C I T Y L I G H T S NEWS TICKER


Kevin, Kevin... Exiting Sacramento mayor departs amid scandal


The changing of Sacramento’s mayoral guard occurs this week, with the exit of Kevin Johnson, once a municipal wunderkind, now tarred by a graphically documented sex scandal and a series of political funny-money charity deals.


C I T Y L I G H T S By Reader staff writers


mayor had set up to promote an earlier ver- sion of the new basketball arena had been funded by contributions supplied to a mayoral foundation by then-owners of the Kings and other interests. He was socked with a $37,500 penalty


by the state’s Fair Political Practices Com- mission for failing to report the gifts in a timely manner. The mayor later became enmeshed in yet


another charity fundraising case in February 2014, this one involving incorrectly reported gifts made by the Walton Family Founda- tion to fund Johnson’s 2012 personal travel expenses to educational conferences; that transgression drew a $1000 FPPC fine. Like Johnson, San Diego’s Faulconer also


Kevins Johnson and Faulconer — only one has gotten in trouble for their charitable fundraising practices


Formerly a player for pro basketball’s


Phoenix Suns, Johnson’s arguably most famous achievement as mayor was spear- heading the drive to build the $558 million Golden 1 Center to keep the Sacramento Kings from leaving town. He helped pull the city’s big-money strings


to pay for the venture, including putting up downtown parking revenue and a deal to let team owners build giant video billboards adjacent to local freeways. Among the chief financial beneficiaries


of the project are three La Jolla–based sons of Qualcomm cofounder and Democratic bil- lionaire Irwin Jacobs — Paul, Jeff, and Hal, whose 2013 investment in the team got them named revolving vice-chairmen of the venture, headed by Silicon Valley billionaire Vivek Ranadive. On December 31, 2014, city financial dis-


closure records show that two of the Jacobs brothers, Hal and Paul, each anted up $3200 to help pay bills arising from Johnson’s 2012 reelection campaign, as did Kerry McReyn- olds, listed as an assistant at Qualcomm. Through May and August of last year, the three Jacobs brothers each gave another $3200 to Johnson’s mayoral campaign fund, as did Hal’s wife Debby. The well-timed Jacobs family gifts to


Johnson came a year before Paul Jacobs and a raft of fellow Qualcomm executives contributed to the mayoral reelection fund of San Diego’s Kevin Faulconer just prior to and after a closed-door summit held by the mayor with family patriarch Irwin Jacobs over his plan to bulldoze a new road and parking garage through Balboa Park, adopted last month by the city council. Johnson faced a fierce round of political


heat in September 2012 when the Sacra- mento Bee reported that a committee the


relies on a nonprofit, called One San Diego, using it to fund his annual turkey giveaways and other forays to poorer parts of the city with funding from AT&T, Sempra, and other big corporations doing business at city hall. Matt Potter


Personal vendetta takedown? Lawyer Mary Frances Prevost suspended a third time Mary Frances Prevost (pronounced PRAY-vo), who describes herself on her website as “California’s Top Criminal & DUI Attorney,” has been suspended by the California Bar for the third time. She was suspended from law practice for six months beginning November 28 because she has not passed the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination. The state supreme court ordered her to pass it September 23 of last year. She was also suspended for periods in 2002 and 2014 for the same reason.


Artificial turf a likely health hazard


at schools Tiny rubber pellets, made from old tires, get in kids’ eyes and mouths


By Julie Stalmer E


rika Lundeen first became concerned about artificial turf


while substitute teaching at Loma Portal Elementary last year. “When I saw the kids rolling around in this black stuff on the field, I asked the PE teacher what it was and she didn’t know. Shortly after that, my son came home and said his school [Silver Gate Elementary] was getting a new artificial field.” Lundeen had some


concerns, so she asked her son’s school to put the brakes on installing artificial turf — at least until an Environmental Protection Agency joint study was released in two to three years. The study involves testing 40 synthetic fields


Neal Obermeyer


and up to nine “tire crumb” manufacturing plants. Preliminary results are due at the end of the year. “The principal told me she


wouldn’t go against the parent majority,” says Lundeen, “so I started a petition. Even with over 200 signatures, the principal decided to go ahead anyway. They keep pointing to a safety study paid for by the tire industry. Remember when there was smoking on airplanes and schools were built with asbestos? Chemicals are innocent until proven guilty and can take decades before deemed unsafe. Our children shouldn’t be the canaries in the coal mine on this one.” Lundeen recently wit-


“Tire crumb” fills the areas between blades of artificial turf


nessed what she believes was a serious synthetic turf hazard. One hot day in late September at Euclid Elementary, 44 students were sent to the school nurse for heat exhaustion after playing soccer on a new synthetic field. She said the field reached temperatures of at least 120 degrees. Lundeen said the only


signage she’s seen near artificial fields have had to do with protecting the


C I T Y L I G H T S


Mary Frances Prevost Prevost is frequently interviewed on local


television, possibly in part because she is strikingly attractive. She is known as a bulldog-tough criminal attorney, dealing with cases related to drugs, domestic violence, DUI, sex crimes, murder, weapons, human trafficking, internet pornography, and white- collar crimes. However, her bulldog personality offends


clients who believe she cheated them, and Bar investigators and judges are looking into what they consider misbehavior.


continued on page 26


2 San Diego Reader December 15, 2016


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