Fresno County DA plays politics on Brown Act, Granite Park. It’s an election year
At 4:59 p.m. Tuesday — the very definition of a late news dump — Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp issued a 1,673-word news release (not including two triple-decker headlines in all caps) essentially telling us her office spent months and years spinning its wheels.
Here’s a two-paragraph summation:
● About the city of Fresno audit over Granite Park? We turned that mess over to the feds in late 2019, but from what we hear the investigation remains “ongoing and active.” Wink wink.
● No charges will be filed against any Fresno City Councilmember for violating the Brown Act, nor for spending a few thousand over the limit purchasing masks during a global pandemic. Tsk tsk.
Before signing off, and somewhat out of nowhere, Smittcamp gave a quote (in bold italics) suggesting Fresno’s city charter be amended to strip authority over the city attorney from the Democrat majority City Council and hand it to Mayor Jerry Dyer, her Republican ally.
Why did Fresno County’s top prosecutor feel the need to get all this off her chest at that particular time? Hours before Smittcamp stood solemnly behind Fresno Police Chief Paco Balderrama as he copped to the arrest of a police sergeant (promoted by Dyer in 2018) for robbing a woman of her meth and then crashing his police cruiser while high.
Because 2022 is an election year. Everything is political, and nothing is accidental.
Smittcamp, who is up for re-election, doesn’t have to worry about campaigning for votes. With a week left before the filing deadline for the June primary, hers is the only name on the ballot.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Smittcamp must remain on the sidelines. She’s free to run interference for fellow Republicans and cast doubts upon Democrats.
Which is something Smittcamp accomplishes by topping her news release with the non-news about Granite Park. With a casual mention of the FBI’s “ongoing and active” investigation — knowing full well the feds will neither confirm nor deny.
“How that is POLITICAL is something you will have to explain to me,” Smittcamp replied to my email questioning her about that inclusion.
Fresno County DA’s pattern
Fair enough. Allow me to do so.
One of the principals in the Granite Park imbroglio is Terance Frazier, a local developer whose romantic partner, Fresno City Councilmember Esmeralda Soria, is running for state Assembly.
So even though Smittcamp doesn’t have sufficient evidence to charge Soria and other Democratic city councilmembers for violating the Brown Act or overspending on masks, she strongly implied Frazier (and Soria, by extension) isn’t in the clear on Granite Park.
Anything to dent Soria’s reputation as she squares off in the 27th Assembly District race against fellow councilmember Mike Karbassi, a conservative Democrat, and Republican Mark Pazin, the former Merced County sheriff.
This isn’t the first time Smittcamp has used her DA platform to besmirch a local Democrat’s reputation.
In 2019, after Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula was found not guilty of misdemeanor child abuse, she gave an interview calling the verdict “a sad day for all children who are forced to live in environments where they can be subject to physical injury.”
Which is a careful way of implying Arambula’s daughter lives in such an environment. The prosecution just couldn’t prove it in a court of law.
But when a Republican like Fresno City Councilmember Garry Bredefeld, the loudest peddler of City Hall’s stench and corruption, kept an aide in his employ for more than two years despite multiple domestic violence felonies hanging over him, Smittcamp didn’t utter a word.
No comment except to TV
The final sentence of Smittcamp’s Tuesday 4:59 p.m. news release reads: “The Fresno County District Attorney’s Office will have no further comment on this matter.”
Yet Wednesday evening, Smittcamp herself stood in front of KSEE-24’s television cameras making several further comments on the matter for the 6 o’clock news. Her office couldn’t meet the burden of proof for the Brown Act violations, she said, because certain individuals (aka certain city councilmembers; the viewer can guess which) were uncooperative.
That ties into Smittcamp’s seemingly random suggestion that Fresno should change its form of government so that the mayor has authority over the city attorney rather than the City Council.
It’s easy to discern why Smittcamp would prefer such an arrangement. Her words may presage an internal City Hall power struggle that has been brewing behind the scenes.
Perhaps Smittcamp is right. Maybe Fresno ought to rethink who the city attorney reports to. But why limit the options? Perhaps the city attorney should report directly to the city’s voters, as an elected official.
That’s the way Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco — three of California’s four largest cities — do things. Of course, the city attorneys in those cities also have prosecutorial powers over misdemeanor crimes. Meaning they decide which domestic violence and drunken driving cases to bring to trial.
If Fresno adopted a similar model, the Fresno County DA’s office would suddenly have more free time and wield less influence.
Something tells me Smittcamp didn’t bother to think that one all the way through.
