Introduction

The Beginnings

April 25, 2002
Meeting

Original Attendees

Who is Mr. Mullally &
Why Shannon

June 27, 2002
Meeting

New Attendees

David Edick

July 18, 2002
Meeting

Donnie meets
Ben re Mullally

August 1, 2002
Meeting

Aftermath of August 1, 2002 Meeting

Mr. Mullally's informative memo

August 22, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting

Aftermath of August 22, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting

Mr. Marchant worked on the Organizing Committee
on City time

Drafting the Mission Statement

August 29, 2002 Organizing Committee Meeting

September 5, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting

September 26th 2002, Organizing Committee meeting

The Battle for the Brown Act

October 17, 2002 Organization Committee meeting

Aftermath of October 17, 2002 meeting

Organizing a Shannon Development presentation to San Diego CEOs

November 7, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting

The Question of its Structure and Organization

The Application for Tax-exempt status

Drafting the Articles of Association

December 12, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting

Picking a Board of Directors

Januray 14, 2003 Organizing Committee meeting

Aftermath of the January14, 2003 Organizing Committee meeeting

Appointment Ceremony by the Mayor

Training the New Board

The Business Committee takes the lead

January 29, 2003 Business Committee meeting

Hugh Constant's conflict of interest

My efforts to shift the focus from tax to manufacturing

Mayor's Press Conference at USD

Mr. Marchant's work on behalf of Shannon Development

February 19, 2003 Board of Director's meeting

Mr. Wilson and the legal filings

February 27, 2003 Board Meeting

The bizarre "e-mail election" of officers

The Mayor's Press Conference at the House of Ireland

The strange Frank Fahey affair

Strong opposition to a twinning with Shannon

March 13, 2003 Board Meeting

Murphy uses Council Chambers to promote the Shannon Development event

I discover the Murphy and Thompstone letters

The Shannon Development Tax Seminar in La Jolla

April 10, 2003 Board Meeting

May 8, 2003 Board Meeting

June 12, 2003 Board Meeting

The Lynching

July 10, 2003 Board Meeting

August 12, 2003 Special Membership Meeting

August 14, 2003 Board Meeting

The attempt to become "official"

My final submission

Web Links

Bylaws of San Diego-Shannon Partnership Inc.

Shannon Development's original company filing

Shannon Development's Articles

Shannon Development's share allotments

Shannon Development's Share structure

San Diego-Shannon Partnership

Ernst & Young

San Diego
World Trade Center

NY Times
Article

Shannon's undervalued
land sale

A short history of Shannon Development

Ireland's "special" tax rates

Shannon Development

Sister Cities International

  Summary

The resolution before the San Diego City Council is:

"BE IT RESOLVED, by the Council of the City of San Diego, that this Council, for and on behalf of the people of San Diego, hereby expresses its desire to be a Sister City to the Shannon Region of Ireland and accepts the shared desire of Shannon Development to seek Sister City partnership with San Diego."

1. Mayor Murphy initiated this in March 2002 and has had his staff working on it  ever since. He is now recommending that you make it official.
2. To do so you must embrace a new departure, a new Sister City program, whereby the traditional people-to-people affiliation, requiring an elected body at both ends of the relationship, is replaced by two new concepts: a "substantive area" and an  "administrative partner".
3. In this case the "Shannon region" would be the "substantive area" and Shannon Development would be the "administrative partner", thus dispensing with the need for a jurisdiction and elected officials at the Irish end.
4. The Shannon region is not a jurisdiction.
5. Shannon Development is an Irish government agency with a loose remit for economic development in and around Shannon Airport. It is incorporated as a private company, wholly owned by the Irish Minister for Finance, ex officio.
6. Shannon Development is a very large property owner in the Shannon area. Although a government agency it can buy and sell property without a bidding process.
7. Shannon Development, with offices in San Jose California, has a large company client list in San Diego and throughout the State of California.
8. As an agent of the Irish Government, Shannon Development dispenses large cash grants as incentives to American companies who invest in Ireland.
9. Shannon Development, in conjunction with Ernst & Young and under the sponsorship of this proposed Sister City organization, has already given a seminar to San Diego businesses regarding the use of Ireland as a tax shelter.
10. San Diego Sister Cities International and Sister Cities International in Washington DC, liked Mayor Murphy's suggestion for this "new departure" from the traditional Sister City program so much that they created a new affiliation program called their "International Partners" program. I was told by a director of that organization that they plan to recommend "The San Diego Model" to other American cities and other countries around the world.
11. Unlike Sister Cities International, San Diego City does not have an "International Partners" program. Current San Diego policy requires that: "A similar identifiable civic or official group must exist in the city with which affiliation is proposed".
     

Introduction:
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I became involved with Mayor Murphy's proposed Irish Sister City project the moment I heard of it because I am an enthusiastic supporter of the people-to-people concept first proposed by Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. I was particularly enthusiastic about a Sister City relationship between my home city of 28 years, San Diego, with any city in my native Ireland. I still am.

But I want San Diego to do it right. What Mayor Murphy is pushing is wrong. He wants to twin San Diego with an undefined "region" of Ireland called "Shannon", which does not exist as a jurisdiction, and he wants an entity called Shannon Development to be his "administrative partner". It would be like Dublin twinning with the "San Diego Region" and having CCDC administer it.

Like the San Diego region, the Shannon region consists of many jurisdictions ranging from counties, cities, towns and villages spread out along the Shannon river. Perhaps one could even include semi-autonomous bodies like universities, airports, port authorities etc.

But the entity that Mayor Murphy has chosen as his Sister City partner is a hybrid body known as Shannon Development. It is a development agency of the Irish Government, something akin to the TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority.

This body is incorporated in the Irish Companies Registry as a private company, (not a non-profit company, an ordinary private company) wholly owned by the Irish Government, its shares being held by the Minister of Finance ex-officio.

It is a grant-giving agency of the Irish Government with an official remit of fostering economic development in and around Shannon Airport, the purpose for which it was originally incorporated in 1956.

It has gradually extended its sphere of influence to where it now arrogates to itself almost everything of an economic nature that occurs in what it describes as the "Shannon Region". It still retains its private company status which vastly reduces its accountability. A recent example of which is its selling government-owned land to a private "partnership" without any public advertisement or bidding process.

The Beginings:
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I first met the new Irish Consul General, Donal Denham¹ on February 21, 2002, at an event at SDSU. The event involved the RUC, the Northern Ireland police force. Mr. Denham had only arrived in California the previous November, 2001 and we were all eager to meet him.

I had worked very closely with his predecessor two years earlier when I reported for various Irish newspapers on a case involving a Northern Ireland loyalist paramilitarist arrested in Riverside County on weapons and drug charges. I also produced a current affairs segment for RTE (Irish Television) on that story. Mark Little, their US correspondent, flew out from Washington to present it.

So Mr. Denham and I had something to talk about. That case had also involved the British Consul as Northern Ireland is part of the UK.

We talked for a while and then he told me that the Mayor of San Diego was going to announce a new Sister City in Ireland at the upcoming St. Patrick's Day Parade celebrations in March. I gave him my card and told him I would like to help.

On March 16th 2002 the Mayor did indeed announce a new Sister City at the 2002 St. Patrick's Day Parade celebrations - Shannon.

On April 19, 2002 I received this email from a Mr. Mullally² whom I had briefly met at the UCSD event. He seemed to be Mr. Denham's driver that night.

I later learned that they were much closer and had known each other for many years. Apparently Mr. Mullally had arrived in San Diego about the same time Mr. Denham had arrived in San Francisco. Mr. Denham had spent the previous three years at the Irish Government's Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment while Mr. Mullally had spent the previous twenty years in Jamaica.

Shannon Development is administered by the Trade department in which Mr. Denham had recently served, so he would have known all about Shannon Development. According to the Mayor's assistant Mr. Ben Marchant, it was he who had suggested Shannon to Mayor Murphy.

April 25, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting:
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The first organizing meeting was held at the Imperial House on 6th Ave., San Diego. Mr. Marchant from the Mayor's Office knew about the Imperial House from his duties at the St. Patrick's Day Parade breakfast in March when he had assisted the Mayor.

Mr. Mullally took the chair and announced that he was being put in charge of this undertaking by the Irish Consul General, Mr. Donal Denham.

Mr. Marchant approved and told us that Shannon was the Consul General's idea.

Original attendees:
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Mr. Marchant: a City employee, Deputy Chief of Protocol, announced that he was the Mayor's representative to this undertaking; seemed to have already done a great deal of work and to be guiding Mr. Mullally.

Bernadette Cashman: runs San Diego Irish Outreach.³ She receives funding from the Irish Consul General. She sees herself as the unofficial Irish Consul in San Diego. Mullally announced that she would be Secretary.

Tim Hushen⁴ had obtained the US Government funding for the highly secretive  RUC presence in San Diego, as part of the Irish peace process. The Federal funding required one public event which was what Mr. Denham attended on February 21st 2002.

Hugh Constant: (happens to be an Englishman) runs the downtown San Diego World Trade Center⁵ and was probably invited by Mr. Marchant. His business is to organize meet-and-greet international business events.

Monica Murphy: was newly arrived from Dublin and in the travel business. She was probably invited by Bernadette Cashman as they were friends.

Kathleen Roche-Tansey⁶ represented the San Diego Sister Cities Corporation. Mr. Marchant explained that she was present on behalf of the City to give advice on setting up a Sister City organization.

Colleen Finnegan: is the Sister Cities coordinator for the City of Carlsbad⁷ and a colleague of Ms. Roche-Tansey.

So the dual personalities of this undertaking were already apparent: international business in the person of Mr. Constant of the WTC and Sister Cities in these two ladies.

This email⁸ is the only record, as minutes were not provided by Bernadette Cashman.

Who is Mr. Mullally  and why Shannon?
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By now the word had got around that Mayor Dick Murphy was twinning San Diego with Shannon and that a complete newcomer to town, a Mr. Mullally was heading it up.

