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Up to now, the city attorney in Chula Vista was appointed by the city council but Proposition Q — a 2008 ballot measure — changed city charter to make it an elected position and Chula Vistans will go to the polls Tuesday to choose between Glen Googins and Robert Faigin as their first elected city attorney.

With a salary of more than $200,000, the city attorney will be the highest paid position in Chula Vista city government.

Both Googins and Faigin promise to follow the rule of law, claim to be independent and accuse his opponent of being beholden to special interests trying to influence City Hall.

They see the position as an advisor, not policy maker, and share concerns expressed by members of the City Council and Proposition Q opponents that the office has the potential to become politicized and impact legal advice offered to the council and city departments.

But that’s also why both claim he should be elected, not his opponent.

“Obviously, now theoretically they’re more responsible to the people than the city council members,” said current City Attorney Bart Miesfeld, “but day to day responsibilities won’t change,” said

Faigin, a resident of Lakeside, has been the county sheriff’s chief counsel since 2002 and decided to run after members of the South County sheriff’s office told him no qualified candidates sought the position.

Googins opened his private practice handling real estate and development issues in 2004 after 11 years of similar work in the city attorney’s office. Disagreements with then City Attorney Ann Moore led Googins to resign, in the process receiving a $175,000 severance package.

Joseph Casas, the candidate endorsed by the San Diego County Democratic Party, dropped out of the race in March and is currently representing Police Chief David Bejarano against accusations of fraud by a former business partner.

“The downside to turning it into an elected position is that instantly the developers, Corky McMillan, all of those people start pumping money into campaigns because they want to influence city politics,” Faigin said.

By the May 27 financial filing deadline, Googins had raised $33,000 from 100 donors, including teachers, border patrol agents and city residents, but also several lawyers, real estate developers. In addition he raised nearly $1,000 from executives from The Corky McMillin Companies, including company president and CEO Mark McMillin.

Googins endorsers include the Chula Vista Police Officer and Firefighter Associations, former City Attorney John Kaheny, state assemblymember Mary Salas, County Supervisor Greg Cox and The Republican Party of San Diego County, though it is a non-partisan race.

About one-third of donors to Googin’s campaign are Chula Vista residents.

“I’m not promising anyone anything,” Googins said. “Just because I’ve represented developers doesn’t mean I’m going to favor any developers. When I’m with the city, the city’s my client.”

Faigin’s campaign raised $2,450 and he put $10,000 of his own money into his campaign. Other endorsers include former San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender, La Prensa San Diego and The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Seven of 10 donors to his campaign are Chula Vista residents, including Eric and Karen Jentz.

Jentz, owner of Balboa Realty, has heavily funded candidates and ballot measures in the last three Chula Vista city elections, also supporting mayoral candidate Steve Castaneda, Pamela Bensoussan and Pat Aguilar, who is currently running for a seat on the city council.

Through various organizations, the Jentz’s gave Faigin’s campaign more than $10,000 and gave San Diego County Citizens for Representative Government , who sent out mailers supporting Faigin and Aguilar, about $80,000.

For the 2008 campaign to make Chula Vista’s city attorney an elected position, Jentz and his wife spent more than $70,000 on Yes on Propositionosition Q campaign, three times more than the No on Propositionosition Q committee.

Days after Faigin was endorsed by the Union-Tribune, Googin’s campaign filed a complaint claiming Jentz “creates political committees through which he appears to funnel his expenditures in an attempt to conceal his or his company’s involvement.”

According to the Political Reform Act, if more than 80 percent of funding for a committee comes from a single source, use of the committee’s name must include the name of the major funder. Violators may face fines. Jentz’s name was included in previous Propositionosition Q and Propositionosition E committee campaign statements.

Copies of the complaint were sent to the current Chula Vista city attorney, district attorney, the state attorney general and the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).

The FPPC said it will not pursue an investigation, they said, because sufficient evidence wasn’t provided by the petitioner.

