People ex rel. Lacey v. Robles
| Citation | 258 Cal.Rptr.3d 97,44 Cal.App.5th 804 |
| Decision Date | 29 January 2020 |
| Docket Number | B290697 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals |
| Parties | The PEOPLE EX REL. Jackie LACEY as District Attorney, etc., Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Albert ROBLES, Defendant and Appellant. |
Albert Robles, in pro. per., for Defendant and Appellant.
Jackie Lacey, District Attorney, Phyllis Asayama and Kenneth Von Helmolt, Deputy District Attorneys, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Albert Robles (Robles) served simultaneously as a member of the board of directors of the Water Replenishment District of Southern California (WRD) and as mayor of Carson, California. The Los Angeles County District Attorney (District Attorney) obtained permission from the Attorney General to sue Robles in quo warranto, a Latin term for a legal proceeding that demands a person show by what authority he or she exercises a public office. In the quo warranto suit, the District Attorney argued Robles was violating Government Code section 1099 ( Section 1099 ), which makes it unlawful to simultaneously hold incompatible public offices—meaning, as relevant here, offices for which "there is a possibility of a significant clash of duties or loyalties" based on the powers and jurisdiction of the offices. ( § 1099, subd. (a)(2).) The trial court agreed, removing Robles as a director of the WRD. We now consider, in the main, whether the District Attorney properly initiated the quo warranto action and whether Robles’s two public offices are indeed incompatible within the meaning of the statute.
The WRD serves 43 cities in southern Los Angeles County, including Carson.1 The WRD is governed by a five-member board of directors, each of whom is assigned to represent one of five geographic divisions. Prior to his removal from office, Robles represented WRD division five, a division that includes Carson within its boundaries. He was first elected to the WRD in 1992, and he was re-elected continuously through November 2016 (his most recent term was to expire in 2020).
The Water Replenishment District Act empowers the WRD to replenish groundwater supplies by buying, selling, and exchanging water; spreading, sinking, and injecting water into aquifers; storing, transporting, recapturing, recycling, purifying, and treating water; and building infrastructure. ( Water Code, § 60221.) The WRD is also authorized to make expenditures and take legal action to prevent contamination of, and remove contaminants from, water basins. ( Water Code, § 60224.)
The WRD board of directors charges a "replenishment assessment" to fund its operating expenses and other activities. ( Water Code, § 60305.) The replenishment assessment is "levied upon the production of groundwater from groundwater supplies within the district during the ensuing fiscal year" and "fixed by the board at a uniform rate per acre-foot of groundwater produced." ( Water Code, § 60317.) Carson contracts with two private companies to provide pumped groundwater to the city and its residents, and the companies pay the WRD’s replenishment assessment and pass on the cost in the water rates they charge.
Having opted to levy a replenishment assessment, the WRD board of directors is statutorily obligated to hold hearings each year to "determin[e] whether and to what extent the estimated costs thereof for the ensuing year shall be paid for by [the] replenishment assessment." ( Water Code, § 60306.) Members of the public can attend these hearings, and as Robles testified during a deposition, residents in the area served by the WRD do attend the assessment-setting hearings every year. City council members (from cities other than Carson, Robles said) also attend to object to the amount of proposed replenishment assessments.
Beyond expressing views at a replenishment assessment hearing, a party opposing a replenishment assessment may file a "judicial action or proceeding to attack, review, set aside, void, or annul a resolution or motion ... levying a replenishment assessment." ( Water Code, § 60317.) In addition, as mayor of Carson, Robles can file—and has in the past filed—a protest with the Public Utilities Commission to object to the rates being charged by the two private water companies contracting with Carson.
While serving as a WRD director, Robles opted to run for a city council seat in Carson, and he was elected to the council in March 2013.2 Late the following year, the District Attorney informed Robles he was holding two incompatible offices under Section 1099, which meant under the law he would forfeit his WRD directorship. Robles nonetheless continued to occupy both offices, and in April 2015, Robles’s Carson city council colleagues appointed him to fill the vacant office of mayor (as mayor he still sits on the city council).
In April 2015, the District Attorney applied to then-Attorney General Kamala Harris for leave to sue Robles in quo warranto. General Harris granted the application in a December 2015 published opinion, finding that "[w]hether the doctrine of incompatible offices precludes [Robles] from simultaneously serving as a director of the [WRD] and as city council member and mayor for the City of Carson presents substantial questions of fact and law warranting judicial resolution." ( 98 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen. 94 (2015).)