I had a meeting with a member of the IDA, the Industrial Development Agency⁹, which is the main Irish development agency, to see if he could shed any light on it.

He told me that Shannon Development shared an office with them in San Jose and that the Consul General must have some purpose in this otherwise it made no sense.

Why would a city the size of San Diego want to twin with "Shannon"? There is a town called Shannon Town, which according to its web site had a population of 8,561 at the 2002 Census, not exactly the best match for America's seventh largest city. It was built as a "company town", owned and operated by Shannon Development. The historic relationship between Shannon Development and Shannon Town has been - "strained".

He was as puzzled as I. But he wanted to stay out of it. And I didn't blame him.

We knew that Murphy had looked at the towns of Drogheda¹⁰ and Waterford¹¹ the previous year. Everybody knew that Mick Ward, who owns The Old Sod¹², was very disappointed that his native Drogheda got dumped for "Shannon". In fact he was flabbergasted and wanted to know who the heck was this guy Mullally.

Even if Shannon was a suitable twin, the fact that the Consul General in San Francisco was dictating not only which Irish city San Diego should twin with but also deciding who chairs the committee, was creating quite a stir. The Irish in San Diego particularly resented the fact that somebody nobody had ever heard of before was now their representative to the Mayor and the Consul General!

I caught a lot of "stick" from Mick Ward and others for getting involved with it at all and lending it legitimacy. Mr. Mullally was the main focus of resentful at that early stage.

June 27, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting:
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Mr. Mullally called this meeting the day before with this email¹³. This left little time to invite others. It later became evident why - he wanted to keep this to a "core group".

New attendees:
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Francis Killgallon: owns the Blarney Stone¹⁴ in Clairemont. Mr. Mullally had started to frequent his bar.

Cathy Cawley-Barry: was invited by me as she was Chairperson of the San Diego St. Patrick's Day Parade.

This email¹⁵ is the only record as minutes were not provided by Bernadette Cashman.

David Edick:
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Mr. Mullally attended a meeting of the San Diego International Sister Cities Corporation on July 16, 2002 and met the then President of San Diego-Vladivostok Sister City Society, David Edick.

David is now President of San Diego International Sister Cities Inc.

He seemed to have had some doubts about anybody trying to twin with a government agency back in 2002, as he put the word "city" in quotation marks in this email¹⁶ to Mr. Mullally.

July 18, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting:
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Mr. Hushen agreed to move our meetings to Manchester Hall at USD⁵⁴. He sent this invitation⁵⁵ and this agenda⁵⁶ on October 15th 2002.

The reaction from the "core group" was predictable and immediate. This email⁵⁷ from Monica objected to the change of venue. She seemed to be spokesperson for the old "core group".

It was followed by this email⁵⁸ from Rob Mullally to Mr. Hushen with CCs to Monica Murphy; Francis Kilgannon; Mr. Hushen & Bernadette Hilgeman; Bernadette Cashman. But not to me. He clearly preferred the clubby atmosphere of the Imperial House with the Cashmans to the "free-for-all", "rabble-rousing" open Brown Act compliant meetings I was urging on the organization.

I noted Mr. Mullally's reference to "Tim" Hilgeman, husband to the attorney daughter of Bernadette Cashman. He seemed to know the Cashmans well. I had never met "Tim".

I also noted that Mr. Hushen referred to them as "the group".

He was still straddling the fence between a "core group" and a "free-for-all". He clearly preferred the former having categorized my efforts to open it up according to Brown Act principles, rabble-rousing.

Mr. Mullally and Mr. Denham may never have heard of California's Brown Act, but Mr. Hushen and Mr. Marchant certainly did. I never tired of reminding them. They both knew I could make problems with it. And I fully intended to.

I realized it was crunch time for the Brown Act versus a "core group". I spoke at length to Mr. Marchant and Mr. Hushen on the telephone. The result was this email circular⁵⁹ from Mr. Marchant. The Brown Act was going to win -  at least for the time being until they could get rid of the "rabble-rouser".

October 17, 2002 Organization Committee meeting:
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The folks down at City Hall decided that they were not going to be caught breaching the Brown Act, at least on paper. So Mr. Marchant pointedly, almost imperiously, told the recalcitrant "core group" - "Tonight I will be joining Tim at USD (to) move the ideas that have been generated so far to the next level. Accompanying me will be the Mayor's Chief of Protocol, Elena Salsitz, and our Protocol Interns Anthony and Sarah."

I noticed his immediate boss Ms. Salsitz was coming along to emphasize the matter.

Mr. Hushen, always the pragmatist, wrote this⁶⁰ to "the group". Surprise, surprise! It had "come to his attention that additional members of the Irish community in San Diego are interested in our efforts."

Mullally shot back with this determination⁶¹ to go ahead at the Imperial House with his own "core group". The gauntlet was being thrown down to the Brown Act.

Mr. Hushen's meeting went ahead at USD while Mr. Mullally held his dissident "core group" meeting at the Imperial. Here are the minutes⁶² of Mr. Hushen's group. I was pleased to see that he and Mr. Marchant were suddenly very conscious of the Brown Act.

Mr. Hushen also presented a report of trip⁶³ to Shannon.

To me the most significant part was Mr. Marchant's report on his address to the California Summit on International Cultural Exchange in Los Angeles.

I was struck by how aptly his phrase “business as its engine, education as its various enhancements, the whole community as its passengers and culture as the scenery” described the new "Shannon Partnership" departure. I was beginning to feel like one of those passengers on Mr. Marchant's train and I didn't like the scenery.

Aftermath of October 17, 2002 meeting:
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Realizing that he had lost Mr. Mullally tried to recover with this backtracking email⁶⁴ to Mr. Hushen. He said:  "what I have a problem with is pat or whoever taking what I said at the meeting and misrepresenting that in such a manner that it ends up with Ben having to call the consul general!"

I knew he would deny ever having objected to Pete Smith being part of the delegation to Shannon. That is why I had wanted it in the minutes.

Concerned that Mr. Hushen and Mr. Marchant would go back to closed meetings with a "core group", I wrote this lengthy email to Mr. Hushen⁶⁵ outlining the situation.

Organizing a Shannon Development presentation to San Diego CEOs:
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Meanwhile Mr. Marchant emailed us⁶⁶ that Karl Mellon of Shannon Development had visited the Mayor's Office on October 12th 2002. That was 5 days prior to our last committee meeting. But Mr. Marchant had "forgotten" to mention it.

Under Agenda item #4 "Mr. Hushen (had) announced that Karl Mellon, Shannon’s full-time representative in the western States of America, will be in San Diego on Tuesday October 22nd, 2002, for a meeting with the City of San Diego." It seems there was a lot of traffic between Shannon Development and the San Diego Mayor's Office, but not all of it getting to the Organizing Committee. We were just a cover.

Ben circulated a memo regarding Mellon's October 22nd visit⁶⁷ the following day. They needed our help to organize " ... a forum to brief the San Diego community on the E.U. and tax information".

This left no doubt as to what this whole thing was about: it was about money, lots of it. I was almost tempted to quip to Ben that Shannon was now the Mayor's 11th goal, but I was in enough trouble being a "rabble-rouser" without being a "smartass".

Then amazingly I get this email from Marchant.⁶⁸ His reference to my "proposal"⁶⁹ was to one I had made suggesting that our "Sister City" organization sponsor an arts project. They ignored it. Mr. Mellon's proposals were more to the Mayor's taste than some silly cultural movie connecting Native Americans and aboriginal Irish.

Ben was altering the minutes⁷⁰ I had written for the October 17th meeting, even though he had already received and approved them on Oct 21st!

Here is Ben's revision⁷¹. Obviously some heavy legal minds were engaged on this. I wondered if the Minutes of the City Council get such careful consideration.

Whatever it was he was hoping to achieve he may have achieved the opposite because by not correcting it he reaffirmed both his and Mr. Murrillo's account of his address to the LA Cultural event at which he so adroitly articulated the new departure for Sister Cities. It was to be business driven!

He sent out his revised version with the agenda⁷² convening the next meeting⁷³ on Nov 7th. 2002. Mr. Marchant was now convening the meetings even though Mr. Hushen was the chair and was in town. The Mayor's Office was really into this thing.

November 7, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting:
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This the 7th meeting of the organization was held on Nov. 7th 2002. Here are the minutes⁷⁴. This time I was asked to record and circulate them. It seemed I was on Mr. Hushen's team but off Mr. Mullally's team.

Karl Mellon acknowledged the minutes⁷⁵ and seemed pleased with events.

So was Mr. Pete Smith⁷⁶.

Mr. Hushen had made another quick trip to Shannon Development in Ireland and reported on his meetings. I have no idea who paid for his trip. This sure was some high-powered Sister City.

The Question of its Structure and Organization:
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Now that we seemed to have settled down in a "businesslike manner", as Pete put it, I spent a good deal of time trying to devise an organization that would meet the Mayor's objectives without attempting to make it a Sister City. I emailed my idea⁷⁷ to Mike Wilson (our attorney), with copies to Mr. Hushen, Mr. Marchant and Pete Smith on November 16th 2002.

Here was my suggested structure⁷⁸ for a non-Sister City organization.

Note that it started off stating that this was NOT a Sister City organization. I was always perfectly clear about that. If its President Mr. Hushen was going to be running backwards and forwards to Shannon organizing all kinds of business events it could hardly be called a Sister City.

Mr. Marchant responded⁷⁹ promptly on behalf of the Mayor on Nov. 18th.

It was clear that Mr. Marchant was under strict instructions to deliver a Sister City and nothing less, while still sticking with Shannon Development. He said "The Mayor's initiative is to establish a Sister City so at this point it is not advisable to do otherwise."

Stretching to the limit I responded⁸⁰:

I was willing to run with a Business Partnership provided it did not lie to the people of San Diego and tell them they were twinning with another "city" in Ireland. It would have to be made clear that the City now had a Business Partnership with the economic development agency for the Shannon region in Ireland - Shannon Development.

