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Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates announced Monday he will be leaving to take a Deputy Attorney General position in the Civil Rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice amid multiple ongoing legal battles between the state and Surf City.
Gates said in a statement Monday that his departure from the city will not impact Surf City’s legal battles against the state over housing, a local voter ID law and most recently California’s sanctuary state law.
[Read: Will Huntington Beach’s Legal Argument of Limited Independence Hold up in Court?]
“The City’s adversaries, including the State currently in our lawsuits should know, Huntington Beach will continue to fight aggressively, and the City will ultimately prevail. The law is on the City’s side and while it may take time in the courts, I have every faith that the City will ultimately be vindicated by the law,” reads his Feb. 10 statement.
So far, courts have mostly ruled against the city and in favor of the state in their lawsuits.
Gates – the only elected city attorney in OC and one of the only ones in the state – did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
He was first elected as Huntington Beach’s City Attorney in 2014.
Gates’ departure comes after officials signed a controversial settlement over the city’s Pacific Airshow guaranteeing the show’s operators millions of dollars in direct payouts along with guaranteed access to city parking lots, police resources and the beach for free.
[Read: How Did a Huntington Beach Air Show Become Embroiled in Controversy and Politics?]
Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns said that he was proud Gates was moving up and hopes that he will continue the work he started in Surf City and that the city will get federal backing in their lawsuits against the state.
“Hopefully the person that takes his place will slide right in and carry everything forward as if Michael is still here,” he said in a Monday phone interview.
As for who that person will be and whether the city council will call for a special election to replace Gates, Burns said that something officials will have to discuss.
“We will have to see what everyone’s thinking and what options we have available to us and move on from there,” he said.
In his Monday statement, Gates said he would recommend Chief Assistant City Attorney Mike Vigliotta as his replacement.
Former City Councilman Dan Kalmick said he would like to see a law firm represent the city amid the myriad of litigation and for the city to look at eliminating elected staff positions and have them appointed instead – like most other cities in California.
He also said that he would like to see the opinion of a lawyer on the lawsuits who doesn’t have political motivations.
“It seems like many of these lawsuits were meant to get the attention of the Trump administration for his own personal gain and it seems like it has succeeded,” Kalmick said.
“I hope a new lawyer comes in and says these lawsuits are futile and frivolous and doesn’t want to lose their law license for trying to continue to litigate them.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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