In a 3-2 vote, National City’s City Council voted to remove Port of San Diego Commissioner Sandy Naranjo from her position at its May 7 meeting.
Naranjo has represented National City on the Port since 2021. In October of 2023, Naranjo was censured by fellow port commissioners.
Naranjo said that she has faced “political hits” from almost the beginning of her non-paid tenure at the Port, first accused in 2021 accused of alleged conflicts of interest with her consulting business, which never did any business with the Port.
“So, this was the first false political attack and I believe it was politically motivated,” she said. “Of course, since the consulting never even happened, I was complete cleared of the accusation.”
Naranjo said in May 2022, the Port issued an Request for Proposal for the Bonnet to Clean Air Engineering — Maritime, an environmental mitigation business owned by former Los Angeles port commission chair Nick Tonsich and relied on Port staff to perform due diligence on CAEM and Tonsich and voted along with commissioners to approve the CAEM project.
After being approached about that decision and finding out that a lawsuit had been filed by Pasha against Tonsich/CAEM for fraud, embezzlement, and using technology that did not work while the Port voted for the CAEM Bonnet System, she asked questions about the lawsuit, and the relationship with the port with Port General Counsel Thomas Russell.
“When Mr. Russel answered my questions to assure me that everything was appropriate, my commissioner colleagues did not indicate that any of this was problematic and especially commissioners who are attorneys became agitated that I asked the questions but made assurances that everything was in order. I stopped asking questions,” she said, adding she then voted with colleagues to renew Russell’s contract and voted for his pay raise. She said at the open session election of officers on Dec. 13, 2022, it became clear to her that there would be “negative consequences” for asking those questions.
Naranjo said she was notified on March 3, 2023, that she was subject to an impartial investigation based on incidents that occurred during the Dec. 13, 2022, session, which eventually led to her censure on Oct. 10, 2023.
Naranjo said she was also attacked when she asked about asking where money was going when the Office of the General Council requested $450,000 for unspecified legal fees, and for her open support of Assembly Bill 2793, introduced by Assembly member David Alvarez, which would bring reforms and accountability to the governance and operations of the Port.
“Now, within a week after this, I am asked to resign on the basis that National City does not have representation, meaning that the Port is refusing to listen to National City because they want to determine who their commissioner is,” she said.
“My job was never representation, it was regulation. But apparently, in the hall of mirrors approach to proper government conduct, questions are false allegation, regulations kill jobs and dreams, legal work can and should involve personal interest and gain, and my departure will fix everything.”
Council member Marcus Bush, one of the dissenting votes, said this was an act of the Port “playing divide and conquer” over National City and that the Port has been doing this for a very long time.
“If you want to remove Sandy, please give a good justification for it, and why at the next time we appoint a port commissioner, how it will be different. Are we going to throw them off when they ask the Port tough questions and they do not like it? We have to vet this,” he said.
Council member Jose Rodriguez said that this was not “personal,” but that the city needed to move forward.
“I think we need to divert our attention and become better advocates for ourselves. Our community desperately needs it…It is unfortunate that our port commissioner has lost trust in her colleagues. As a result, our voice in National City is not being heard,” he said.
Council member Luz Molina, the second dissenting vote, said she heard public comment, all those who supported keeping Naranjo in her position, and noted that city unitedly supported her continuance on the commission saying, “The Port’s long perpetuated standing of disenfranchising National City, and its people” in a letter that the city sent to the Port when it censured Naranjo.
“We publicly supported Commissioner Naranjo,” she said. “Since that time, she has been targeted, both publicly, and in private with micro-aggressions and macro-aggressions that range from the petty to the not so petty. The attacks have been persistent and perpetrated in an organized manner by commissioners from other cities, Port leadership, and others who have expressed their desire to get rid of Commissioner Naranjo.”
Mayor Ron Morrison said the city does not control what the Port does, only what the city does. He said this had nothing to do with Naranjo, but that the city has several major projects coming up, and the request to get this on the agenda has been going on for months as the city tried to work this out.
“Our commissioner is to represent the city of National City. Our representative is not to be a regulator, it is to be a representative. We are in the middle of a great amount of things that have taken us years to get here…We have to have a voice. We have to have someone that the other commissioners will respect enough even when they disagree with them. That has broken down,” he said.
City Council directed staff to start the process of asking for application for a new port commissioner.