This would not be an abuse of the Sister City concept. I am not against economic cooperation between two regions, in fact I was doing everything in my power to achieve that - legally and honestly. I was even willing to concede that it could "be administered as part of the Sister City program". But it could never be called a Sister City.

The Application for Tax-exempt status:
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Our attorney Mike Wilson was pressing for a decision⁸¹ on the tax-exempt filing.

I attended in Mr. Wilson's office during his conference call with Paul Dostart. We used the speakerphone. Here is my notes on that call⁸² which I sent to Mr. Hushen. He immediately responded⁸³ with a desire to stick to a 501C3, despite the lawyers' advice.

As a last try⁸⁴ on Nov. 21st I thought I might persuade Mr. Hushen to go with a 501C4 on the grounds that Shannon Development may feel more comfortable with a non-Sister City designation, after all nobody knew better than they that they were not a "city" or indeed any kind of jurisdiction.

On Nov. 25th at 8:47 AM I received this⁸⁵ which suggested that Mr. Hushen and Mike Wilson had agreed privately to go with a Sister City 501C3. I had not seen what Mr. Hushen was going to sign nor had they discussed it with me.

At 8:48 AM I received this⁸⁶:

Based on "further analysis" Mike Wilson was changing his recommendation to a 501C3. He went on to say "we are all in agreement" when of course we were not. I was still adhering to his and Mr. Dostart's earlier advice that "the main difference is that a 3 is a charitable org. engaged in educational activities while a 4 is a civic, community or social betterment org" and that "a sister city org. is usually considered a 4".

Mike had misrepresented my position to Mr. Marchant! He not only addressed his email to Mr. Marchant, Tim and Pat, while (deliberately?) omitting to send a copy to me, but he falsely informed Mr. Marchant that he had "already discussed this with Tim and Pat and they are in agreement with the recommendation". I was not.

This was patently false. From that moment on I was unable to trust the Partnership attorney, Mike Wilson. It seems that the Mayor was going to get what he wanted and it was not only going to be a Sister City but it was going to be a 501C3 as well.

There now seemed little I could do. I considered resigning, but I worried about what they might do next. I stayed.

Drafting the Articles of Association:
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I was having difficulties getting Mr. Wilson to include me in the preparations of the Articles which made me suspicious and anxious to see a copy before they were filed. But I persisted.⁸⁷

I finally received them as an attachment⁸⁸ on Nov. 25th 2002 with the terse statement "Attached are the articles that Tim will sign a week from today." There was to be no input from me or any discussion by the Organizing Committee.

I had also been requesting copies of the 501C3 filing before it went to the IRS. They knew why.

Here are the draft Articles ⁸⁹ ready for Mr. Hushen's signature as the incorporator (they were never amended by anybody that I know of).

I pointed out that these Articles described us as a corporation for "charitable and public purposes", promoting "strong ties" between the regions "through educational programs and cultural exchanges", with no mention of business or economic development. He wasn't interested. He seemed determined to draft what Mr. Marchant wanted, which Mr. Marchant had said was what the Mayor wanted, and Mr. Hushen was only too willing to sign whatever Mr. Wilson and Mr. Marchant wanted.

I had asked Mr. Rudy Murrillo for advice on incorporating. On Dec. 3rd 2002 he sent me this "donor advice⁹⁰" with a copy to Mr. Hushen. I followed up⁹¹ with my appreciation for the advice expressing a desire to apply due diligence in that regard. I did not receive a reply or a comment from Mr. Hushen.

On Decemeber 5, 2002 Mr. Marchant announced that the Articles had been signed by Mr. Hushen and filed⁹² with the State of California on Tuesday December 3, 2002, the very day I discussed "due diligence" issues with Mr. Murillo. This explained why I did not hear from Mr. Hushen on the subject until after the Articles were filed.

December 12, 2002 Organizing Committee meeting:
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On Dec. 5th Mr. Marchant convened the next meeting⁹³ for Dec. 12th 2002 and an Agenda attached⁹⁴. The Mayor's Deputy Chief of Protocol, Mr. Marchant, was conducting all the affairs of the Shannon Partnership, on a City salary.

Mr. Marchant took the minutes⁹⁵ and circulated them to us as an attachment on January 10, 2003, as part of his convening the January 14, 2003 meeting. This was his email.

At that meeting there had been no question of the Organizing Committee seeing or approving the Articles of Association of the Corporation prior to filing, just an announcement that "Michael Wilson reported that the Articles of Incorporation for the San Diego Shannon Partnership Inc. had been filed on December 9th, 2002."

The Partnership's meetings were simply to legitimize whatever actions Mr. Marchant and the Mayor had taken between meetings. Minutes were written to answer my requests for compliance with the Brown Act regarding open meetings. They were open all right but all decisions were being taken in the Mayor's Office.

Picking a Board of Directors:
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Mr. Wilson had previously informed me ⁹⁶ that Mr. Hushen as the incorporator would pick the new Board - "as is usual". Unbelievable the Mayor now proceeded to do so personally!

I received this letter of invitation from Mayor Murphy⁹⁷ to "apply for" appointment to the Board. No mention of a Sister City! Murphy said:

"I am very pleased to announce that the City of San Diego and Shannon Development (a government agency for the Shannon Region of Ireland) plan to create a partnership for the promotion of business, academic, and cultural exchanges."

So I filled out this application ⁹⁸ to "the Office of Mayor Dick Murphy" for a seat on the Board of "The San Diego-Shannon Partnership Inc.", (not for a seat on the board of any Sister City organization).

Meantime Mr. Hushen was catching up on his correspondence and copied me his response to Rudy's ⁹⁹ advice re donor funds - 3 days after the Articles had been filed. Mr. Hushen seemed more interested in establishing the fact that he could deduct his travel expenses to Ireland in relation to the Shannon Partnership (hopefully after it got approved as a 501C3).

Mr. Wilson emailed Mr. Marchant,¹⁰⁰ Mr. Hushen and I with his thoughts¹⁰¹ on possible By-Laws. This time he was careful to actually send me the email as he had "omitted" to do with the Articles. Perhaps he thought I might notice.

Januray 14, 2003 Organizing Committee meeting:
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January 10, 2003 brought this cheerful announcement ¹⁰² from Mr. Marchant.

Next meetings was to be Jan. 14th at SDSU - Mr. Hushen's place. This was the Agenda.¹⁰³

He announced that Karl Mellon of Shannon Development would attend; he introduced our new brochure¹⁰⁴ but most importantly he announced that Mayor Dick Murphy had graciously "selected a Board of Directors to put this organization together."

Surprise, surprise I was not among the elect! I hadn't even been called with an explanation.

These are the minutes¹⁰⁵ (received Jan. 16th, from Mr. Marchant) of the January 14th 2003 meeting. The tone of the meeting was a long way from a Sister City organization. Mr. Mellon was very clear about what he wanted and it had nothing to do with the Sister City concept.

I thought I was beyond being shocked but I was genuinely shocked at the brazenness of it all when he proposed (it's in the minutes): "Mr. Marchant also proposed that a business committee be organized to plan the economic partnerships of the San Diego Shannon Partnership Inc. beginning with a breakfast meeting with the target date of March 11th, for the purpose of Shannon Development to make a presentation to a very targeted group of businesses and their decision makers."

Well you couldn't be clearer than that.

It turned out that not only did he propose the Business Committee but he personally ran it from the Mayor's office, as you will see below.

So much for Mr. Denham's letter to Mr. Marchant on Sept. 16 2002 when he said that he believed "that the Society is now sufficiently well organized, supported locally by the Irish community and up and running for it to make it's own decisions and go its own way." The only one making any decisions was Mr. Marchant on behalf of the Mayor.

Still convinced they would eventually have to find a suitable city in the Shannon region, I remained enthusiastic throughout the meeting. In fact I made a remark, half joking, that I hoped one day, as a result of our efforts, there would be a daily direct flight between San Diego and Shannon Airport. I still believed in the concept. I just did not want it to be used by politicians for their own purposes or tarnish the Sister City concept.

I had underestimated the determination of the Mayor and Shannon Development to see this through with only them involved, no elected officials at the Irish end.

Everybody seemed to be aware that I was passed over for the Board. I still had this naive regard for the Sister City concept. All the others knew that it was just there to be used. They were embarrassed for me. I could feel it in their body language. Mr. Marchant seemed unfazed.

I didn't know whether to be happy or sad that I was not acceptable after all the work I had done. I wondered if I would even know any of the new Directors - if I ever got to meet them. I was getting a real taste of how Mayor Dick Murphy does business. What to do? Back off and get on with my life, or fight these people?

I decided to fight.

Aftermath of the January14, 2003 Organizing Committee meeeting:
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When I got home I called Mr. Marchant and read the riot act to him for almost an hour. First I asked him who the Mayor had chosen. I was appalled. There was not a single person from any of the big Irish Community organizations. And this was a Sister City!

Sea Brew, a young ambitious downtown lawyer was chosen. Sean was associated with the Friendly sons of St. Patrick but then just about every lawyer downtown is a member of that "fraternal" organization.

The Irish Community do not consider the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick an Irish organization, as very few are Irish, they never support other Irish organizations, and they meet just once a year.

I was now glad I had decided to fight because this was outrageous.

Finally Mr. Marchant said he would get back to me. He didn't. But at 5:11 PM that evening I got this "Agenda".¹⁰⁶ I can't believe that everybody on the copy list did not get their invitation for the following morning until 5:11 PM that evening. But Mr. Marchant, being the professional he is, made it look that way. This is his cover email.¹⁰⁷

Appointment Ceremony by the Mayor:
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It was like being summoned to the Oval Office. Everything was carefully orchestrated, even where we must stand to greet the great man. (I understand they actually put your name on a piece of paper on the floor where you must remain standing when you enter the Oval Office. Maybe next time at the Mayor's Office.)