Faigin, who said he met Eric Jentz twice, said he never asked the Jentz to spend a dime on his campaign.

Repeated attempts to get in touch with Eric Jentz were unsuccessful.

Mark Baber — a resident of La Mesa and general counsel to Republican Party of San Diego County — who has acted as treasurer to three committees heavily funded by Jentz, declined to comment. Baber is the current treasurer of the Yes on Propositionosition G committee Chula Vistans for Jobs and Fair Competition.

Googins has lived in Chula Vista for almost two decades. He thinks Jentz opposes his candidacy because of past policy disagreements while Googins was on the board of directors of Third Avenue Village Association. He said his past experience in the city gives him a better understanding of the community and the city attorney’s office.

“I’m going to be that much more accountable to this place because I’m going to go home to this community,” Googins said. “[Faigin] could be coming in with all sorts of crazy ideas.”

Faigin sees his lack of connection to the community as an asset. It means he comes to the office with no entrenched special interests, he said.

“When I’m hiring an attorney, I don’t care where he lives,” Faigin said. “When the Chargers needed a quarterback, they didn’t go out and get the best guy in San Diego. They got the best guy available.

“My entire time in dealing with one particular individual in Chula Vista couldn’t be more than an hour. I’m not beholden to anyone.”

Photos provided by Castaneda and Cox campaigns

Story also on sdnn.com

A year before the city’s centennial, Chula Vista will consider its future in what may be a pivotal election.

Though several candidates are vying for two council seats, the most heated race is for mayor with three candidates—the current Mayor Cheryl Cox (Republican), Councilmember Steve Castaneda (Democrat) and Southwestern College trustee Jorge Dominguez (Independent).

While it’s a three-way race, the apparent rivalry between Cox and Castaneda has taken center stage in this South Bay city of 220,000, the second largest in San Diego County.

“She’s got a political machine with her husband, and they’re powerful people, and she’ll go after anyone coming after her with a vengeance,” Dominguez said of Cox, who is married to San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox, who represents South County cities including Chula Vista and was the city’s mayor for most of the 1980s.

Not surprisingly, all three candidates believe the economy to be the biggest issue on voter’s minds. All plan to make the Bayfront Master Plan development project a priority, as have previous mayoral candidates. All three talked about ways to diversify the city’s economy like improving main business corridors, recruiting green jobs to the area or a college or university.

Since Cox entered office in 2006, the number of city of Chula Vista employees has declined from 1,250 employees to 991 while city funds have fallen from $172 million to $129 million. City general fund reserves fell to 6.1 percent, below the city mandated eight percent of operating budget. Attempts to raise the city sales tax by 1 percent also failed.

The City Council has taken steps toward financial reform but the city is still “heading into some treacherous times,” she said.

In a situation faced by local governments all over California, property and sales taxes both decreased while foreclosures went up. Paying off the bond for a new police station and city hall and finding money for city employee raises were all decisions made prior to her time in office but the city’s now paying the price, Cox said.

“People who came in 2006 had to look over their shoulders and say ‘dang, how are we going to pay for that,’” she said. “This is an opportunity for people to do better by facing the reality that the money stream is not endless,” Cox said, who is endorsed by the Chula Vista Chamber of Commerce.

Her opponent, Castaneda, has served on the City Council for the last six years. He was on the City Council when contracts were signed with city employees for a 20 percent raise over five years with city employees, just before the economy began to slip.

Both Castaneda and Dominguez argue the mayor’s style or lack of leadership got in the way of city business during economic downturn.

“It’s always the responsibility of the leader. Period. Be it glory or the bad stuff,” Dominguez said.

Cox agrees there has been friction and that the City Council isn’t always unanimous, but claims ” I’m not the bad guy in this.”

“I don’t think anybody could have seen this economy hitting us,” she said. “Now that we’re in tough straits so it must be the mayor’s fault,” she said.

