An attorney for the city’s former top bureaucrat, who Mayor Todd Gloria belatedly claimed he fired for cause, says the ex-COO has reached a tentative $146,000 settlement with the city.
The proposed settlement is larger than the three months of severance that ex-COO Eric Dargan sought when he was abruptly dismissed in February, attorney Michael Conger said.
Conger said Dargan’s original ask was about $115,000 including benefits – and that he wouldn’t have sued the city if it had paid the severance described in the 2022 employment offer letter that both Dargan and the mayor signed.
The City Attorney’s Office declined to confirm the existence of the apparent settlement on Wednesday, saying it was “unable to comment on pending litigation.”
The City Council will need to vote to approve the settlement in open session in coming weeks before it can be finalized.
The yet-to-be-publicly-scheduled vote will come months after Gloria initially announced Dargan’s departure in February. At the time, the mayor said he was eliminating the COO position solely to address a massive city budget deficit. Then in late March Dargan filed a discrimination lawsuit, alleging that Gloria reneged on a pledge to pay him three months’ severance after a dismissal. After that Gloria’s office did an about face.
Gloria’s Chief of Staff Paola Avila told Voice of San Diego in March that Dargan – who is Black – was “in fact, terminated for cause.”
Dargan’s forced departure from City Hall had followed criticism from several councilmembers and the leader of the city’s largest union that no one was taking charge of the response to the city’s $258 million budget deficit, and rumors that Dargan fell asleep at key meetings.
But when pressed in February, Gloria described Dargan as “a good man” he enjoyed serving with, whose position was eliminated for financial reasons.
Weeks later Dargan filed the discrimination lawsuit.
Conger told Voice that the former city COO never received a formal performance review during his more than two years at City Hall – let alone a negative one. Conger, a veteran attorney, who has challenged the city in court many times, argued the city manufactured reasons for Dargan’s firing after his departure.
“We believe the city is fabricating facts to justify its discrimination,” Conger said at the time, noting a 2019 city audit that showed pay disparities affecting Black city employees.
Avila told Voice in March that the reasons for Dargan’s termination would “be made clear in the city’s response to Mr. Dargan’s complaint.”
But the city has yet to respond to those claims in legal filings.
Instead, in the days after an April 21 closed-door City Council briefing and negotiations, Conger said the City Attorney’s Office sent the ex-COO a settlement agreement that he and Dargan signed off on. It is not final without a vote of the City Council.
Conger argued the process has been unnecessary and costly for the city.
“(Dargan) wanted to be paid a severance which was preset at three months’ pay. We probably got five months’ pay for the trouble that they put us through,” Conger said. “Another example of the city doing business in a completely inefficient way.”