Mr. Sean Brew, Friendly Sons of St. Patrick
Mr. Hugh Constant, San Diego World Trade Center
Mr. Frank Devaney, City of San Diego
Ms. Colleen Finnegan, City of Carlsbad
Mr. Patrick Flannery, Irish Congress of Southern California
Mr. Timothy Hushen, San Diego State University Foundation
Mr. Paul Kline, Immigration attorney, former U.S. Consul General
Mr. James Langley, University of California San Diego
Ms. Marnyce McKell, Small business owner
Mr. Brian Monaghan, American Ireland Fund
Mr. Paul Peterson, Attorney, San Diego Regional Airport Authority
Mr. Peter Smith, Business and Real estate

This was a pretty high-powered Board. There were five attorneys:

Frank Devaney, now a judge, was from the San Diego City Attorney's Office. We were told that his wife Leslie Devaney, also a deputy City Attorney, was running for City Attorney in November 2004, endorsed by Mayor Murphy.

Sean Brew our Secretary, is an attorney in private practice and an enthusiastic supporter of Mayor Murphy.

Paul Kline,¹⁰⁸ a Harvard law graduate with a Masters in Public Administration is a former U.S. Consul General.

He owns California Business Immigration whose web site says they specialize in "International Corporate Relations ..... expertise includes a network of strong relationships from government agencies to additional legal services whether you need assistance with investments, real estate, or any other type of legal matter. We at California Business Immigration address the entire scope of your requirements to ensure that your needs are satisfied personally ...or globally."

No doubt he would be able to advise on foreign residency issues arising out of Shannon Development's tax haven plans.

Brian Monaghan, a downtown attorney, is a long-time friend and colleague of Dick Murphy. They were once partners together at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps.¹⁰⁹

The UC Hastings College of Law¹¹⁰ in San Francisco on whose Board he sat had this to say about him:

"A solo practitioner, Mr. Monaghan is a prominent plaintiff's attorney in the area of civil litigation. The San Diego Trial Lawyers Association awarded Mr. Monaghan Outstanding Trial Lawyer Awards on 10 occasions from 1979 to 1998 as well as presenting him its Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for 1979, 1984 and 1988. In 1998 he was the recipient of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America Stephen J. Sharp Public Service Award, as well as the American Board of Trial Advocates' California Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. In February 1999 Mr. Monaghan received the American Ireland Fund Distinguished Heritage Award. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for the San Diego Padres¹¹¹ and the International Board of Directors of The American Ireland Fund."¹¹²

Brian is now retired and fighting a melanoma cancer. He seems to be doing fine from this health article ¹¹³ in 2004.

Paul Peterson was Mayor Murphy's heavyweight. He introduced him as his appointee to the Board of Commissioners of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority but we knew him best from his long association with Sol Price.

Then we had some high-powered representation from the universities:

James Langley¹¹⁴ is President of the UC San Diego Foundation.

Tim Hushen ¹¹⁵ is "Chief, Sponsored Research Services of the San Diego State University Foundation ....and  manages and directs more than 50 professionals in developing over 1,000 proposals for external funding and supervises the administration of $140 million grant", according to his resume.

Hugh Constant, was eager for business for his San Diego World Trade Center.¹¹⁶

Colleen Finnegan, represented the City of Carlsbad. As a resident of San Diego and a supporter of the Mayor she was really there as an expert on Sister Cities.

Marnyce McKell, was billed as a Small business owner. She was African-American and had no idea why she was there. She soon disappeared.

Peter Smith, was described as "Business and Real estate" which was probably accurate.

Patrick Flannery. I was put down as representing the "Irish Congress of Southern California", the organization that puts on the annual San Diego St. Patrick's Day Parade. I have no idea why they picked that one, I certainly didn't. I belong to several San Diego Irish organizations. In fact I had asked to be described as "a San Diego Irishman", though I introduced myself to the Mayor as "a voter". He smiled.

Bernadette Cashman turned up for her Certificate of Appointment from the Mayor but we never saw her again after the ceremony.

Training the New Board:
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Mr. Marchant had to start from scratch with the Board of Directors, most of whom had never been at a committee meeting. He sent out this invitation¹¹⁷ for a "meet-and-greet" and urged them to read the previous minutes to get some idea of what it was the Mayor had appointed them to.

The "Business Committee" was obviously the most important:

Mr. Marchant and Mr. Hushen met on their own:¹¹⁸ "Tim and I met anyway and discussed a few ideas about the timing and the work ahead that will be required to pull off a successful breakfast presentation of Shannon Development" and "we don't really need the hype leading up to the 17th (St. Patrick's day) to ensure attendance, since it's all peripheral to the business/economic interests and purpose of the meeting."

Ben knew what the Mayor expected of him and it had precious little to do with "Sister Cities".

The Business Committee takes the lead:
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Karl Mellon sent us¹¹⁹ a list of 243 companies in the San Diego region. We were to contact these CEOs and spread the good news.  Remember that NY Times article¹²⁰ Mr. Marchant had found all by himself, back in August 2002?

I will not include the company list. It would not be fair to those 243 companies.

January 29, 2003 Business Committee meeting:
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Narelle McKenzie of Pricewaterhouse Coopers,¹²¹ hosted a meeting in their downtown offices. Who had contacted PwC? Mr. Marchant?

This meeting was described by Mr. Marchant in his Agenda as another Business Committee Meeting. I guess the previous one attended by only Mr. Hushen and Mr. Marchant showed that this Business Committee needed a prestigious venue, like a major accounting office for example. Mr. Marchant was learning the ropes from Karl.

Here is Mr. Marchant's Agenda.¹²²  And here are the minutes¹²³ afterwards. (Mr. Marchant both prepared and distributed them). Note this was a "Business Committee Meeting", not a meeting of the Shannon Partnership, let alone a Sister City meeting. Was Mr. Marchant was working for Shannon Development now? Where was this Sister City we were supposed to be creating?

Karl Mellon commented ¹²⁴ afterwards on our various suggestions.

At the Business Committee meeting I had naively suggested the telecom industry (as Ireland is in desperate need of telecom infrastructure, particularly broadband) but Karl already knew what he wanted: he wanted to make "a presentation which is of interest to as wide an audience as possible".

Everybody pays taxes, you can't have a wider appeal than that! We were to learn later that Ernst & Young's¹²⁵ expertise in tax havens was more the kind of high tech expertise Karl had in mind.

I now understood what all those trips by Mr. Mellon to the San Diego Mayor's Office were all about. All the planning for "our" upcoming tax seminars had already been done. We were just here to legitimize the whole thing.

It looked like Mr. Marchant was working on this full time for the Mayor. And it also looked like Mellon was not kidding when he told us at the January 14th meeting at SDSU, that "he came to this operation with a check book".

Hugh Constant's conflict of interest:
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At this Business Committee meeting Hugh Constant took a bow for "generously offering the support of the World Trade Center to manage and do the marketing for the event; including such necessities as meeting space, staff support for mailing/faxing notices to invitees, and central communications for inquiries. All agreed that the World Trade Center seemed a perfect fit for our purposes", according to the minutes written by Mr. Marchant.

I was later to learn that Hugh Constant was being paid by Shannon Development for all this. He was later to earn a handsome fee for putting on the event in La Jolla. That is the business he is in, putting on business seminars. But this was a conflict of interest. He was a Board member and should at least have informed the rest of us on the Board.

There was also the matter of open bidding, after all we were a public benefit corporation. We all knew people who put on business seminars. They too would like to have clients like Shannon Development - with large checkbooks.

My efforts to shift the focus from tax to manufacturing:
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I wrote to Karl¹²⁶ dreaming dreams, still  not fully aware that he was really only interested in Shannon as a tax haven. Of course I had not been at those private meetings between Mr. Hushen and Shannon Development in October and November 2002 in Ireland.

I never did receive a reply from Mr. Mellon, but Mr. Hushen got this,¹²⁷ direct from Shannon Development in Ireland and he passed it on.

It was their most recent presentation in Canada¹²⁸ soon to be updated and adopted for us. It clearly showed that a very large part of Shannon Development's presentations at such events is devoted to tax advice. And we were helping them plan one here! Under the guise of a Sister City?

Mayor's Press Conference at USD:
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At the Jan. 29th Board Meeting I had been put in charge of organizing and publicizing a Mayoral Press Conference. I chose USD.

This was my suggested Flyer.¹²⁹ On Feb. 11th 2003 it was amended and approved thus¹³⁰ by Mr. Marchant.

They had changed my "Mayor Dick Murphy wishes to introduce an exciting new people-to-people project between the people of San Diego and the people of Ireland’s Shannon Region. He has personally appointed a Board of Directors"

to "The Board of Directors, acting in cooperation with Mayor Dick Murphy and in partnership with the City of San Diego".

They had dropped my "people-to-people" and the Board who had clearly been "appointed" by Murphy were now merely "acting in cooperation" with him. I wondered who poured over these changes. He was the only one who could have been aware of the nuances involved.

Mr. Marchant's work on behalf of Shannon Development:
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Mike Wilson announced¹³¹ that our By-Laws¹³² were ready (if a quorum of Directors could ever be mustered to approve them).

On Feb. 7th 2003 Mr. Marchant proposed a meeting for Feb. 12th 2003¹³³ to approve the By-Laws. He was anxious that the Board "take ownership" of the corporation before the scheduled April 8th Shannon Development event.

Mr. Marchant was now acting as a full time agent of a foreign government on San Diego City taxpayer's money using this "Partnership" corporation as a front.

He refers to the tasks before "us". It was impossible that Mayor Murphy was not aware of the work being done by somebody on his most personal staff, right there in his office every day.

He sent the following attachments, the still being drafted and discussed By-Laws, roster of Directors,¹³⁴ upcoming 2003 events¹³⁵ and the Agenda for the next Board meeting.¹³⁶

Bernadette Cashman was not on the roster. What she had been doing at the Mayor's appointment ceremony was never explained. Perhaps Mr. Denham had insisted she be there.

On Feb 14th Mr. Marchant emailed us that the Feb. 18th Business Committee Meeting was cancelled.¹³⁷ Karl Mellon was scheduled to attend but had cancelled. It was obvious what the business of that Committee was all about, it was all about what Shannon Development was all about.