“So I’m going to be blamed for the disaster of Lehman Brothers and Wall Street?”

The mayor’s approach to the economy, Castaneda said, “is to treat it with chicken soup.”

“I want to start CPR and go on the prescription drugs ‘cause we need decisive action now and we can’t just wait around for it to get better.”

When he announced his candidacy — his second run at mayor of Chula Vista — Castaneda said, ”I’m running to get the snakes out of the pit.”

“The city can’t recover until people who have had a stranglehold on this community for generations are gone,” Castaneda said.

For years, Castaneda has accused Cox of playing political games.

While running for re-election to his seat on the city council in 2008, Castaneda was indicted by San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ public corruption unit for perjury He was accused of lying to a grand jury in the course of the investigation about his intentions to buy a condo, but was found not guilty or acquitted of all 13 charges.

Castaneda expects to be exonerated in a current investigation, led by a special prosecutor appointed by Cox to review his last campaign’s finances.

“The system does work,” Castaneda said of being found not guilty. “It was the most ridiculous waste of taxpayer money and could have ruined me and my family and ruined my business for over two years.”

Castaneda also made news for failing to pay his taxes, a problem he said stemmed from financial troubles after a divorce and has since been worked out with the IRS.

“Her husband’s Dumanis’ boss and they’re doing investigations of a councilman she’s having issues with? It’s just too much of a coincidence in my opinion for this kind of stuff to be going on,” Dominguez said.

“He gets into a little bit of trouble and blames it all on me and my husband,” Cox said. “Quit blaming people.”

Ed Herrera is the CEO of the San Diego South Chamber of Commerce and president of the Chula Vista Civic Association, which co-hosted the election’s first debate two weeks ago. Castaneda was the only candidate to attend.

A little over a year old, the Chula Vista Civic Association has quickly become the largest organization of its kind in the city, Herrera said.

He said the Civic Association doesn’t make endorsements but Chula Vista needs someone who won’t be timid about making the kinds of changes the city needs.

“We really need a change in the tone of leadership. Both Castaneda and Cox are incumbents who have had opportunities to address the issues,” said Herrera who believes the city hasn’t gone far enough in making financial reforms.

To sever its dependency on the housing market, Herrera believes the council’s priority needs to be job creation and finding ways to make the city a niche industry’s capital. In addition, he said, the city needs to begin to appreciate and earn back the trust of its small businesses while enticing others to the area.

“We need a mayor who will ask ‘are we doing enough to help small businesses?’”

The Northwest Civic Association will hold the next mayoral debate or candidates forum April 12 at the Chula Vista Civic Center library at 6 p.m.

Southwestern College trustee Dominguez doesn’t have the money or backing of the two incumbent candidates but is confident he can still win the June 8 primary and November election.

After the economy, his first priority would be to make sure the council works together.

He also thinks charges against Castaneda were political maneuvering and said he’s not running against Castaneda so much as he is running against Cox. There’s no skeletons in his closet to dig up, Dominguez added.

“I’m so squeaky clean I squeak when I walk,” he said. However, he said, he isn’t sure what to expect. ,

“It’s scary going up against Cheryl Cox.”

As of the March 22 campaign finance filings, Cox received $36,450 in campaign contributions while Councilman Castaneda raised more than $6,700. Dr. Dominguez was loaned $800 by his wife.

Also posted on allvoices.com as a contracted Provoices correspondent.

Osman Osman, 38, is a security guard who works 40 hours a week at construction sites, then cleans houses and businesses.

He took out a $10,000 loan to expand his company American Cleaning Expert, $7,000 for more carpet and window cleaning equipment.

Growing his business allowed him to quit delivering newspapers at 3 or 4 in the morning. With a few more contracts, he can quit the security jobs and provide more work to other refugees and asylum seekers.

“Someone comes from Africa and he cant speak English very good,” he said. “I can help those guys build their language and stuff and survive as a refugee also.”

