Trademark Attorney San Diego

Michael Jules Aguirre (born 1949 to Julio and Margaret Aguirre) was the City Attorney for the City of San Diego, California. A frequent political candidate and prominent figure in San Diego politics, Aguirre was elected as city attorney in November 2004 with support from Democrats. He was defeated for re-election in 2008. As City Attorney Aguirre issued 35 investigative reports detailing waste, fraud, and abuse in San Diego City government, particularly in the San Diego City Pension.

Biography

Aguirre earned a Bachelor's degree in political science at Arizona State University in 1971. He earned a law degree from the Boalt Hall at the University of California at Berkeley in 1974. He earned a Master's degree from John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1989.

He married Kathy Aguirre, and the couple had two children, Arthur and Emilie. Kathy and Mike later divorced. Arthur attends law school at the Santa Clara University and Emilie at Harvard Law School.

Aguirre worked as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Department of Justice, and directed a grand jury investigation of pension racketeering. He was then appointed as assistant counsel to the U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. After leaving his government work, Aguirre set up his own firm specializing in securities fraud.

According to his official "Office of the City Attorney" biography:

In the 1990s, Aguirre continued his securities practice, his crusade of self-directed public interest lawsuits, and his electoral campaigns. In 1990 Aguirre allied with the Chicano Federation to file a successful federal voting rights lawsuit to overturn San Diego’s redistricting. In 1993 Aguirre successfully defended the United Farm Workers Union in Yuma, Arizona in a case with lettuce grower Bruce Church. Aguirre took over the defense of the case, during which UFW President Cesar Chavez died following the second day of his grueling testimony. UFW leaders asked Aguirre to takeover the defense, after Chavez died. Aguirre finished the jury trial, which the UFW lost, and successfully over-turned the case on appeal.

In 1996 Aguirre went to court to throw out a 1995 contract between the City of San Diego and the San Diego Chargers football team. In the contract, the city agreed to issue $60 million of bonds to renovate the Chargers’s stadium, and, in a controversial clause, promised to constantly maintain the stadium as a state-of-the-art venue. The City also agreed to guarantee the sale of 60,000 game tickets at prices to be set by the Chargers. Aguirre’s suit and the ensuing scandal surrounding the maintenance clause compelled the city to renegotiate with the Chargers in 1998. The new contract proved controversial because it continued to compel the city to buy any unsold tickets at Chargers games, at public expense.

Aguirre ran for San Diego City Attorney in 2004, in the midst of a massive financial crisis and investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The chaos began in the summer of 2003, when scandal erupted over a pension deal that municipal employees received between 1996 and 2002. Workers were given increased benefits during this period, but the city did not contribute enough to municipal pension funds to cover the increased benefits. The resulting deficit of some $1.4 billion left the city’s finances in a shambles, and made it virtually impossible to issue municipal bonds.

While in office Aguirre was the constant target of the conservative local newspaper. The paper wrote several hundred negative articles on Aguirre during his four years in office. In one the paper claimed Aguirre had called for an evacuation of the entire City of San Diego. In fact, Aguirre had written a memo to the San Diego Mayor, during the California wildfires of October 2007, that said a voluntary evacuation should be considered in light of federal regulations, the immediate threat of the fire, and concerns over weather conditions and air quality.

While City Attorney Aguirre filed a legal action to force a developer to reduce the height of an office building Federal Aviation Administration officials was a threat to public safety. A confidential search warrant issued by a Superior Court judge was leaked to the press and the San Diego Chief-of-Police declined to serve the warrant. The San Diego newspaper brought a legal action to unseal the affidavit supporting the search warrant and wrote several editorials attacking Aguirre for his efforts. In 2009 a California Superior Court judge determined the developer had no legal right to erect the building to the unsafe height.

In 2005 the San Diego City Police Union sued Aguirre in connection with his efforts to set aside alleged illegal pension benefits. The Union accused Aguirre of extortion for proposing that the union give up the alleged illegal benefits as part of a settlement agreement with the City. A federal court trial judge and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found the case to have no merit and the case was dismissed in Aguirre's favor. Aguirre was regularly attacked by the City union heads and their political allies on the City Council.

Aguirre was challenged by two candidates for city attorney on the June 3, 2008, primary election. The President of the San Diego City Council Scott Peters challenged Aguirre, with the backing of City unions. Peters and his backers spent several hundred thousand dollars in the campaign against Aguirre. Also running was a Superior Court judge, backed by the Republican political establishment. Aguirre defeated Peters but came in a close second to Superior Court Judge Jan Goldsmith. Aguirre was defeated by Goldsmith, who was backed by both the Republican establishment, the local San Diego paper, and the City unions, in the general election in November, 2008.

Since departing office the pension plan, as Aguirre had predicted, has continued to suffer financial setbacks, further deteriorating the City's ability to pay for City services. The pension deficit had grown to $2.5 billion. A recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case largely vindicated Aguirre's legal position on the pension dispute.

Aguirre sued Countrywide Financial in July 2008 over lending practices. Aguirre was able to convince the federal Multi-district litigation judicial panel to move all of the Countrywide cases to San Diego but the City Attorney replacing Aguirre dismissed the case.

A Wall Street Journal in 2008 praised Aguirre’s efforts to rid the City of San Diego of hundreds of millions of dollars of alleged illegal pension benefits. The WSJ wrote: “The garden at this skunk party is City Attorney Mike Aguirre, who has made himself very unpopular with the political establishment by suing to rescind the 1996 and 2002 pension promises. Though a liberal Democrat normally sympathetic to unions, he says the benefits were granted as part of "the largest municipal securities fraud in American history," and so taxpayers shouldn't have to honor them.” The editorial goes on to talk about similar pension problems in New York and New Jersey, and closes: “Taxpayers in those states need a rabble-rouser like Mr. Aguirre willing to stand up to union interests. The San Diego attorney faces a tough re-election battle in November, but he's setting off an alarm that voters across America need to hear.”

Aguirre returned to private practice with two key players in the City Attorney's office, Mia Severson, who headed the City Attorney's civil litigation division and Chris Morris who headed the City's Criminal Division. The three practice under the firm name Aguirre Morris & Severson. Aguirre also started the National Center for Regulatory Reform (Centerforregulatoryreform.org) which has issued extensive reports on the Market Crash of 2008. Aguirre's law firm has launched a major fraud case against American International Group. Aguirre has shown up in the national media lately as an expert on Wall Street financial reforms.

References

  1. ^ "Office of the City Attorney" biography
  2. ^ Vigil, Jennifer (October 24, 2007). "Aguirre wants San Diego evacuated in wake of wildfires". SignOnSanDiego.com (San Diego Union Tribune) . http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071024/news_1n24aguirre.html . Retrieved 2007-10-24 .  
  3. ^ City Attorney Sues Countrywide To Stop Foreclosures - San Diego News Story - KGTV San Diego
  • GOP seeks to oust Aguirre (read correction of errors by SD Union Tribune)

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