Corporate landlords who engage in deceptive or illegal practices. Claim-denying health insurance companies. Industrial firms that supply the Mexican factories, or maquiladoras, that pollute the Tijuana River with toxic waste. Such actors could soon be in the crosshairs of a new legal team one county supervisor wants to create for San Diego County. Plans are underway to make county government the home of one of the nation’s largest local consumer protection units, an outfit that will be tasked with suing corporations for wrongdoing and securing major settlements for county taxpayers. Board of Supervisors Chair Terra Lawson-Remer first teased creating the unit in a speech in April. Her staff has been drafting plans for it since. In a recent interview, Lawson-Remer said she envisions the office acting as a “cop on the beat,” with a focus on the “broad ways in which we’ve got some big companies that are ripping off everyday people.” “This is something we should have done a long time ago,” she said. To fund the office, Lawson-Remer wants to tap a reservoir of roughly $200 million the county has won by signing on to consumer protection lawsuits over the years. Those funds can only be spent in certain ways — but litigation for enforcing civil law is one of them. The county has been spending its payouts from nationwide litigation against pharmaceutical companies over the opioid crisis to help fund substance-use programs and prevention. But when it comes to spending money from other settlements, not much has been done, Lawson-Remer said. “There’s not really been a strategy of, how do we use this money to fight for people in San Diego?” she added. The consumer protection unit she’s proposing would employ 20 people — 10 lawyers, along with investigators, analysts and support staff — and would have an annual budget of about $6 million, though budget details are still being finalized. Lawson-Remer expects to introduce legislation to create the unit this spring. Multimillion-dollar seed money for the unit would be a “huge and wonderful investment” and put San Diego County “up there with the top enforcers in the state,” according to Erin Bernstein, a UC Berkeley law professor and expert in such civil litigation. Other big local units across California include one in San Francisco, which launched in 2006. Oakland, Los Angeles County, Santa Clara County and the city of San Diego have since followed suit. But Bernstein, who helped start Oakland’s unit in 2016 and worked in San Francisco’s, said neither of those began with staffing levels as high as what’s being proposed for San Diego County. “We don’t have an over-enforcement problem in California,” Bernstein said. “It really is the government’s responsibility, in some ways, to be bringing these civil law enforcement and cases and helping the residents.” Serving as a watchdog for corporations is still a relatively new role for local government, other experts said. Lawsuits against tobacco companies in the 1990s were followed by ones against lead paint manufacturers, but from there, what lawyers call affirmative litigation grew more prevalent. “It’s become much more integrated into local governments in the last two decades,” said Jill Habig, a former attorney in San Francisco’s unit and founder of the Public Rights Project, which helps local governments create their own affirmative litigation units. “It’s still a relatively nascent project in the sense that this is not yet kind of seen as a core function of local government,” Habig said. Steps to create a San Diego unit would come as the federal government sharply reduces its own role in consumer protection. This year, the Trump administration has begun to dismantle the 50-year-old Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency that keeps dangerous products out of American homes. The administration has also worked to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, firing staff, closing its office and seeking to end its funding. Created during the Obama administration after the 2008 financial crisis, that agency has slapped banks with fines and sued other major corporations. But Habig said even a robust federal consumer protection agency wouldn’t be able to take on all the small to mid-sized companies that operate at the local level. “A federal agency is never going to have the resources to cover a really problematic landlord that owns three buildings in San Diego,” she added. “But that is hugely important for the neighborhood and the people who live in those buildings.” Like similar units, Lawson-Remer wants the county’s unit ultimately to be self-funding: By winning settlements, she argues, it could not only fund itself but also bring in more revenue for the county over the long term. “If we fund it for five years, within five years they’ll win and bring in more money,” she said. “That’s what’s so exciting about this.” ...read more read less