By making small loans to entrepreneurs like Osman, the International Rescue Committee’s microenterprise program has helped create or expand 150 refugee small businesses and create at least 200 jobs since the program’s start 10 years ago, said Joel Chrisco who helps run the program.

Businesses created or expanded include artists, handymen, janitorial, childcare, catering and restaurants, limousine and taxi companies, used car and towing businesses.

In this video, hear the stories of two business owners.

Microenterprises are generally defined as businesses with five or fewer employees. It’s a form of lending generally seen in the developing world but also in “poverty pockets” in the general U.S. microfinance market, said Robert Gailey, an associate professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in charge of the college’s Center for International Development.

Loans from the IRC typically start as low as $100 to build credit in the separate financial education program. Microenterprise loans average $7,500 each and can be as large as $15,000 at an interest rate of 7.25 percent. Interest free loans are also offered to Muslim clients, the only institution to do so county wide, Chrisco said.

There’s always competition for the kind of jobs that don’t require much English or special skills in San Diego but especially now with the state of the economy and an already sizable immigrant population.

“The general concept of the American dream is often defined as start your own life and become a business owner and that’s leading a lot clients here,” Chrisco said.

“This incredibly competitive job market leaves a lot [of refugees] to consider microenterprise as a means to an end in San Diego.”

IRC San Diego’s microenterprise program, the only specifically for refugees in the county, has a repayment rate of 96 percent and about that or higher for other microlenders.

The concept of establishing institutions to hand out small or microloans is often tied to the Gramman Bank in Bangladesh.

The bank centers around the concept that the most effective way to end global poverty is to lend money to groups of poor women. For their efforts, the Gramman Bank and its founder Muhammad YunusMuhammad Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

San Diego’s IRC office, the largest of 22 branch offices in the nation, started their microenterprise program in 2000 centered around the same concept but for individual entrepreneurs and grew to include men and women. At the end of 2009, the program handed out a total 81 loans, half currently active, totaling more than $600,000.

A grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement helped start the program. 16 others like it are operating under the grant in cities around the country, the ORR said.

Nationally, in the general microloan market, large microlenders include Accion USA, who focus on lending to immigrants, and since 20006 Gramman America, who have offices in New York City and Omaha, Neb. and are expected to expand to more cities.

The ability to repay loans is considered but having a job isn’t a prerequisite for receiving a loan, he said. Profitability and a good business model are what’s most most important. Still, it’s incredibly challenging, aimed at entrepreneurs and “not a one-size-fits-all kind of program,” Chrisco said.

All loans must be approved unanimously by a board of nine lending professionals from local banks and financial institutions.

San Diego has become the number one city in the world for resettling Iraqi refugees with 5,000 last year alone. 90 percent of refugees resettled by the IRC since 2007 are Iraqi. Yet only three businesses, a dentist’s office, pizza shop and barber shop, have started through the microenterprise program.

But each business has hired other Iraqi refugees to work, as have nearly all businesses interviewed for this article hired refugees from their country of origin.

Jobs here help people support themselves but also send money home to those less fortunate in their country of origin.

Each month, 40 percent to 60 percent of Sarah Sami’s earnings from her fashion and jewelry company 7th Wish go back to family and neighbors in Baghdad.

Sami has been around fashion her entire life, studying in Denmark, running her own company at one point in Iraq and as a child spent time in the family clothes factory.

“There men and women who have been killed, they have kids,” she said. “They don’t have somebody to support them. So we try, me, my brother, my sister, we try to send them money.”

More interest is expected in the future after people have a chance to get acclimated and find work, said Jason Jarvinen from the IRC’s financial education program.

“The first few years when you’re in the country, that’s a really hard time to start a business just because there are so many other kind of adjustments taking place.”

IRC San Diego officials predict 20 percent to 30 percent of all Iraqi refugees resettled were previously employed in a high-skilled profession like doctor, engineer or business owner. So more interest is anticipated in recertification programs as well.

