Janet Kern hopes to stabilize the position recently scarred by
scandal
Morgan Hill – Janet Kern is about to find out what it’s like to be the little guy.
Today, Kern will take over as Morgan Hill’s city attorney, leaving San Jose after eight years – the huge neighbor this city loves to hate.
“I hope I can bring something that might help smooth that relationship,” Kern said in a recent interview. “I think by understanding where San Jose is coming from maybe we can find ways to resolve those issues. Growth is going to happen; it’s a matter of how you manage it.”
And Morgan Hill leaders and school officials have been most unhappy about the way San Jose is managing Coyote Valley, the large rural buffer that separates the two cities and may soon be home to what amounts to a new city.
San Jose wants to fill Coyote Valley with 25,000 house, 50,000 jobs and 80,000 people over the next two decades. It’s one of the issues Kern can’t wait to begin working on.
“There are a lot of quality of life issues with Coyote Valley and the growth that’s headed this way,” Kern said. “How will we manage to keep a good quality of life in Morgan Hill? I’m really looking forward to tackling those issues and helping Morgan Hill move into the 21st century.”
In San Jose, Kern was the top lawyer for the city’s hyperactive redevelopment agency, a $150 million-a-year department that gets credit for the renaissance of the city’s downtown.
That experience will be called upon quickly in Morgan Hill, as city leaders look to expand the local redevelopment program and explore using the agency to revitalize Morgan Hill’s main corridor.
“I found that experience something that would be very valuable for us,” Councilman Larry Carr said of Kern’s redevelopment background. “But ultimately, we had a lot of great candidates, and it came down to our comfort level with these people.”
To a man, council members praised Kern’s personality, calling her a “warm,” “approachable” “open” woman with a “great sense of humor,” a “great sense of fun” and “extremely good judgment.”
“I’m very impressed by her presence and her composure,” Mayor Dennis Kennedy said. “She has a very warm, open personality. She’s a people person. She’s the kind of person you feel comfortable talking to.”
Kern is the city’s first permanent city attorney in more than a year.
Former city attorney Helene Leichter resigned last April in the wake of an embarrassing scandal.
Leichter was paid $233,000 as part of a settlement with the city.
In July 2004, attorney Bruce Tichinin, who was representing developer Howard Vierra who was angry that a project he wanted to build at the base of El Toro Mountain was rejected by the city, hired a private investigator to find evidence to support his belief that Leichter was having an adulterous affair with City Manager Ed Tewes and that the affair was the reason his application was rejected.
Tewes and Leichter denied they were involved and no evidence was found to support the claims, which were repeated by then-council member Hedy Chang, and by Tichinin, who’s now suing the city for business losses he said occurred when the council publicly criticized in his role in the scandal.
Council members wouldn’t comment on Leichter, but made it clear that the scandal figured into the selection process.
“As a council, we talked a lot of about what we were looking for,” Carr said. “Someone who would be approachable and someone who would be respected in the community.”
Kern said she never considered Morgan Hill as a city stained by scandal.
“I think anybody who takes a new job looks at who their predecessor was,” she said. “I’m very satisfied that the people I’ll be working with are a very talented and professional group of people. The staff is really experienced, with department heads who have had long careers and are at the top of their field.”
Kern, 54, is a California native. She grew up in Diamond Bar Ranch in Los Angeles County.
She attended college and law school in Utah and settled for a time in Colorado. She was living there when she met her husband, George, who was living in southern California at the time. To split the difference, the couple bought a house in Salinas.
“We like the smaller community,” Kern said, adding that’s she thrilled to be working for a smaller city after eight years in what most people would consider the big leagues of municipal law.
“The bigger the bureaucracy, the harder it is to be effective,” she said. “I started out in law thinking I was going to do all these glorious social things and I ended up in a corporate setting. I’m at the stage of my career where I have a lot of depth of experience and ability. This is an opportunity for me to be at the top of the pile, even if there aren’t a lot of people under me. And from a personal perspective, it cuts my commute in half.”
A Kernel of Kern: The City’s New Lawyer
Personal
- Kern, 54, is married to George, a golf professional in Salinas, where the couple lives
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Her hobbies include golf, sailing, photography and theater
Professional
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1998-2006, senior associate counsel, San Jose Redevelopment Agency
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1984-1998, three stints with Sherman & Howard in Denver, where she practiced business, finance and securities law
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1994-1997, general counsel to Waste Management Inc. in southern California
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1989-1992, general counsel to division of Johns-Manville Corp., Denver
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1971-1974, reporter, the Nevada Appeal, Carson City, Nev., and Daily Report, Ontario