He informed us that the Board Meeting for the following day February 19th was still on.

February 19, 2003 Board of Director's meeting:
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On February 10th Mr. Marchant announced the date and location,¹³⁸ this time at a third University, UCSD. Its Foundation President, Mr. James langley, was on the Board of the San Diego-Shannon Partnership Inc. On January 16, 2003 Mr. Marchant had already sent out notices for the next general meeting¹³⁹ to be on Feb. 19th 2003.

On Feb. 14th Mr. Marchant had sent out details of the¹⁴⁰ meetings and included this agenda.¹⁴¹ (His attachment for upcoming events¹⁴² still showed me organizing the Mayor's Press Conference on March 10th.)

Mr. Marchant was still  writing the Agendas, the Minutes and convening the meetings. What a strange "Sister City". Mr. Marchant now had three email lists: one for the Board, one for the Business Committee (his favorite) and one for the General Membership.

I noticed that certain items might be "tabled". I also noticed the Agenda said "Appoint/Elect" officers. From past experience I realized he intended to "appoint" not "elect" these officers. Nothing was to be left to chance. Mr. Hushen had already proven himself totally loyal to the Mayor, so he had to be President.

To ensure Tim's election the plan was to "table" if there was a quorum (which there was at the February 19th meeting) and immediately schedule another meeting which would inevitably be poorly attended, as was the February 27th meeting.

Otherwise there was absolutely no reason why the officers were not elected at that meeting. The adoption of the By-Laws took no more than 5 minutes as everybody accepted whatever attorney Mike Wilson had written. It was merely a formality.

But instead of  allowing the Board to elect officers who would "take ownership" of the corporation Mr. Marchant talked about the upcoming Shannon Development event in glowing terms and skipped over the appointment of officers. There was an abundance of food and drinks to keep people occupied. Something was afoot.

The minutes ¹⁴³ were not released by Mr. Marchant until after the next meeting, for reasons that will become obvious in a moment.

The day after this well attended February 19th meeting (perhaps too well attended) Mr. Marchant immediately scheduled another meeting¹⁴⁴ for Feb. 27th 2003.

Expecting to elect officers the February 19th meeting had been the biggest meeting ever, about 16 people.

Mr. Wilson and the legal filings:
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The following day Mike Wilson emailed everybody that the By-Laws were approved¹⁴⁵ at the February 19th meeting. It had been the first item on the Agenda in order to empower the Directors to "appoint/elect" officers. But not the way one would expect.

Mike Wilson ¹⁴⁶ now requested input for the exemption filing.¹⁴⁷ He had ignored my earlier input on the Articles, and had actually misrepresented me. I decided not to offer any input this time as he may make it look as if I were complicit in his exemption filing, which probably would not tell the truth to the IRS about what we were really doing.

February 27, 2003 Board Meeting:
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This February 27th meeting had only four Directors present, Hushen, Smith, Constant and Flannery, exactly the excuse Mr. Marchant wanted. He knew that meetings called at short notice, in this case less than a week, would result in low attendance. He obviously was working to a plan as he could easily have elected officers on the 19th.

What actually happened at meetings was almost irrelevant any more as Mr. Marchant always wrote them up as he pleased anyway. He came to each meeting very, very well prepared and was always very "measured" in his handling of the minutes afterwards.

So the following day February 28, 2003 Mr. Marchant circulated the "minutes" for both meetings as attachments to this email.¹⁴⁸ He was obviously pleased with himself as he said "we are making great progress". The minutes bore very little resemblance to what actually happened. I did not have a tape recorder. Next time!

Here are the "minutes"¹⁴⁹ for the February 19th meeting and the "minutes"¹⁵⁰ for the February 27th meeting. I could see there was some heavy-duty manipulation going on and I suspected Mr. Marchant was getting a lot of help down at the Mayor's office.

The bizarre "e-mail election" of officers:
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It was clear at the meeting that an email election had already been decided upon by Mr. Marchant and Mr. Wilson. The achievement of this was the sole purpose of this "extra" meeting, to contrive an excuse for their email election.

Item #2 in Mr. Marchant's minutes announced this bizarre plan for electing officers - by email vote!

According to my personal notes, when I questioned it, Mr. Wilson a corporate lawyer, assured us that this Board Meeting could agree to accept the results of Mike Wilson's substitute email ballot "in good faith" and abide by it as if it were an actual ballot at the meeting. He did not refer to any wording in our By-Laws nor did he have them in front of him when I asked. He had his mind made up. That was his advice.

He also assured us that we could authorize him as the Company attorney (if you can't trust your attorney who can you trust) to tabulate the votes.

The problem I saw was that nobody but Mr. Wilson was going to see the votes and I no longer trusted Mr. Wilson as he had misrepresented me as having approved the Articles he filed. Of course it was all a sham. Nobody needed to vote. Mr. Marchant intended to just "announce" the result he wanted. Mr. Wilson was simply facilitating him.

Mr. Hushen nominated me for Vice-President. I declined. They wanted me as an officer to lend credibility to the Partnership, but in an office with no power. They wanted to make me a party to their various actions, much as Mr. Wilson had misrepresented me as a party to what I still consider to be a fraudulent filing of the Partnership's Articles.

The By-Laws provided for my nominating myself as President, so I did, and refused all other offices knowing that the Presidency was the one office they would not let me have.

For the record, before they still "nominated" me for Vice-President in the minutes, I emailed this¹⁵¹ the following day, at 11:43 AM, before receiving the minutes¹⁵² at 12:07 PM.¹⁵³ I had anticipated that they would do that. They wrote whatever minutes they liked.

I even feared that they would not accept my self-nomination for President, leave it out of the minutes altogether and just nominate me for Vice-President. They "nominated" me for both!

Mr. Marchant emailed me ¹⁵⁴ back at 12:07 AM, the exact same time as he emailed the minutes. So he had received my email before he sent the minutes. I noticed he copied Mr. Wilson. He said: "I have included only the outcome of our decisions." I guess he didn't see any need to record my objections, just what he had decided.

Throughout the two years I was involved, Mr. Marchant treated the minutes of all meetings that way. He include only "the outcome". So I could raise any issue, make any motion but if it weren't approved it didn't get recorded.

But in this case he had gone even further and stated that I had accepted the nomination for Vice-President when I most emphatically had rejected it. Rules or honest behavior meant nothing to him, only that which he was tasked by the Mayor to achieve.

I called him. After a very long frustrating telephone conversation, trying to get him to drop the whole idea of an email vote and correct my nomination, I sent him this email¹⁵⁵ at 1:21 PM.

This perhaps is the most important email of all. It showed that as a non-lawyer I could see even then that there would be problems with the validity of a so-called "email election". My email ended with "Why not keep it simple and wait for the next Board Meeting". I even warned of possible future legal challenges.

At the next Board Meeting they merely confirmed the "email election" as conducted by Mr. Wilson even though I pointed out that Mr. Wilson's legal advice in this regard may be flawed.

To my mind, confirming an illegal email election after the event does not make it legal. Email does not provide "concurrency" either in "communication" or in "activity", as required by the By-Laws. The By-Law requirement that "all members participating in the meeting are able to hear one another" was not complied with. It was therefore an illegal election.

This raises the question as to whether the Mayor has had the cover organization he thought he had over the last two years. It may mean that not only factually but legally as well, this organization was being run out of the Mayor's Office the entire time. There were no officers and the Mayor had appointed the Directors.

Was there ever a fully autonomous citizen organization for him to heap blame on if anything goes wrong?

When somebody embraces such a fraudulent project they better be darned sure that the insulating entity is legally bullet-proof. We will see.

Yet after all this, Mr. Marchant still flatly refused on the telephone to correct the minutes.

I don't know what his motivation was but he and Mr. Hushen told many, many people that I had sought office, any office, and been rejected. They wanted people to believe that my problem with the Shannon Partnership was simply that I had failed to get myself elected as an officer. They still do. My future, and present, objections were to be dismissed as those of a disgruntled ex-Director.

Of course I knew I would never be President. I had made it abundantly clear to them that the first thing I would do if elected President would be to call for disbandment. I did anyway.

So as to leave no doubts as to my concerns about the minutes I emailed¹⁵⁶ this final summary of my position at 2:15 PM. He knew I was doing it for the record so at 2:49 PM he emailed ¹⁵⁷ me in a very conciliatory tone promising to "amend the minutes to address these concerns." But he never did. He later amended them, for his own reasons.

On March 5, 2003 we all received an email¹⁵⁸ attaching these amended minutes¹⁵⁹ of the February 27th meeting. Here are the two versions side-by-side.¹⁶⁰

They changed the wording of item #2 adding: "Ben Marchant will issue a ballot to be voted on via e-mail" and changing "The board members agreed to accept the decision of the election of officers in good faith" to "the board will approve the results of the election of officers at the next meeting."

He was still clinging to an email election. To me it didn't seem to matter whether it was to be "approved in good faith" by those Board members who at the February 27th meeting or by those Board members who would be at the next one on March 13th,¹⁶¹ it lacked "concurrency" and was still an illegal procedure and remains so to this day.

This is a good example of why minutes should not be under the control of one dominant member of an organization. The person who writes them should be independent, even if it means bringing in somebody from outside, such as a stenographer.

An extraordinary amount of thought had gone into all this. All for a Sister City!

Of course Mr. Marchant "forgot" to amend the part in the minutes where I was wrongly nominated for Vice President, even though he had promised he would. That nice conciliatory email on February 28th was just for show.

The Mayor's Press Conference at the House of Ireland:
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Item #6 of the February 27, 2003 minutes said: "Mr. Marchant announced that the Mayor will be holding a press conference to announce the San Diego-Shannon Partnership, Inc. on Friday, March 14th, at the House of Ireland in Balboa Park from 12:30 to 1:00 p.m. A flyer¹⁶² announcing this event will be provided when ready."