Turkey – Images by Khari Johnson

Story written Oct. 2005

Turkey consists of 69 million potential EU-citizens. We spoke to some of them about their future with or without the EU.

By Khari Johnson and Per Christian Selmer-Anderssen

46 years after first applying for European Union membership and three weeks after the start of a ten to fifteen year long negotiation-process the minarets in Istanbul are calling. As the sun sets and the imam concludes prayer, the poor begin to gather in lines for free Ramadan dinners and families begin their daily feast.

In the Uskudar neighbourhood, the Aladag family has just finished a large Ramadan dinner, consisting of several kebab-dishes and grilled vegetables. Over chai tea and short snacks, we start conversation about the EU.

“I hope the EU will give my children the possibilities I never had like traveling around the world,” Huseyin Aladag (28) says.

Joining the EU will create higher standards with better working hours and wages, Aladag says, more opportunities for his unborn children.

Soon he will be married but there are few pictures of his fiancée in the house and the most prevalent photo is one of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister and head of the Islamist based Justice and Development Party.

After his fathers death ten years ago he inherited the apartment where he now lives with his sister Reyhan (30) and mother Havva (48). When he marries next spring, he will move to another apartment in the neighborhood with his wife.

The 28-year-old describes himself as a conservative person who believes in traditional religious values like covered women and attends the mosque regularly.

Being a conservative, Huseyin hopes the many state governed companies, like Turkish Airlines, will privatize in the run up to the EU. The Turkish government has taken steps towards privatization of industry in recent years, selling various government controlled industries to private firms and investors.

A smaller government with changed police laws and more respect for human rights, Aladag says, are good signs of change.

“In 10 years if the EU rejects us, democracy will continue. Economy and human rights are problems but they are solved quicker with the European Union,” Huseyin says.

Huseyin thinks the rest of Europe can learn something about family values from Turkey, like caring for the elderly and helping each other out. However there are pieces of Turkish culture he hopes will disappear in a more “European” Turkey.

“According to the old customs you are not allowed to cut your toenails in the night and not allowed to marry between festivities. In some places they still sacrifice goats.”

The family appreciates the prime minister’s attempt to bring Turkey into the EU. Like the women of the Aladag family, the prime minister’s wife covered by a headscarf.

“What I hope the most is that I will be able to walk around in closed dressing. I am lucky, the bank I work in is conservative so I am allowed to wear my headscarf at work,” Reyhan says referring to the prohibition of headscarves in Turkish Universities as well as for state employees.

The whole family is pro European Union, but the mother Havva Aladag has some concerns.

She is afraid that Turkey will be too modernized and that the new generations will forget their religious roots and traditions.

“I do not agree with my mother. We will not loose our religion. This is just a part of a big development where education and human rights are in progress of getting better,” Reyhan argues.

At midnight the family goes to bed. It is just five hours until they have to get up again to eat their morning meal before sunrise.

The man who sings the morning prayer in Uskudar is imam Ali Namli of the Salami Ali mosque.

We meet him in the mosque just after the many hundreds of mosque attendees have rushed home after prayer to get ready for Ramadan meals. Dr. Namli has a PhD in Sufism.

“Europe thinks every Muslim is like Osama bin Laden,” said the imam. “In Turkey there is no extremism because learned people are in the positions.
Turkey will never be a Saudi Arabia or other countries.”

As part of reforms made in the first half of the 20th century state controlled seminary schools were opened called the Faculty of Divinity to “reform” Islam.

Turkey, Namli says, will not be the only one to gain from EU membership.
“If Europe wants to be a big community,” Namli says “it will accept Turkey and all other cultures but if they want to be small they can do what they want. What Turkey takes will not be as much as Turkey gives.”

Europe can learn lessons from Turkey he says on religious tolerance.
“We have experience with living with other religions. In the Ottoman Empire we lived friendly with every kind of people.”

