A local attorney accused of hiring a private investigator to
prove that the city manager was having an affair with the city
attorney began to fight back Tuesday by saying it is not illegal to
keep watch on a government official.
A local attorney accused of hiring a private investigator to prove that the city manager was having an affair with the city attorney began to fight back Tuesday by saying it is not illegal to keep watch on a government official.
“This is America and, as the Supreme Court recently restated, we do not punish people for scrutinizing their government,” said Bruce Tichinin, the private attorney, said in a statement to The Times Tuesday.
“If investigatory efforts are somehow illegal, in and of themselves, without anybody having actually broken the law, who is next? The media? Sixty Minutes? Michael Moore? Woodward and Bernstein?” Tichinin said.
The council discussed the issue at a special meeting Wednesday and will meet again on July 14.
Tichinin was alleged to have hired Brian Carey of Santa Cruz to follow City Manager Ed Tewes while he was on city business in Southern California in February 2003. City Attorney Helene Leichter was out of town at the same time.
Tewes has denied having an improper relationship as did Leichter.
“I unequivocably deny the affair,” Leichter said Thursday.
The report prepared by Councilmen Greg Sellers and Larry Carr after a year-long investigation into the surveillance suggested that Tichinin wanted proof of the affair as leverage in two possible instances, one involving Councilwoman Hedy Chang; the other, a client in a land-use issue.
Tichinin said any leverage he was seeking was wholly correct and above board.
“If I could show proof (of a relationship), I could go to the council and show that the city attorney’s lack of independence (in his client’s case) could be directly attributed to that relationship,” Tichinin said.
“It is distressing at this late date in the history of our country that any governmental entity, including the City of Morgan Hill, would threaten or seek to retaliate against a lawyer or any citizen whomsoever for investigating the affairs of government or possible issues of legitimate concern,” Tichinin said.
“It has been said that “those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them,”” Tichinin said.
Chang earlier this year had hired Tichinin to defend her against claims that Chang had defamed and harassed Leichter by alleging an “adulterous sexual relationship” with Tewes. Chang has repeatedly denied that she knew Tichinin had hired an investigator.
Sellers and Carr said council members felt they had to take action to discover why Tewes was being followed because the city is committed “to preserving a safe working environment for its employees.”
The Seller/Carr report included a range of possible actions the council might take against Chang and/or Tichinin, from doing nothing, through censure and condemnation, to referring the cases to the District Attorney and the State Bar for disciplinary action.
“The city can threaten to turn me into the State Bar, the District Attorney or the Attorney General,” Tichinin’s statement went on. “It will not deter me from exercising my constitutional rights or those of my clients to vindicate their rights. This is not the first time in my 32-year legal career that one governmental agency or another has sought to intimidate me or my clients, and I surmise it will not be the last.”
Tichinin, over that 32-year career, most of which has been in Morgan Hill, has gone head to head with city officials several times before. He was a member of the Save El Toro Committee that stopped the development of El Toro Mountain, the city’s signature peak, when developers wanted to carve off the top and erect a restaurant reached by a tram attached to the mountain’s side.
Tichinin campaigned for the first growth control initiative in Morgan Hill after out-of-control development led to raw sewage running in the streets and a threat of triple sessions in the public schools. He went to court after the measure was adopted to keep developers from skirting the law and continuing with their projects.
In 1982 Tichinin represented residents living near the sewage plant in Gilroy, which Morgan Hill shares, after employees reported they had been instructed to dump 2 million gallons of untreated sewage a day into the Pajaro River, and keep quiet about it.
In 1990 he uncovered a secret contract the then City Council had with the developers of homes in the Cochrane Road area, behind the former hospital, that would allow them to avoid the controls of the second growth-control initiative, Measure P.
Tichinin represented property owners in Uvas Canyon, forcing the county to prepare an environmental impact report on the effects on water quality in the reservoirs that a large development of houses would have.
Tichinin was on the board of South County Alternatives, the predecessor of Community Solutions; he was a founding director of the Morgan Hill Community Foundation and has been on the planning board of Independence Day, Inc. – president for three years – the group that produces Morgan Hill’s two-day July Fourth celebrations.
For the same client he caused a ruling of statewide precedent relating to trespassing, in which a property owner would be reimbursed the cost of a living tree instead of that of cord wood.
Tichinin said his most exciting case was Wildlife Alive vs. Chickering in which his client was awarded attorney’s fees from the California Department of Fish and Game. The Legislature, however, declined to authorize the payment.
Tichinin arranged for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department to serve the state Fish and Game Department with the court order to pay his fees but, getting advance warning, the department called out the State Police who arranged themselves on the steps of the Fish and Game building, to stop the service.
Fortunately, it did not come to that and Assemblywoman Leona Egland intervened and got the Legislature to authorize payment.
“It was the headline story in the Sacramento Bee the next day,” Tichinin said.
“It may be that these matters have to be resolved in court,” Tichinin said, “with the ultimate loser being the city treasury. Perhaps that will not be necessary. I will extend the city an opportunity to engage in some sober reflection before taking my next step.”
Tichinin was born in Berkeley but has lived in Morgan Hill since 1954. He graduated from U.C. Berkeley and Boalt Hall, a U.C. law school.
A more complete description of the council report was published in Tuesday’s Times and can also be found at www.morganhilltimes.com/
Carol Holzgrafe covers City Hall for The Times. She can be reached by e-mail at ch********@*************es.com or phoning (408) 779-4106 Ext. 201.
