Dan Shinoff defended Otay Water District's attorney Bonifacio Garcia a few years ago when a ratepayer sued. Bizarrely, the Otay Water Board had indemnified its attorney in case he was sued for wrongful actions. Normally, it's the other way around: the attorney guarantees that his legal advice is, well, legal. But apparently that's not the kind of attorney Otay Water District was looking for. As an Otay ratepayer, I helped pay Dan Shinoff's legal fees in that case. Now I'm paying Shinoff's legal fees again.
A History of Death Threats, Scandal and Sewage-Tainted Water
October 16, 2011
by Rob Davis
Voice of San Diego
...But this was March 2011, and an attorney for the Otay Water District was making a case for censure to the Chula Vista Ethics Board. One of the advisory group's members, a businessman named Chris Shilling, had run unsuccessfully in November against an Otay board member, David Gonzalez Jr.
The election hadn't been close. Gonzalez, the brother of Red Sox first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, won easily after far outspending Shilling.
Shilling had taken his campaign against Gonzalez to Facebook, on a page with 46 followers. There, he called the district corrupt and accused Gonzalez of stealing campaign signs. They were baseless comments, hardly noteworthy during election season.
But they sure got the water district's attention. Otay pursued legal action. Bonilla filed a complaint with the ethics board to get Shilling booted.
Bonilla didn't do that on his own dime though. The district's ratepayers paid for the agency's attorney to work on the complaint, which purported to come from the agency's board of directors. But the board hadn't agreed to send it. Bonilla told the Union-Tribune that he, Gonzalez, Watton and an attorney had decided to.
Watton said the district got involved because Shilling had noted in campaign literature that he served on the ethics board, making his criticism carry more weight.
"If someone is just out making stuff up and lying to the public, that is of interest to the district," Watton said. "We're not corrupt."
Bonilla later told the board that he'd pay for any litigation himself, according to meeting minutes. But he didn't reimburse the district for its legal expenses.
When the agency's attorney, Dan Shinoff, presented his case to the ethics board in March, he zeroed in on what he called Shilling's malicious critique of Gonzalez and Bonilla. Shinoff, who's paid $250 an hour by the district, appeared to be settling a campaign score. Talking to commissioners, he unfurled an inflated oratory filled with its own baseless accusations.
Shinoff tried to connect Shilling to an anonymous website that attacked Gonzalez. And yet Shinoff offered no proof it was Shilling's site. Shinoff said the criticism was symptomatic of the country's devolving political discourse.
"Somebody's going to be a victim if we continue this in this society," Shinoff told the board, noting the shooting rampage that had left six dead and 13 wounded in Tucson, Ariz. a few weeks earlier.
He said an ethics board member shouldn't be allowed to make such attacks — not with so much at stake. A rebuke was absolutely necessary, he said.
"I urge you with my heart and with my soul for you to do the right thing," he said. "I come from a family of concentration camp survivors. And I can tell you from a very personal perspective, permitting this sort of dialogue only leads to tragedy."...
[Maura Larkins' comment: I think Mr. Shinoff meant to say that he married into the family of a concentration camp survivor. But I must admit that it sounds more compelling for him to say he "came from" such a family. In the past, Mr. Shinoff has said it was "vile" to compare local political conflicts with the type of behavior in Germany that paved the way for the Holocaust. So why is he doing exactly that? This seems to be a new low for Shinoff: he is violating his own standards in an effort to obtain a legal advantage. One might wonder if he is exploiting the suffering of Holocaust victims to try to squelch free speech in San Diego.]
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