Councilor challenges new committee.
A committee created to keep city politics clean is too political.
At least that's the word from Matt Ortiz, the only city councilor who hasn't appointed a member to the Ethics and Campaign Review Committee.
The committee is an outgrowth of the March, 2004 city elections, when last-minute attack ads galvanized calls for campaign reform. The committee is comprised of appointments from each city councilor and the mayor.
"I'm concerned that incumbent councilors are stacking the committee with people favorable to their agenda," Ortiz says. "This committee has the potential to wreak havoc on elections."
For example, he says, City Councilor Miguel Chavez' appointee, local business owner Fred Flatt, is inappropriate because Flatt's name was included on an invitation to an October fundraiser for fellow councilor and mayoral candidate David Coss.
In general Ortiz believes the committee constitutes City Councilor Karen Heldmeyer's personal retribution mission against the perpetrators of the 2004 ad campaign in which she, Chavez and Patti Bushee were targets.
In response to Ortiz' criticisms, Flatt says he wasn't sure he'd be nominated to the committee when he joined Coss' campaign. He says he is discussing with the other committee members whether he should recuse himself from any committee work having to do with Coss' campaign.
Flatt also believes Ortiz opposes him because Flatt, in 2001, filed a complaint-eventually dismissed-with the state attorney general against then County Commissioners Paul Duran and Javier Gonzales. Flatt says Ortiz supports Gonzales, now a mayoral candidate.
Ortiz says he has yet to throw his support behind anyone. "I work well with David [Coss], and I would work well with Javier," he says.
Heldmeyer also dismisses Ortiz' charge that the committee is politically stacked in her favor and in response to the 2004 attack on her campaign.
"If I had really been seeking retribution, I would have done it a long time ago," she says.
The committee has met twice in the last month, elected lawyers Fred Rowe and Nancy Long as chairman and vice-chairwoman respectively, hashed through rules of procedure and divided into subcommittees.
Those subcommittees will help advise candidates of campaign law, vet grievances and conduct hearings when specific situations arise, Rowe says.
The committee will meet publicly in January with city candidates, their campaign managers and treasurers to discuss the elections.
Ortiz tells SFR he asked six different people to serve on the committee but no one wanted to because of its makeup. Ortiz would not reveal who his choices were, but says he's now considering appointing himself.
"I want to see how exactly the process is going and who is taking the lead," he says. "I want to make sure my appointment, whoever that is, can stand up to the partiality of this committee.
