoods\u2019 quality of life.<\/p>\n<p>While the City Council and mayor will be my client\u2019s decision-makers \u2014 and I will protect their interests as the public\u2019s representatives every step of the way \u2014 my advice to them will always be influenced, first and foremost, by the oath I took as a lawyer to uphold the rule of law. That means giving honest, informed, fully transparent legal advice free of taint from any political agenda.<\/p>\n<p>I will also set a new standard for transparency in the City Attorney\u2019s Office. Except in those few instances when the law requires that my advice be given confidentially, the advice I give to the mayor and City Council will be public so that I, too, can be held fully accountable for the work I do on the public\u2019s behalf. This way the public will be confident that the policy-makers are getting solid legal advice.<\/p>\n<p>In closing, I\u2019m running both to restore the role of the City Attorney\u2019s Office to giving straight-up, non-political legal advice to the mayor and City Council so they can do what\u2019s in their constituents\u2019 best interests; and overall to improve the public\u2019s confidence in government.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve done my best to protect taxpayers from outside City Hall. It\u2019s now time for me to give San Diegans my best efforts from inside.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Cory Briggs has been representing taxpayers in San Diego since 2002 when he opened Briggs Law Firm. He is now running to be San Diego&#8217;s next city attorney.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By CORY BRIGGS | City attorney candidate Since 2002, I\u2019ve been fighting for the taxpayers of San Diego \u2014 working hard to protect their interests against the insider power brokers who\u2019ve dominated City Hall for decades.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1441,"featured_media":254659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Cory Briggs: Why I\u2019m running","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11552,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-opinion","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}