Frank Fahey, the Irish Minister at the Department of Trade and Commerce, at which Mr. Denham had served the previous three years and which has oversight over Shannon Development, was coming to San Diego to launch the new Shannon Sister City Partnership for Mayor Murphy. Clearly Shannon Development had clout.

Colleen Windsor at the Mayor's Office demanded the key to the House of Ireland, asserting that it was City property. But she did not want any of the Irish membership at the Mayor's Press Conference. The Mayor wanted tight control over everything.

I was left to explain to Mal Rafferty at USD that his facilities were no longer required. He had cleared the schedule of the Manchester Hall for the Mayor and had arranged for his staff to work overtime. He had even arranged refreshments.

Mr. Marchant sent me this email ¹⁶³ for comments on the draft Press Conference announcement¹⁶⁴ attached. This was my response.¹⁶⁵ I pointed out that neither Mr. Mellon nor Shannon Development should be introduced as representing the "Shannon Region". I was trying to minimize Shannon Development's role and keep us on track for twinning with a legitimate jurisdiction in the region. I never did received a reply.

The strange Frank Fahey affair:
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Then this email¹⁶⁶ from Mr. Marchant abruptly canceling the House of Ireland Press Conference.

The "something more pressing" that had come up was protecting Dick Murphy from the wrath of the Dublin Government who had just found out the real reason why Trade Ministry Frank Fahey was in San Diego. Wittingly or unwittingly he was to act as the other "elected partner" in The San Diego-Shannon Partnership Inc.

The Progressive Democrats, partners in government with Bertie Ahern's (and Fahey's) ruling Fianna Fail party, suspected nothing when they approved Frank Fahey's trip to San Diego for the St. Patrick's Day parade. Perhaps neither did Bertie.

But somebody found out the real reason why Minister Frank Fahey was in San Diego and he was quickly told not to appear at any Press Conference in San Diego regarding Shannon Development.

The Irish Government very nearly were made the "elected Irish partner" of this "new departure" Partnership and they didn't like it. That was the whole purpose of the Press Conference and the tightly controlled photographs in front of the House of Ireland. It would have legitimized the Partnership.

Fahey did pose for photographs with the Mayor the following day at the St. Patrick's Day Parade celebrations in Balboa Park, but that was a whole different affair.

That is Mr. Fahey to the left and behind the Mayor in Balboa Park at the St. Parick's Day celebrations.

The aftershocks of that little episode reverberated for weeks afterwards and could well be the reason Dick Murphy temporarily bowed out of the 2004 Mayoral race on March 28, 2003.

Some very powerful people in Dublin were very angry at him for trying to get them involved in something they had not fully understood.

If Murphy had got that photograph with the Irish Trade Minister in front of the House of Ireland in Balboa Park, the Irish Government would be in a Sister City relationship with San Diego City whether they liked it or not courtesy of Shannon Development.

Mr. Marchant had said on many occasions that the Irish Government was the other "elected partner" in this Partnership. They almost pulled it off.

Murphy should have quit when he had the chance.

Strong opposition to a twinning with Shannon:
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A meeting of prominent members of the San Diego Irish community was held at The Imperial House on the day after Fahey's withdrawal, March 11, 2002. Mr. John Hyatt took the minutes¹⁶⁷ and emailed¹⁶⁸ them to me that night at 11:34 PM before he went to bed.

March 13, 2003 Board Meeting:
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This agenda¹⁶⁹ was emailed¹⁷⁰ by Mr. Marchant on March 10th.

Mike Wilson finally sent ¹⁷¹ the minutes¹⁷² of this meeting on April 7th. By now minutes were becoming meaningless. They were being written to further whatever Mr. Marchant's agenda was at the time, including and excluded items in the light of subsequent events.

The minutes show their reply to my questions as to why the San Diego Irish community were excluded with "It was pointed out that the corporation represents all members of the San Diego community and not just members of Irish decent in the Irish community."

They wrote this because they were fully aware that there was strong opposition from the Irish community in San Diego as I had read to them the minutes of the Irish community meeting held the previous Tuesday on March 11th.

Mr. Wilson's minutes of this Board meeting did not even mention this or my motion proposing Galway City as an alternative Sister City as directed by the community group nor did it mention my motion to disband, discussion of which had taken almost the entire meeting.

I had proposed a motion to disband the Partnership and asked to be allowed to state for the record my reasons for doing so. Mr. Hushen refused to entertain the motion and without asking for a seconder attempted to move on. But Brian Monaghan said he wanted to hear what I had to say and he seconded the motion.

Here is the motion¹⁷³ that did not appear in the minutes. I was not yet aware of Mayor Murphy's letter to Mr. Thompstone at the time or I might have worded it stronger.

I presented the short history¹⁷⁴ of Shannon Development I have used in this narrative which draws heavily on Brian Callanan's book, a Shannon Development employee.

Yet none of that is in the minutes. They did not want to admit there was opposition.

Murphy uses Council Chambers to promote the Shannon Development event:
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Mr. Marchant emailed¹⁷⁵ this notice of the "Presentation".

To my amazement Murphy was going ahead with this thing despite the withdrawal of the Irish Minister the previous Friday.

Dick Murphy actually used the Chambers to "Announce the Shannon Development presentation on business opportunities taking place Tuesday, April 8th" as it says in the circulated announcement. He did not say The Shannon Partnership event he said The Shannon Development event. And that's what he meant.

They hadn't even applied for Sister City status yet! And they were presenting it to the City!

Many San Diego Irish attended the Presentation of the Partnership in the City Chambers to ask questions about this strange Irish Sister City and to register their opposition. They wished to counter the claims being made by Murphy that there was "strong support" among the Irish community in San Diego for a Sister City involving Shannon Development, in fact there was "strong opposition".

I refused to go forward to be recognized by the Mayor as a Partnership Director. I stayed with the protesting group. I did not want to validate this travesty in any way.

Mr. Marchant talked to the protestors afterwards at the back of the Chamber. He was pressed very hard about who represented the other side of this relationship. Everybody wanted to know who at Shannon Development represents the Shannon Region and if he or she were an elected official.

Mr. Marchant made his contrived argument that Shannon Development was an Irish Government agency and the Irish Government was elected by the Irish people. We pointed out that if the Irish Government were the other side of this Partnership why had the Irish Minister withdrawn his participation by not appearing at the House of Ireland Mayor's Press Conference announcing the Partnership. Many of them had planned on being there.

I discover the Murphy and Thompstone letters:
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When pressed further for a name Mr. Marchant then mentioned something he had never mentioned before.

He said that there had been a letter from Kevin Thompstone, the CEO of Shannon Development, inaugurating the partnership. I stepped in and asked about this letter and he said in front of my friends that I had already seen it. I insisted that I had not.

I was completely unaware of any letter from anybody in Ireland. At that moment I doubted one existed, I suspected Mr. Marchant was inventing one to get out of a tight spot when pressed for who was at the Irish end of this twinning now that the Minister had bowed out. The truth proved even worse: he had kept the founding letters from me.

I was completely unaware of any letter from Mr. Thompstone to the Mayor, let alone a prior letter from Murphy to Mr. Kevin Thompstone. I never imagined Murphy would have been stupid enough to write such a letter. I was about to find out the following day, over a year later, that not only had Murphy written such a letter¹⁷⁶ but that he had told Thompstone that "the community had expressed particular interest" in twinning with Shannon! Before anybody had even heard of it! The letter was dated March 15th, the day before he announced it at the St. Patrick's Day Parade, March 16th!

I sent Marchant this email¹⁷⁷ the following morning at 9:09 AM.

To me it would have been unthinkable for Mr. Marchant not to have mentioned it to me before, after all we had been through on this and the number of times I had questioned the genesis of this partnership. He had always told me that it was Donal Denham, the Irish Consul General who had initiated it.

Looking back, obviously he was protecting the Mayor (or the Mayor was protecting himself) in view of my continued questions about the appropriateness of his relationship with Shannon Development. I would have used this letter at every meeting from the very beginning to argue against such a "partner" in a Sister City organization when there were so many other wonderful real cities in Ireland who would be delighted to twin with San Diego.

I had always assumed that this "Murphy's folly" as I used to call it, would somehow progress to a twinning with an actual jurisdiction, however small, even Shannon Town¹⁷⁸  itself, which as I mentioned above had a population of 8,561 and had been created by Shannon Development. Discovery of this letter changed everything.

Mr. Marchant knew that I kept every email so he knew he would have to be careful.

He had said to my friends that he had emailed it to me, as he had done with everything else. I had told him at the outset that I required everything to be sent by email. He did not have my mailing address so he could not say he had mailed as I would have asked him to where he had mailed it. So he had to settle for saying that he had handed it to me.

I have a strict policy of receiving all documents either as an email attachment or by fax. I even receive my faxes as email through an e-Fax service. That way I always have a record, which is why I am able to compile this link narrative. I learned this from 28 years in the real estate and mortgage business, and have taught it to many agents I trained in my Century 21 franchised office.

In 28 years I have never been sued, which must be some kind of record in real estate.  Those who attempted to get in my pockets discovered at depositions that their lies would be defeated in court by my records and that having shown documentary proof that their allegations were false, I would sue their attorneys for abuse of process.

He replied with this email. ¹⁷⁹ His statement that "The letter was included in the packet of information I provided everyone that attended the April 25, 2002 meeting at the Imperial House. I also provided it to new people at subsequent meetings" was a  lie. But at least now having admitted its existence he had no choice but to produce the letter.

Which is probably what accounts for the last paragraph of that email. The Mayor was now backing off the Sister City he had just introduced to the City Council as a Sister City (I'm sure there are video tapes of it) as Mr. Marchant went on to say:

"The relationship has not progressed to the status of Sister City yet, nor has it progressed to the point that it is necessary to submit an application for sister city status. The relationship may continue to grow for an indefinite period of time until such time as deemed appropriate to fulfill the requirements for sister city status as outlined in the City Council Policy 0018 and the Sister City International guidelines. At present the San Diego-Shannon Partnership, Inc. is a partnership to promote people to people relations in business, education, culture, and community, with the hope and vision to execute successful programs that will justify the establishment of a sister city program."

