Santa Clara city councilmembers at the center of a recent civil grand jury report titled “Irreconcilable Differences” are pushing back on some of the findings, accusing jurors of false “inflammatory statements” and biases.
The 91-page report, which was released last month by the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury, details “deep divisions, rivalry and routine disrespect” between the mayor and councilmembers and advises the city to create an independent ethics commission and hire ethics and conflict resolution professionals to work with the council.
While the council largely agreed at Tuesday night’s meeting that conflict resolution and ethics training is deeply needed in Santa Clara, the substance of the report divided some councilmembers who accused jurors of ignoring “bad behavior” by Mayor Lisa Gillmor and Councilmember Kathy Watanabe.
In a 4 to 3 vote, the council ultimately directed city officials to draft the required response to the grand jury and return with a plan for developing an ethics program. Gillmor, Watanabe and Councilmember Suds Jain cast the dissenting votes, with Gillmor stating she was voting no because she wanted no delay in creating an ethics commission.
“I have pushed to get an ethics commission, ethics advisor and it’s been shot down at every opportunity,” Gillmor said. “The last grand jury brought up the need for an ethics advisor in the city of Santa Clara, this council majority turned it down and here we are a year and a half later with the same if not worse issues on this city council.”
“Irreconcilable Differences” is one of three civil grand jury reports authored about Santa Clara in recent years. In 2022, the civil grand jury released a scathing report titled “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” that focused on the San Francisco 49ers’ political influence on the city.
The controversial report was referenced several times in “Irreconcilable Differences.” But Jain said the two reports have “similar errors and biases.”
“(‘Irreconcilable Differences’) makes many references to the very flawed 2022 report,” Jain said. “Additionally I have very serious concerns about how the grand jurors were recruited and about longstanding biases on the grand jury. Two grand jurors recused themselves and I don’t know which ones or why.”
The civil grand jury watched more than 400 hours of council, committee and commission meetings from January 2020 to May 2024 to formulate their report. But some councilmembers argued that it only focused on the behavior of five of the seven members of the council.
Vice Mayor Anthony Becker called the report a “word salad full of inflammatory statements to give the perception of bad behavior while ignoring” behavior from the mayor and Watanabe. The report recommended that Gillmor and Watanabe attend conflict resolution training, but said the two showed “appropriate meeting decorum” in the reviewed footage.
“There have been numerous times I have been verbally abused by members of this council, verbally abused by the mayor’s proxies, accused consistently of many things by either members of this council or members of the public aligned with those councilmembers,” Becker said. “Yet out of 400 hours of meetings that the grand jury reviewed, it never identified any of those instances.”
The council is expected to discuss next steps for an ethics program, as well as the other 2024 civil grand jury report, “Outplayed,” at a meeting later this summer.