On Jan. 11, Chula Vista resident Delia Dominguez Cervantes filed an ethics complaint against Chula Vista Council member Jill Galvez.
On May 12, at the Board of Ethics meeting, where Galvez and Cervantes were allowed to personally testify, the BOE dismissed the complaint.
“All Board of Ethics members present voted to dismiss the complaint based on a finding that probable cause does not exist,” stated Chula Vista Deputy City Attorney Megan McClurg in an email.
At the time of publication, the audio of the May 12 meeting was not available on the City’s website.
Cervantes stated that on Jan. 6, Galvez misused city resources for personal gain fostering mistrust in city government. On Jan 8, Galvez sent another newsletter that also included links to her mayoral candidate page.
Both newsletters came from Galvez’s official city email jmgalvez@chulavistaca.gov, according to the complaint.
Galvez denied the complaint, calling it “politically motivated” and stated that she has done everything “by the book” in a previous interview.
At the April 20 BOE prima facie meeting, Galvez submitted evidence to counter the complaint. After going through the materials, the committee asked for IT to provide the original newsletters in question and what servers were used in sending them.
“On January 8th, I sent a mass email to a database of proprietary voter email addresses managed by Political Data Inc. I paid for the mailing with my campaign account. There was a campaign disclosure of “Jill Galvez for Mayor 2022 FPPC ID 1440411” on the bottom of the email. The return address was Jill@JillGalvez.com, not the city’s server. None of my city council emails were imported into the proprietary PDI database of voters in Chula Vista, or vice versa,” she stated in her April 20 rebuttal.