Namli never said that Turkey is perfect though. Turkey needs reform, Namli says, regardless of if Turkey enters the EU or not.

“The EU can help but our problems will not pass only with the EU. It’s about us. We can only look our way to grow up.”

As Namli reflects on the future his ten year old son is playing with the window shades. A stripe of sun floods in to the imam’s small office. Turkey is changing, Namli says, a fact that is evident in its young and growing population. The Turkish State Statistic Institute reports that 26% of Turkey’s population is 14 and under. The current work force of 25 million will double by 2020, around the time Turkey will join the union if it is to join.

One of the young and educated is Yafes Doski, a 25-year-old studying medicine in the south-eastern Turkish city of Diyabakir. Kurds, like Yafes, make up 20% of Turkey’s population, nearly 14 million people. Himself Kurdish, he considers his town and the land surrounding to be Kurdistan.

On the wall in his room is a picture of Kurt Cobain, one of his favorite musicians. Across from the poster sits a modest bust of a Native American in headdress. He respects the Native Americans he says for how they fought bravely for their land.

He recalls when he was younger not being able to walk publicly with Turkish friends or read Kurdish books.

“Before we couldn’t speak Kurdish or listen to Kurdish music. That has now changed.”

He thinks the PKK, a Kurdish paramilitary force (the largest armed opposition group in Turkey according to Amnesty International), assisted in getting Kurds human rights. The Turkish government in its endeavor to become a more open society for EU membership eased restrictions on Kurdish people’s rights as well. Over 35, 000 people are estimated to have died during conflict between the Turkish government and PKK forces between 1984 and the late 90s. A ceasefire, which held for over six years, was called off by the PKK in June 2004.

He believes in the European Union for the changes it can make in Kurdish people’s lives in Turkey. He knows though that Turks “still don’t love Kurds”, alluding to resentment he feels from Turks.

The economy and educational system of Turkey’s southeast, where the majority of Turkey’s Kurdish population resides, is considered the worst of any of the nation’s regions.

“Now there are very bad things,” he said referring to the current situation in Turkey. “It can be worse if there is no European Union.”

Even though he thinks PKK fighters have helped Kurds gain more rights, he says he would not want to join the fighters. He would rather get an education and help better his people. However, he understands the struggle.

“When soldiers come and kill your brother or your father is killed, you may go and fight in the mountains [where the forces stay]. It is not only for terrorism but for our freedom. We are here. We are Kurds. Is this wrong?”

When asked if he found killings by PKK fighters wrong, Doski says, “War is always wrong but sometimes it is useful.”

Hootan Shambayati is following a different sort of fight. An associate professor at Bilkent University, Shambayati focuses on legal matters and court cases.

Freedom of the press may have some influence on what happens in negotiations, Shambayati says, and though things have improved he says the indictment of journalists is still evidence of flaws in the system, giving the example of an Armenian journalist Orhan Pamuk. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit organization based in New York City, claim that Pamuk was indicted on the charge of “insulting and weakening Turkish identity through the media.” Pamuk will stand trial Dec 17 for a statement made to a Swiss magazine that he told, “one million Armenians were killed in Turkey.”

Discussion of issues like Pamuk’s charges, Shambayati says, is positive. If convicted, it would be bad, allowing the persecution of Turkish journalists to proceed. If acquitted however it could be very positive, perhaps setting a precedent in Turkish law to protect journalists who write about issues their government doesn’t like.

Shambayati is for the European Union but isn’t content with the way things have been handled so far.

“Changes are being made, “he says, “but only to fulfill EU standards, not Turkish needs.”

This worries Shambayati who thinks that with the rapacity of change taking place in the Turkish system that new progress may not be wholly accepted by Turkish citizens.

The Turkish government, Shambayati says, is taking a minimalist approach to reform, meaning that they are doing the least possible to meet European standards.

“If people realized how much change there is, no one would want to join.”

“Passing reforms are easy,” Shambayati said. “Implementing those reforms is difficult.”