June 11, 2014

An Open Letter

There has been much written in the media lately regarding Mr. Cory Briggs, San
Diegans for Open Government and CREED-21. We would like to clear
up a few points.

Pedro Quiroz, Jr is a voting member of Theresa Quiroz is a voting
member of CREED-21, and Richard Lawrence is a voting member on both boards.
The organizations are made up of a few regular people trying to make a BIG
difference.

In deciding what actions we need to take, the Boards look to their missions.
works to keep our governments open and accountable to the people.
CREED-21 works to ensure that all development is equitable and environmentally
responsible. And we have been proud of what we have accomplished.

We cannot afford to hire lawyers, and so are very happy when someone with Mr.
Briggs' abilities and convictions agrees to take on the organizations' cases.
Fortunately, he has enough clients who can afford to pay for his services that he is
able to pay his firm's overhead and still spend time working on our matters.

and CREED-21 have never accepted money in case settlements or in
judgments we have won. The media and losers of those cases claim that Mr.
Briggs has made himself rich from our cases. But what really happens is simple.
When we lose a case, Mr. Briggs does not get reimbursed for his time or expenses.
He is willing to risk substantial loss to fight the well-funded groups he takes on for
us. When we win a case - and always after persuading a judge that we are right -
Mr. Briggs is reimbursed for appropriate legal fees. Our settlements and
reimbursements are mostly public record - sometimes the other side insists on
confidentiality - and available to any journalist willing to report the truth.

More importantly our settlements require actions to protect the environment or
correct open-government violations. In almost every case, we are required to tell
the agency and developers what they were doing wrong before they made their
mistakes. It is only when they ignore the law that we sue them to right their
wrongs. We are not out for the money, and neither is Mr. Briggs.

Our victories have been wins for everyone who cares about our environment and
good government. For instance:

Just recently, officials with the the Sweetwater School Board and Southwestern
Community College District were reported to have accepted bribes to steer millions
of taxpayer dollars to certain contractors. The agencies refused to take any action
to recover the taxpayer money. So did. The Sweetwater case is still
pending, but we did achieve a settlement agreement in which the businesses who

paid bribes to Southwestern officials will pay back more than $640,000 to the
district. That is money that can now be used to pay for college facilities or to be
returned to the taxpayer, and it would not exist were it not for the action of 
However, when you read about this case, our efforts are never mentioned.

Similarly, has filed against the City of San Diego for taking out $130
million in infrastructure bonds. The voters passed a law that requires the
government entity to put long-term debt on the ballot for voters to approve. The City
went to great to issue these bonds without putting it to a vote and without
making a binding commitment to the projects it will spend the money on, so it is
essentially a big slush fund for politicians. That suit has not yet come to a
conclusion, but believes that if the voters pass a law requiring that they be
given a vote on whether to incur debt and the specific purpose for that debt, then
our elected officials should ensure that vote happens and abandon unethical ways
to get around the legal mandate.

CREED-21 has worked to ensure that developments around Southern California
are environmentally sound. Several of our cases were against WalMart who
refused to try to find ways to make its new supercenters more energy-ef?cient as
required by California law. CREED-21 has won or settled nearly every such case it
has been involved in, with WalMart often agreeing to install solar on its
supercenters to resolve our cases. While CREED-21 received little to no press for
its efforts, recently President Obama held a press conference at a supercenter in
Northern California to praise WalMart for its "voluntary" decision to provide more
solar on its new stores. CREED-21 has been successfully doing this for years

Mr. Briggs is our attorney. All the arguments put forward that he is just a front for a
non-existent group are false and part of a narrative put forward by Jan Goldsmith at
the City of San Diego, who frankly must be embarrassed by the fact that he has lost
most of our cases against the City, and by developers who are afraid that they will
have to make their projects better environmentally if we sue them. The arguments
that Mr. Briggs owns a big house and therefore must be making tons of money from
his connection to and CREED-21 is baseless. He works for us for free in
the hope that his costs will be reimbursed if we win.

There will always be attempts to belittle and silence and

CREED-21 because we are, indeed, a thorn in the side of government and big
business. We require that the laws which have been passed to protect the people
are followed. We will continue to pursue that goal for as long as we can.

We ask only that you look with skepticism on the recent hail of hit pieces that
appear in the local media. No-one can make the media actually report the facts,
but we can give you most of the court documents that show what we are really
doing. They can be found on the Facebook page for and the Facebook
page for CREED-21.

Mr. Briggs is net the here, despite the desperate attacks against him. He is
sirnplig.?r a lien.r successful acting at the behest ct scme concerned asters
willing to step up and use the pcwer cf the Ccurts tc fcrce gcvernment and
develcpers tc with the law. Please let us know if 1ych appreciate cur 

cr want tc jcin these thankless endeavcrs.
Theresa Duircz 

    

 

 

Richard Lawrence