Then what was it doing organizing a tax seminar event for Shannon Development under the guise of a Sister City?

At 12:42 PM on March 18, 2003, almost a year after I attended the first organizing meeting, and on the day after Mayor Murphy had presented the San Diego-Shannon Partnership Inc. to San Diego, I received the Mayor's letter to Thompstone¹⁸⁰ and Thompstone's reply. ¹⁸¹ They were attached to this email¹⁸² and I was seeing them on that day for the very first time.

I wrote this email¹⁸³ to Mr. Marchant, protesting as strongly as I knew how and asking many questions. It was unbelievable to me that a public servant would be involved in such persistent lying - for a Mayor!

His response in this email ¹⁸⁴ is very measured and I felt then and still do that he had help. He was shifting potential blame and liability to the "independent self-governing organization" he himself had micro-managed for a year.

He slipped up when referring again to the Mayor/Thompsone letter exchange saying "I can only tell you with certainty what I sent out." We had already established that he could not have "sent it out" by either email or US Mail, nor had he claimed to have done so, he had claimed that he had provided packets of information at the meetings. He either couldn't keep his story straight or somebody else had written his memo to me.

I responded¹⁸⁵ by asking among many other things if the event in the City Chambers the previous day was run by the Mayor or an "independent self-governing organization" called the Shannon Partnership. A full reading of my memo shows I asked many more questions.

I never received a reply. All the questions remain unanswered today.

The Shannon Development Tax Seminar in La Jolla:
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One of our Directors Hugh Constant who organized the event under contract to Shannon Development sent this circular¹⁸⁶ from his Company, San Diego World Trade Center. Attached were the agenda¹⁸⁷ and a flyer¹⁸⁸ for the event.

I attended and noted that it was entirely about using Ireland as a tax shelter. They had flown John Heffernan, Managing Partner, Ernst & Young, Limerick Ireland to San Diego especially for the event. There could no longer be any doubt about what this so-called Sister City was all about.

As a result of the seminar Mr. Hushen was invited¹⁸⁹ to appear Cox TV's "Financial Fix"¹⁹⁰ on April 18th.

I watched the show and understood why the show's host "believed that the activities of the San Diego/Shannon Partnership and Shannon Development will be of interest to his viewers". Tax avoidance is always of interest to people interested in financial matters.

April 10, 2003 Board Meeting:
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We were now meeting at Hugh Constant's place, The San Diego World Trade Center, where all meetings have since taken place.

I brought along some prominent members of the Irish Community: (Delphine Malone, President of the House of Ireland in Balboa Park, Annemarie Sundquist, San Diego's Irish woman of the year for 2003,  Gerry Kirkpatrick, San Diego's Irish man of the year for 2003  and John Hyatt editor of the San Diego edition of the statewide Irish newspaper, The Irish Herald)

All of these had protested strongly about this abuse of the Sister City concept and came to ask for the disbandment of Shannon Partnership Inc.

The only hint in the minutes that any of that took place is Item 10,  where it says "John Hyatt, a representative of the House of Ireland, voiced concerns about the group’s cultural focus and about whether the group is representative of the San Diego Irish-American community."

Attorney Sean Brew emailed¹⁹¹ the minutes¹⁹² on April 11th.

May 8, 2003 Board Meeting:
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Mr. Hushen sent out this invitation¹⁹³ with this Agenda¹⁹⁴ attached. He stated that the Corporation was now a 501C3 and that our dues were tax deductible.

I asked to see the IRS approval. There was none. I declined to pay any dues until I saw the approval of our 501C3 status. I never did see it.

By June 6th I still had not received the minutes of the May 8th meeting so I emailed¹⁹⁵ secretary Sean Brew requesting them. I got no reply.

June 12, 2003 Board Meeting:
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I went to the regular Board Meeting on June 12, 2003 even though I had not received a notice or a copy of the Agenda. I was being frozen out. I picked up this copy¹⁹⁶ of the Agenda at the meeting. I never did receive a copy of the minutes.

I still had not received a copy of the May 8th minutes but I picked up this copy¹⁹⁷ at this meeting.

Item # 8 recorded accurately enough that I had made a motion to create a proper Sister City with "any elected body in Ireland" and that they had all voted "nay" I being the solitary "aye". It even recorded "that such a relationship must be approved by the City of San Diego". Of course it would. That was why I was proposing it and they knew it well. At that time Sister Cities International had not yet obliged with their new "International Partners" program, the "new departure".

Mr. Marchant's remark made it clear that at that point they never intended to seek formal official approval from the City Council. They knew I would object. They wanted the name of Sister City without the responsibility of Sister City.

Under "Approval of Minutes of May 8th 200 Meeting" I complained that the minutes misrepresented me on Item # 11. Everything I had said about Shannon Development was from third party documented sources. I had been very careful to rely on Brian Callanan's book. None of them had taken the time to read it!

I wrote on my copy of the minutes what I had said to them: that they "did not record the real reason for my objection, which is that they (Shannon Development) do not have the capacity to form a (Sister City) partnership with a city".

I asked what it was I had said about Shannon Development that needed further clarification. Everything I said I had put it in writing and was verifiable. (I have linked to it here¹⁹⁸ before).

They were unable to point to a single word that required further evidence, but as usual they did not correct the minutes.

The Lynching:
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The first I hear of it is this email¹⁹⁹ from Mr. Hushen at 4:31 PM on Tuesday July 8th 2003, attaching this Agenda²⁰⁰ and calling a meeting for Thursday July 10th, 2003.

Mr. Hushen may have emailed the "Agenda" but I had no doubt as to where it was written - in the Mayor's Office.

Mr. Marchant believed throughout that he, on behalf of the Mayor, could hire and fire at will. He had "fired" Mr. Mullally from the chair of the Organizing Committee and "appointed" Mr. Hushen at a meeting on August 22, 2002 -  no discussion, no vote. He really had "appointed" the officers as well.

I responded thus.²⁰¹ I asked if the decision had already been taken to remove me. I had not received any notices of meetings or copies of the minutes since May 5, 2003, over two months. I think they were just going to formalize my removal at a quick meeting. They had had enough of my trying to make a regular Sister City out of this thing.

But I was not about to appear at a "trial" without being told what I was being charged with or who my accusers were. I have no doubt that if I had gone to that meeting they would have written whatever they pleased in the minutes to justify their actions. They had said in the convening email: "This meeting will be for Board members only so
please do not invite other-non-members to attend." I was not even being allowed to have a witness present let alone an attorney. They were setting up a kangaroo court.

One hour later Mr. Hushen responded.²⁰²

During the intervening time he had consulted the "us" he referred to and they decided that "The purpose of this meeting is to consider calling a special meeting of the members of the San Diego/Shannon Partnership, Inc. to vote on whether to proceed with removal action."

Apparently I had "confounded" them (he referred to an "us", presumably those he had consulted) by not understanding that his earlier email which simply said "Removal of Pat Flannery as a Director (All)" had really meant "to consider calling a special meeting of the members". Now how did I miss that?

My email had alerted them to the fact that I had a strong case against them unless they told me what I had done wrong and be allowed time to prepare a defense. All they did was put me on notice that they would probably call a Special Membership Meeting rather than a Board Meeting in order to remove me. But they did not tell me a date.

They thought I would just go quietly to save myself embarrassment. But I wasn't about to let them destroy my name and reputation.

They could not have been in any doubt about how seriously I was taking this as even at that early stage I had warned them that "because involuntary removal as a director of a non-profit organization could have very damaging effects on my personal and professional reputation, these proceedings must be fully recorded and be subject to judicial review."

Surely the warning of judicial review should have started warning bells down at the Mayor's Office. Yet Mr. Marchant and Mr. Hushen seemed unfazed. They had enormous faith in the power of the Mayor's Office.

I had been chairman of the San Diego Association of Realtors Grievance Committee and knew a little about these things. I can imagine the liability our Association would have incurred if my Committee had failed to provide a realtor member with a copy of the complaint against him/her well in advance of any hearing let alone deprived him/her of membership without even telling him/her what the charges were. Was the Mayor's Office above all that? Mr. Marchant certainly thought so.

July 10, 2003 Board Meeting:
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The meeting took place without me.

The minutes ²⁰³ were emailed²⁰⁴ by secretary Sean Brew the following Monday July 14th.

I noticed that 5 Directors had voted when only 4 had attended. Delphine Malone and Kathleen Roche Tansley were not Directors. I don't know if 4 was a quorum.

Item 3 said "After discussion and comment regarding Mr. Flannery’s past actions and statements concerning the partnership, the motion passed."

I was never told which "past actions and statements concerning the partnership" so upset them that they voted "to hold a special meeting of the members to vote on whether Pat Flannery shall be removed as a member of the Board of Directors" let alone whether they were true or false. I assume my "statements" were that: Shannon Development is an unsuitable partner. It still is.

On August I wrote directly to Mayor Murphy.²⁰⁵ He responded. ²⁰⁶ I responded ²⁰⁷ again.

I had written to him: "I ask that having appointed all of us on this Board that you now use your influence to ensure that the reasons for my removal as a Director are clearly stated by my Board colleagues for the record and that I am given an opportunity to address whatever it is that has brought this about."

His position was that his "authority in this corporation was limited to his role in appointing the initial Board of Directors". At least he was admitting that he did appoint the initial Board of Directors. On what authority I have yet to find out.

Murphy may still be asked to account for the source of that authority. Mr. Wilson, the Partnership attorney, advised the Partnership that the sole "incorporator", Tim Hushen, was the sole authority on appointing directors. He never did so.

His position remains as advised by his Chief of Staff and the City Attorney's office in that letter, but I put him on notice that it would ultimately come before a judge for judicial review. And it will. He was warned often enough. His office had micro-managed this Partnership and were micro-managing my removal.

If this Partnership ever comes before the full City Council and is made official a judge may be asked to decide what influence the Mayor exercised and what his role was in my removal and what knowledge he has of my" past actions and statements concerning the partnership" that warranted my removal. He should at least have advised them to give me a fair hearing. He didn't. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Hushen felt he drew his authority and protection from the high Office of the Mayor.