Having obtained the Attorney General’s leave to sue, the District Attorney filed a complaint in quo warranto in January 2016. The complaint alleged Robles had "usurped, intruded into, and unlawfully held and exercised the office of Director of the WRD in violation of [ Section 1099 ], and continued to do so once he was sworn into the office of Mayor of the City of Carson ...." The complaint further alleged the two offices were incompatible under Section 1099 "because the WRD and the City of Carson have overlapping territory, duties and responsibilities, and a clash of duties is likely to arise in the exercise of both offices simultaneously." The District Attorney sought Robles’s ouster from the WRD board of directors under Section 1099 plus a fine and costs under Code of Civil Procedure section 809.
At the November 2016 general election, when the mayoral term the city council appointed him to fill was set to expire, Robles was elected mayor of Carson. Later in 2017, with the quo warranto proceeding well underway, the two public bodies on which Robles sat (the WRD board of directors and the Carson city council) took actions purporting to authorize him to simultaneously hold both offices. Specifically, in December 2017, the WRD board of directors adopted Resolution No. 17-1069, amending the WRD’s administrative code to state WRD board members may "hold positions in other governmental agencies and cities within the District boundaries provided that the governmental agency or city is not a groundwater pumper/or has previously owned in the previous 25-years [sic ] the right to pump groundwater within the District."3 A few days later, the Carson city council passed an ordinance providing, with retroactive effect, that elected or appointed officers of the city may simultaneously hold certain other elected or appointed offices, including on the WRD’s board of directors.4
The trial court held hearings on the quo warranto complaint in February and April 2018. At the first hearing, the trial court determined Robles’s offices were incompatible under Section 1099 because there were several possible ways in which the duties and loyalties of both would conflict. These include Carson’s potential interest in challenging replenishment assessments, Carson’s power to make land use decisions impacting the groundwater supply, the possibility that Carson would acquire groundwater pumping rights and become even more directly enmeshed with the WRD, and the prospect that the WRD would negotiate to purchase public land in Carson to construct water-related infrastructure.
After receiving supplemental briefing and holding a second hearing, the trial court rejected Robles’s contention that he was "compelled or expressly authorized by law" to hold both offices. The court found the WRD’s enabling act does not permit it to authorize holding of other public offices and, even if it did, a mere resolution (which is what the WRD board of directors passed) does not have the force of law. The trial court also rejected Robles’s contention that the quo warranto proceeding must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction on the theory that the Attorney General’s authorization to sue was no longer effective now that he had been re-elected to both offices in November 2016 and the terms he was serving at the time of the authorization had expired.
Having determined Robles was in violation of Section 1099, the trial court granted the District Attorney’s quo warranto petition and, in May 2018, entered judgment removing Robles from the office of WRD director. This appeal ensued.
We think it obvious that a shopkeeper who sets the prices that customers must pay would face a real possibility of divided loyalties if simultaneously selected to be a consumer advocate for the customers who patronize the store.5 On our facts, Robles is the shopkeeper—setting water replenishment assessments his Carson constituents must ultimately pay (or legally protest). Section 1099 forbids this sort of conflicted arrangement by making it unlawful to hold multiple public offices where there is a "possibility of a significant clash of duties or loyalties" between them. ( § 1099, subd. (a)(2).)
All the ancillary arguments Robles advances to avoid quo warranto removal as WRD director notwithstanding this conflict in loyalties are unpersuasive. He contends, as we shall first discuss, the quo warranto suit should never have been brought because the District Attorney is not a "private party" eligible to sue under Code of Civil Procedure section 803 ( Section 803 ), the quo warranto statute. But Section 803 ’s use of the term ...
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Ross v. Superior Court of Riverside Cnty.
...Bd., supra , 23 Cal.App.5th at p. 131, 232 Cal.Rptr.3d 558 ), including district attorneys ( People ex rel. Lacey v. Robles (2020) 44 Cal.App.5th 804, 826-827, 258 Cal.Rptr.3d 97 ( Lacey )). And the rule applies regardless of whether the official is a named defendant or a third party ( West......