May 5, 2006

Cortese up against accusations

Colleagues say he may have violated the city charter

By Daniel DeBolt
Staff writer

Four weeks before the mayoral election, candidate David Cortese has some serious accusations to contend with from two of his colleagues.

But he’s also wondering why these issues are coming up a year after they originally surfaced.

Council women Nora Campos and Nancy Pyle issued a statement on May 3 alleging that mayoral candidate and Councilman David Cortese set an agenda with lobbyists behind the scenes on a large residential development and proceeded to direct city staff on the project, something council members can’t do. Cortese co-chairs the Evergreen East Hills Visions Strategy Task Force, along with Campos, a body of representatives from the community advising the
city on the project.

Campos said there was a good reason this issue was coming up now- a new ordinance requiring council members to report more information about meetings with lobbyists.

“It’s a very serious situation and it requires the council’s attention which is why she (Pyle) is bringing it to the council on Tuesday,” said Leland C Wilcox, Pyle’s chief of Staff.

Last year Cortese and others spearheaded efforts to censure Councilmember Terry Gregory for accepting gifts from lobbyists.

“I think it’s important that if a council member is going to hold colleagues accountable about ethics he should be held to the same standard,” Campos said.

Campos and Pyle said Cortese misled the public about his meetings with lobbyists and developers when he said in a meeting last year that he had not met "met with developer's lobbyists, property owner's lobbyists at all on this issue."
Cortese said the statement was taken out of context from the following transcript:

“I think with fair certainty that I'm the only member of this task force that hasn't met with the developers, lobbyists in recent weeks. I haven't met with the developers’ lobbyists on this issue at all. But I know that the mayor's office has and that several council members’ offices have.”

Cortese said he is surprised Pyle and Campos would bring this up a month before the mayoral election.

“I don’t think there should be a timeframe on open government,” Campos said, before pointing to how old the NorCal deal was before it became scandal.

Campos referred to new reports from lobbyists Thomas A. Armstrong of HMH Engineers, The Shoennauer company LLC, Gerry DeYoung, Pirayou law offices, Saggau and DeRollo LLC. Cortese met with them about the development during a five-month period, when city staffers were drafting an environmental impact report, she said.

The other part of the accusation deals with a section of the city charter that says city council members are not allowed to direct or coerce city staff and must instead go through the city manager.

“We believe that councilmember Dave Cortese may have violated this section of the charter in a memo to the then titled Evergreen Visioning Project Task Force whereby he directed city staff on this $1 billion-plus land use development,” read the statement from Campos and Pyle.

In the memo to city staff and the task force, Cortese writes, “After hearing community and developer proposals, I am hereby directing city staff as follows…”

“Maybe it was an unfortunate choice of words,” said Laurel Prevetti, Deputy Planning Director for San Jose. “From a strict sense it’s not appropriate for a councilmember to direct staff to do anything. The numbers in the memo were not anything new. He was summarizing where we were in community process.”

Prevetti pointed out that at the end of the memo, Cortese reminds staff that the council will ultimately decide on a plan for Evergreen. Prevetti said she did not feel like she was directed by the memo and would not take direction from city council members if they did direct her. Prevetti said the council briefly discussed the memo a year ago.

Campos and Pyle aren’t running for mayor but have endorsed Cortese’s opponent, Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez, for mayor.

The city council will discuss the issue at the May 9 council meeting and take action against Cortese if deemed necessary, Campos said.