Over DA’s objections, county supervisors OK new office to pursue consumer protection lawsuits

A new office to protect consumers from seedy landlords, polluters and scammers is coming to San Diego County.

The county will join the ranks of other large California communities who have created consumer watchdog units in recent years, expanding the role local governments play in suing companies in civil court.

For nearly a year, Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer has argued the county needs to make a landmark investment in consumer protection, citing a long list of bad actors the county could start suing, including payday lenders, health insurers that wrongly deny claims, scammers who rip off seniors and Tijuana River Valley polluters.

Lawson-Remer has said the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has only accelerated the need for local governments to fill in the gap.

On Tuesday, her colleagues agreed. The Board of Supervisors approved creating the unit on a bipartisan vote, with Republican Joel Anderson joining the three Democrats. Republican Jim Desmond voted no.

“The laws to stop many of these fraudulent abuses already exist,” Lawson-Remer said. “What has been missing is the capacity to enforce them.”

Lawson-Remer’s push for the unit has previously sparked a turf war with District Attorney Summer Stephan.

The District Attorney’s Office has had its own consumer protection unit since the 1970s. Called the Economic Crimes and Consumer Protection division, it employs 10 investigators and 15 prosecutors who have the power to initiate criminal and civil cases.

The new unit will be housed in the county counsel’s office. Unlike the DA’s unit, the county counsel’s will only be able to bring civil cases, due to state law.

Similar units in county counsel’s offices coexist alongside units in district attorney’s offices in three other counties — San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Clara.

But Stephan appealed to supervisors Tuesday to delay a decision on the new unit pending more analysis on how her own consumer unit and a new one could complement each other, and she criticized the rollout of the plan.

“It has not been done in the way business and collaboration is done,” Stephan told supervisors. “It was not built bringing the real expertise to the table.”

Stephan has also criticized Lawson-Remer’s proposal and questioned the need for a new unit. “I don’t think this is the right thing to do,” she told The San Diego Union-Tribune earlier this year.

Fueling the rift is that the new unit will be funded using millions in settlements and judgments the DA’s unit has won in court.

That money is kept in a fund that can only be spent on other consumer protection efforts, including staff in the DA’s unit. Over the last two fiscal years, the fund grew from $186 million to $224 million, according to county financial reports.

Lawson-Remer has said the new unit, which will employ up to 30 staffers, will only need about $6 million from the fund to get started. Once it starts winning cases, she thinks it will self-fund itself much as the DA’s unit has.

Others who spoke Tuesday pushed back on Stephan’s claim that the new unit would duplicate her unit’s work.

County Counsel Damon Brown pointed to concurrent legal powers seen elsewhere in the state. That includes the state Attorney General’s Office, which Brown used to work in and which has a consumer protection unit whose work overlaps with similar units in county offices.

“This is not anything novel or new,” Brown said of the new unit.

Gerald Singleton, at attorney at the firm Singleton Schreiber, told supervisors the new unit was a chance “to support and supplement and build on the work that the district attorney’s done.”

“I think there’s an opportunity for everyone,” he said.

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