Covert defends the covert, but he's a bungler

As you know, lawyers and law firms come and go in the good old South Orange County Community College District. I mean, there are so many lawsuits! I gave up keeping track of them years ago.

Ten years ago, when I successfully sued the district for violating my 1st Amendment rights, a guy named Larsen was the district's attorney. For a while, his assistant was a young fella named Bob King. I remembered him 'cause he was such a little weasel. His nose twitched.

Eight or nine years later, King popped up again as the district's Vice Chancellor of Human Resources. Once again, he was a total asshole—he was Mathur's gleeful hatchet man. He left after about two years. Nobody's sure why.

Mostly, though, these lawyers come and go and nobody remembers 'em. But one attorney was an exception. He was the district’s legal beagle in charge of keeping the board of trustees on the right side of the state’s anti-secrecy in government law, commonly known as the Brown Act.

His name was Covert. Spencer Covert. No, I’m not making this up.

Back in 1997, a few of us (mostly notably, Wendy Gabriella and I, with the help of attorney Bill S) took on the district over its repeated violations of the Brown Act. In May of that year, we demanded that the board of trustees “cure and correct” its violations of the law, for they had secretly appointed Raghu Mathur the interim President of Irvine Valley College during an April closed session.

Naturally, the board blew us off. Then, in July, the board held a special meeting in which it reorganized the district, though the item had not been agendized as such. We sued.

A few months later, the board illegally named Mathur the permanent president of the college and, at the same time, it invited an unannounced guest to a closed session. We sued again. We won. (For years, these suits were referred to as “Bauer 1” and “Bauer 2.” I'm so proud.)

I remember Spencer Covert as a scrappy little guy. He always lost, and he was a noisily sore loser. I seem to recall him climbing on a box and yammering. Maybe I just dreamt that.

Eventually, the district decided to let him go. He squawked then, too.

According to this morning’s OC Register, Covert has had a long and colorful career as a Brown Act attorney (Capistrano district lawyer has run afoul of open-meeting laws). Nowadays, he hangs around during Capo Unified school district board meetings:

A school-law attorney who sat in on a private Capistrano Unified school board discussion in which open-meeting laws may have been violated has previously advised school boards to do in private what courts say they should do in public. ¶ Spencer Covert of Tustin was invited to an Aug. 11 closed-session meeting by board President Ellen Addonizio, who said she wanted Covert's advice to ensure that the board would be in compliance with the state's Brown Act open-meeting law. During the meeting, trustees engaged in a sensitive evaluation of Superintendent A. Woodrow Carter's performance. ¶ Covert, however, has run afoul of open-meeting laws at least four times over the past 15 years, according to news reports. Each time, Covert's school-board clients were reprimanded by a judge for not complying with the Brown Act.

The Reg explains that Covert’s last Brown Act FUBAR was in 2003, when a judge ruled that the Orange Unified School District board had discussed a land deal unlawfully during a closed meeting.


Now, Covert has popped up at the Capo school district, which has been “sternly criticized” four times by the OC DA for Brown Act violations.

In a three-page legal complaint dated Sept. 22, the union says that Covert, who is not on the district's payroll, was "admitted to the closed session through a back door out of the view of the public." Then, with Covert in the room, trustees discussed firing or temporarily suspending the superintendent, violating the Brown Act because the meeting's published agenda only referred to a "performance evaluation," not disciplinary action, the complaint says.

The Capo board will discuss the union’s charges Monday night. Meanwhile, some trustees are horrified to learn about Covert’s record as a Brown Act bungler.

The Reg provides the following overview of Covert’s record:

1993: A Riverside County judge orders the Corona-Norco Unified School District to prevent further destruction of copies of a district report on school personnel making repairs to the home of the superintendent and another official. Covert defends the superintendent's decision to shred copies of the report, saying it was not a public record, according to news reports. Covert later tells the Register his role in the case was mischaracterized.

1997: A San Bernardino County judge rules that the Chino Valley Unified School District board illegally met in closed session to fire its superintendent and buy out his contract without giving adequate public notice. The judge chides the school board for refusing to take public comment at special meetings. "Mr. Covert was the chief architect of the termination of a superintendent that ultimately cost Chino taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in addition to legal fees," former Chino trustee Brian Chilstrom says.

1999: Orange County Superior Court Judge Tully Seymour orders trustees of the South Orange County Community College District to tape-record their closed sessions for two years because of what he calls "persistent and defiant misconduct" of state openness laws. Covert says the case was subsequently settled on different, but secret terms.

2003: Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew Banks orders the Orange Unified School District to tape-record the school board's private meetings for three years after finding trustees illegally discussed a land deal behind closed doors in 2001, according to news reports. During four closed-session meetings, trustees discussed acquiring a strip of land from the county on which to build an access road, as well as considered filing a lawsuit against the county to protest a proposed ordinance that would have made the acquisition difficult.

ROYAL SOCIETY EMBARRASSMENT
From Bob Park’s What’s New:

It often seems that creationism is a peculiarly American affliction, but in the UK last month it infected, of all places, the Royal Society. Michael Reiss, the Royal Society's director of education, appeared to endorse the teaching of creationism - worse, Reiss, a biologist, is also an ordained priest in the Church of England. This outraged Richard Roberts, 1993 Nobel prize for gene splicing; he was joined by Harry Kroto, 1996 Nobel prize in Chemistry, and John Sulston, 2002 Nobel prize in Medicine, in demanding that Reiss step down or be fired. Reiss resigned, and there is now discussion of a rules change to make sure clergy cannot fill such positions....

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