City attorney withheld decision

CITY HALL — City Atty. Dennis Barlow on Friday defended his decision to wait nearly two months before informing Councilman David Gordon that the state attorney general had declined to review whether the councilman violated conflict-of-interest laws.

Several City Council members had directed Barlow to request, through state Sen. Carol Liu’s office, that the attorney general’s office investigate whether Gordon’s optometry practice, accessible by city employees through their health benefits, precluded him from participating in union negotiations.

Since that time, Gordon had refrained from all labor-related discussions while awaiting word on the attorney general’s opinion, a move that appeared unnecessary because Barlow received the letter in early December.

Barlow said he held off on letting Gordon know after a deputy in the attorney general’s office said she might be able to secure an informal verbal opinion on the matter.

“In all my experience, in all my years of doing this, they have always given an opinion,” Barlow said. “Maybe I could have pushed them, but I didn’t want to. I wanted them to give me the answer.”

Still, shortly after receiving the Dec. 7 reply from the attorney general’s office, Barlow sent an e-mail to every council member except Gordon, informing them that their Sept. 1 request for a written opinion had been declined due to budgetary concerns.

But in the letter to Liu’s office, Deputy Atty. Gen. Susan Duncan Lee said her office was not authorized to issue opinions to city attorneys pertaining to conflict-of-interest issues in labor negotiations. She only referenced budgetary constraints in precluding any deviation from standard practice.

The issues first emerged last summer when Gordon, on the advice of his private attorneys, extracted himself from labor negotiations because of the possibility that he might have a remote interest in the contract.

It wasn’t until Feb. 5 that Barlow said he told Gordon’s private attorneys he had received the response in December. Barlow argued that because Gordon was not part of the three-member council panel that requested the inquiry, he did not include him on the e-mail regarding the attorney general’s decision because it was about him.