San Diego’s interim mayor convicted of wire fraud

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – A federal jury convicted San Diego’s
interim mayor and a councilman on conspiracy and wire fraud
charges on Monday, the latest scandal in a city that has
witnessed the resignation of its mayor and federal probes into
the mishandling of its pension fund.

Interim Mayor Michael Zucchet was convicted on his first
official day in office and immediately suspended.

Prosecutors said Zucchet and city councilman Ralph Inzunza
took campaign contributions from a strip club owner and
promised to vote for the repeal of San Diego’s ban on customers
touching nude dancers in adult clubs.

Zucchet, Inzunza and a Las Vegas lobbyist also convicted of
conspiracy and wire fraud will be sentenced in November. They
could face up to four years in prison.

The city council did not pass the strip club proposal. The
club owner and manager behind the scheme pleaded guilty to
charges in 2003.

Zucchet and Inzunza vowed to appeal the jury’s verdict,
saying they believed they had acted within the law.

“There is not a single public official that doesn’t do the
same thing. It just isn’t tape-recorded. Every single thing he
was accused of goes on every single day,” Zucchet’s lawyer
Jerry Coughlan said in a statement.

The trial capped a politically embarrassing six months for
San Diego, once regarded as a model of municipal governance.
Mayor Dick Murphy announced in April he was resigning after
Time magazine named him one of the three worst big-city mayors
in the United States.

Murphy, who won a second term after a narrow and hotly
disputed election in November, was plagued by myriad fiscal
problems and investigations into a $1.7 billion pension
shortfall.

Five current and former trustees of the city’s pension fund
were charged in July with conflict of interest by prosecutors
who say the trustees made a deal allowing the city to underfund
the pension scheme in exchange for increases in benefits.

The pension underfunding has left San Diego unable to
complete fiscal audits for the past two years.