Outspoken City Attorney Has Wrist Slapped : Government: City Council calls him to task in a dispute over policies regarding the homeless.

Santa Monica City Atty. Robert M. Myers, who last month publicly criticized his bosses on the City Council in a dispute over policies regarding the homeless, was called to task by the council in a secret personnel session early Wednesday morning.

The session was requested by City Councilman Herb Katz, who said Myers was out of line for issuing a memo that chastised the council for asking the police chief and the city manager to enforce the law prohibiting sleeping overnight in the parks as a public safety measure.

In Myers’ view, enforcing the park law violates the human rights of the homeless by subjecting them to the “indignity of a criminal arrest” because they are without shelter.

Emerging from the 1 1/4-hour session, which followed the regular council meeting, Myers refused to comment. He declined to even confirm he was still on the job, though that seemed obvious moments later as he joked with members of the council’s liberal majority, with whom he is allied.

“He was city attorney when he went into the meeting, he was city attorney when we came out of the meeting,” City Councilman Ken Genser said later.

Mayor Judy Abdo characterized the meeting as useful.

“We had a frank, productive discussion,” she said.

No one would elaborate, citing the confidentiality under the law of personnel discussions. But before the closed session, Katz said he was going to ask for a public apology to the council. If none was forthcoming, Katz said he would seek Myers’ resignation or move to fire him.

“The city attorney’s job is to enforce the laws, not to make them,” Katz has said repeatedly.

Since only two of seven council members are not allied with the renters’ rights movement, and Myers is the author of the city’s rent control law, the odds were against Katz.

Most council members had already expressed their displeasure with Myers’ memo, which many of them first learned about from reporters seeking their reaction. At the time, City Manager John Jalili said Myers tactics were unprofessional.

The dispute began with a decision by the council to request that the sleeping-in-the-parks law be enforced. The council action provoked a debate on what is perhaps the thorniest issue in the current wrangle over the problem of the homeless.

The decision was also noteworthy in that it signaled for the first time a determination by the council to take action on the problem.

Members of the city’s Task Force on Homelessness, which at the time had not agreed on what to recommend on that touchy issue, complained that the council action preempted them.

Since then, the task force has taken a deliberately ambiguous middle-ground position on the parks issue as it seeks to find a consensus. The task force is a diverse group of citizens appointed to devise a strategy for serving and managing the large numbers of homeless people who have migrated to the city.

The task force, which will present its recommendations to the City Council next month, is expected to urge that police be given discretion to enforce the sleeping-in-the-park law as needed to protect public safety, though indicating it should be a last priority.