August 12, 2003 Special Membership Meeting:
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On August 11, 2003 Mr. Hushen email this invitation²⁰⁸ to a special meeting of the membership for the following day August 12, 2003.

While I had not been given proper notice of the meeting, I had received on July 14th an email copy of the minutes of the July 10th Board Meeting which contained information that a Special Membership Meeting to remove me was scheduled for August 12, 2003.

I was still unable to attend for the same reason I was unable to attend the July 10th Board Meeting: I had not been given details of the complaint against me and was therefore unable to prepare a defense.

I joked to a friend that if they were going to try me in my absence they would have to hang me in my absence. They did.

I was not sent a copy of the minutes or any formal notice that I had been removed from the Board. I did not even receive an email.

I picked up this copy of the minutes²⁰⁹ at the next scheduled meeting on August 14th.

It says "after discussion and comment" Pat Flannery was removed as a member of the Board. I wondered what that "discussion and comment" was. I still don't know.

August 14, 2003 Board Meeting:
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Not having received any communication regarding the Special Meeting to remove me on August 12th. I attended the meeting. They seemed genuinely surprised to see me.

This meeting was to be my last due to intimidation by Frank Devaney, deputy City Attorney and director of the Partnership.

When I tried to raise the issue of my removal under item #3, "approval of the August 12th Special Membership Meeting"  it was clear that I was not going to be allowed to do so. Board Member and Deputy City Attorney Frank Devaney then took over the chair from Mr. Hushen for the rest of the meeting.

From the chair he aggressively asked me "do you know who I am?"

I knew he was a deputy City Attorney and that his wife Leslie was running for City Attorney. I told him yes I knew who he was and asked him if he was threatening me. He became very angry and agitated.

I told him that I had just obtained and read the minutes of the special meeting on August 12th and was until that moment unaware of having been removed from the Board. I wished to question the legality of item # 3 on those minutes which stated "motion was made to remove Pat Flannery from the Board of Directors. After discussion and comment the motion passed. (8 ayes, 0 nays, 1 abstention)." I asked for a transcript of the "discussion and comment" that had taken place in what was an open meeting of a non-profit public-benefit company. He ignored my request, ruling it out of order.

I told him of my letter to Mayor Murphy asking him to use his influence to get me a fair hearing and of the Mayor's Office reply. He seemed familiar with both. He warned me that I was playing way above my league. I asked if he was the attorney in the City Attorney's office who had advised the Mayor. He did not deny it.

I referred to the part of my letter to the Mayor which "threatened" a judicial review of these entire proceedings. He seemed quite acquainted with that part of the letter and warned against threatening the Mayor as it could have very serious repercussions for me personally. I told him I was not threatening the Mayor, merely asking him for a fair hearing. I suggested that perhaps the Mayor was threatening me, through him.

At that point I addressed myself particularly to all three attorneys present: Sean Brew taking the minutes as secretary, Mike Wilson present as the Partnership attorney and Frank Devaney, a deputy City Attorney.

I asked each of them if as knowledgeable, responsible attorneys they could defend the lack of information and notice given to me about the complaint made against me that warranted my removal. I asked each of them if in their opinion I should have been given such information and time to prepare a defense.

They were all silent. Mike Wilson asked if he could speak to my attorney. I replied I did not have one. I asked them if they really wanted to embroil themselves in defending the indefensible when I would inevitably bring a law suit for judicial review in order to clear my name and reputation.

Again Frank Devaney intervened and accused me of threatening them. He was very angry and defensive.

He informed me that I was no longer a member of the Board of Directors and could not comment on the minutes of a Board Meeting. I pointed out that the minutes under discussion were those of a Special Meeting of the Membership held on August 12th and asked if I were still a general member. He said I was not and ordered that I could only speak at what later appeared in the minutes (for the first time) as item #8: "Public comment". I was now a member of the public attending the meeting pursuant to the Brown Act.

I actually didn't speak after that nor was there any such thing as "public comment" but Sean Brew wrote it up as if all this had taken place under a brand new heading in the minutes: "Public Comment".

I observed Mr. Devaney very closely during the rest of the meeting. He seemed very intense. He had a number of private conversations with Mr. Marchant, Mr. Hushen, Mr. Brew and Mr. Wilson during the meeting. He seemed to be advising them on the legalities of the situation. I also noticed that those five men hung around outside, after the meeting, in intense discussions.

I later received this copy of the minutes ²¹⁰ from a friend. I noted that it was headed August 12th in error when in fact it is the minutes of the August 14th meeting.

While it grossly minimized the exchange between Mr. Devaney and I, it did say: "Frank informed Pat that there may be adverse repercussions for such action". Obviously Mr. Devaney's job that night was to "dissuade" me from "pursuing legal remedies".

During the meeting I was handed a copy of this notice²¹¹ by Sean Brew. I asked him why he was handing a letter convening a meeting that was already past.

He claimed to have mailed it to me on July 22, 2003 but I had never received it. I had not been receiving anything from him for a long time. I don't know if he even had my address as I had never received any mail from him. I noticed it was addressed "Dear Member" which suggested that he had just sent it to the other members in order to convene the meeting.

The letter convened the special meeting on August 12, 2003 "the purpose of meeting is to vote on whether Patrick Flannery shall be removed as a Director of the Corporation".

He was covering for the fact that he had not given me proper notice, but it wouldn't have mattered if I had received it or not because it did not contain details of the complaint against me, which was what I really wanted. I wanted time to prepare a defense. One cannot do that if the first one learns of the nature of a complaint is at the meeting or hearing involved. Even F. Lee Bailey would at a disadvantage in such circumstances. I was never told what it was I was being accused of. I still haven't.

The attempt to become "official":
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After a long period of inactivity they have now decided that they will try again to make this official.

What has changed is that Sister Cities International has come up with this.²¹² Like Mayor Murphy they too like the idea of rubbing shoulders with company CEOs rather than elected local officials.

To get over this requirement in their traditional affiliation rules:

"A sister city, county, municipality, oblast, prefecture, province, region, state, territory, town, or village relationship becomes official with a signing ceremony of the top-elected officials of the two jurisdictions, following approval by the local city councils (county commissions or state legislatures), as appropriate"

they have created a new program especially for the San Diego-Shannon Partnership. They have invented a “substantive area” to replace the traditional "jurisdiction". Shannon Region is presumably such a "substantive area".

They now call this their Sister Cities International "International Partners" program:
 

The San Diego-Shannon Partnership started by getting the San Diego City International Affairs Committee to approve²¹³ their application for Sister City status. On January 29, 2005 Mr. Hushen announced that the "City of San Diego International Affairs Board unanimously approved the Partnership's application for Sister City status."

On February 23, 2005 I sent this email²¹⁴ to all the members of the San Diego City Council providing a link to my web site with this information on Shannon Development and the San Diego-Shannon Partership Inc.

David Edick President of San Diego Sister Cities International Inc. responded with this letter²¹⁵ to the members of San Diego City Council. He included this cover letter²¹⁶ from Sister Cities International attaching this letter²¹⁷ from the President of that organization.

Mr. Edick refered to this San Diego Policy document²¹⁸ # 000-18.

On February 24, 2005 Mr. Hushen circulated²¹⁹ this draft Motion²²⁰ to be placed before the City Council. It was followed²²¹ on February 25, 2005 with this amended²²² version, which is the one going before the Council on April 11, 2005. The amended version removed Mr. Kevin Thompstone's name.

My Appeal to the City Council:
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First, my response to David Edick's letter to the City Council:

He said that I had questioned whether Sister Cities International would accept Shannon Development as an "administrative partner" to the City of San Diego.

I had not realized they had invented this new concept until I obtained a copy of his response. I saw it for the first time in Mr. Tim Honey's letter²²³ dated March 7, 2005.

No doubt Mr. Edick wished to give the impression that this new type of affiliation is not new and not specifically designed to facilitate the San Diego-Shannon Partnership Inc.

Mr. Edick also says that he has carried out due diligence with regard to the San Diego City's policies on Sister Cities.²²⁴ He may have done so. However, he does not say that the San Diego-Shannon Partnership complies with existing Council Policy. It does not.

Unlike Sister Cities International, San Diego City does not have an "International Partners" program.

Current San Diego policy requires that: "A similar identifiable civic or official group must exist in the city with which affiliation is proposed, with a clear indication of intent to carry out active mutual programs. The foreign city itself must evidence a desire to affiliate."

Shannon Development or more accurately "Shannon Free Airport Development Company Ltd." is registered with the Irish Companies Registry Office as a private company having only one shareholder, the Irish Government.

A private company, no matter who owns it and no matter what its activities, can never pass itself off as a "civic or official group". The City of San Diego cannot approve this motion without breaching its own written Policy Statement  000-18.

Even if it were to amend its policy, does San Diego really want to be the first City in America to destroy the traditional concept of Sister Cities by turning it over to those who wish to use it as a cover for greed and corruption?

Mayor Murphy has pushed and sponsored this effort from the beginning. If the traditional "elected" rule of Sister Cities is not enforced people like Murphy will be able to partner up with any foreign agency they choose, even a foreign army or intelligence agency.

It has recently come to light that Murphy's "Sister City" partner, Shannon Development, had to reverse a sweetheart land deal²²⁵ it had done with another partnership, MMDS Partnership, to whom it had privately sold a valuable piece of land near Limerick University in the Shannon region, for millions of dollars under its market value.

Because Shannon Development is registered as a private company in Ireland it was not legally obliged to publicly advertise this government-owned land, as a normal government agency would have had to do.

I therefore appeal, even plead, with the San Diego City Council not to approve this project as a Sister City, not to make San Diego part of this "new departure" and not to strip the Sister City concept of its traditional integrity.

Please give us a real traditional people-to-people Irish Sister City. There are so many wonderful Irish cities to choose from.

Pat Flannery - April 2005
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(Opening a can of worms)
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