3 on Council Hire Lawyer in Remap Fight : Government: Filner, Hartley and Bernhardt express concern that city attorney’s office could not adequately represent them.

Frustrated over growing legal woes surrounding the city’s redistricting plan, three of the five San Diego City Council members who tentatively approved the measure hired an outside lawyer Friday to replace the city attorney as their representative.

In what the private lawyer himself described as a “highly unusual situation,” council members Bob Filner, John Hartley and Linda Bernhardt retained David Lundin to represent them in possible legal proceedings involving the redrawing of council district boundaries.

As members of the prevailing council majority that gave conceptual approval to a redistricting map Monday--igniting a controversy that led to multiple federal court hearings over the next three days--Filner, Hartley and Bernhardt normally would be represented by the city attorney’s office.

However, dissatisfied with the city attorney’s performance, and with critical court hearings scheduled for later this month, the three decided to retain Lundin--a move that city lawyers have emphasized will come at the council members’ own expense.

“Our clients’ perception is that there’s a problem . . . with the city attorney trying to represent the council as a whole when the council is so divided,” Lundin said. “Basically, they felt the city attorney could not adequately represent their position.”

Nevertheless, his own efforts, Lundin stressed, “certainly should complement” those of the city attorney in the redistricting case.

On Thursday, a federal magistrate delayed until July 23 any council action on the plan, which Latino activists contend illegally dilutes minority voting strength and violates the settlement of a 1988 Chicano Federation lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the city’s electoral system.

Unless the council, which originally planned to move toward formal adoption of that map next week, reverses itself and approves an alternative proposal developed by a citizens advisory board, further court review of the plan is a certainty, U.S. Magistrate Harry McCue said.

“I suspect Mr. Filner wasn’t real happy with what happened,” said Assistant City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick, offering his explanation for the legal switch. Although the plan that was passed by a 5-4 council vote Monday was introduced by Hartley, Filner is widely regarded as one of its major architects.

“Maybe he feels we weren’t as assiduous as he’d like in our advocacy, even though I’d have to say we were,” Fitzpatrick said. “But, if (Lundin) can be more persuasive with the judge, more power to him.”

For each of the three council members who hired Lundin, Hartley’s plan offers political advantages over the advisory board’s proposal, creating boundaries more to their liking. Indeed, under the advisory panel’s plan, the new or future homes of both Filner and Bernhardt were left outside the proposed realignment of their respective districts.

Beyond their unhappiness with the outcome of the preliminary legal skirmishing over the redistricting plan, the three also were angered by the fact that their first detailed explanation of the magistrate’s order came via newspaper stories Friday, not from city attorneys, Lundin said.

The hearing that resulted in McCue’s order, however, ended late Thursday after most council members had left City Hall. Deputy City Atty. Kenneth So said that, although he tried to contact the council members Thursday night, Ron Roberts--who voted against Monday’s plan--was the only one he reached. Fitzpatrick added that the city attorney’s office sent a memo on McCue’s order to the council offices Friday.

None of the three council members who retained Lundin returned telephone calls Friday. The two other members who supported Monday’s redistricting plan--Abbe Wolfsheimer and Wes Pratt--are lawyers and have not sought outside counsel.

Ironically, when the city attorney’s potential conflict in representing a badly divided council was discussed in court earlier in the week, U.S. District Judge John Rhoades’ major concern appeared to be whether the council’s minority could receive adequate representation.

With the city attorney’s office obliged to represent the position of the five-vote council majority, Rhoades asked, how could it simultaneously defend the other four members’ interests? In a letter to Rhoades, Councilman Bruce Henderson raised the same concern, suggesting that those four members also might eventually need private lawyers.

Friday’s maneuvering over which attorneys should represent whom seemed an appropriate end to a week in which the redistricting plan spent more time in court than at City Hall.

Hartley’s plan reduces the Latino composition of Filner’s 8th District from the advisory board’s 52.2% to at most 51%, and perhaps less, as well as dramatically alters the configuration of a number of other council districts. Based on some estimates, the plan would change council representation for up to 300,000 San Diegans.

To date, however, the two sides’ court debate has focused more on how Monday’s council vote occurred than on the content of the redistricting plan itself. In particular, Chicano Federation officials argue that the council’s approval of Hartley’s plan, only hours after it was publicized, denied them a meaningful voice in its development, as guaranteed by an agreement that settled the first stage of the group’s lawsuit.

Those procedural questions prompted McCue to order the council to reconsider both Hartley’s plan and the advisory board’s map when it resumes debate on the subject July 23.

Reacting to McCue’s order, several council members suggested Friday that the council might hold several public hearings on the plans before formally voting on either or perhaps adopting an amended version later this summer.

“In retrospect, we could have avoided some of the outcry if this had been handled differently,” Pratt said. “But, in one way, the judge has done the council a favor by giving us a chance to sit back for a week or so to reflect. When we go through it all over again, who knows whether the result will be the same or change? But, at least, the process will be better.”