Serving on two boards would be problematic for Briscoe

John Briscoe is running for office, but he already holds one. The Ocean View School District Trustee wants to sit on another school board at the same time.

Briscoe, 55, has two years left in his term. But he has filed for candidacy in the Huntington Beach Union High School District as well, and he said he plans to hold both offices at once.

Briscoe said the Orange County Registrar of Voters was first skeptical, but then told him he could run—though they didn’t make any guarantees about what happens if he wins.

“I said, ‘Great, I can do both,’” he said. “I have the capacity, the time and the board experience to serve both districts together.”

One problem for Briscoe: it’s unclear whether he’ll be allowed to serve. A state attorney general’s opinion from 1996 specifically states it’s against the law to hold office in a high school and its feeder middle school district at the same time, due to a “clash of loyalties.”

There’s long precedent respecting the California attorney general’s opinions on which offices would conflict, said Mark Bresee, legal counsel at the Orange County Board of Education.

“Those opinions are given great weight,” Bresee said.

But prior to 1996, there were a few trustees who served in two districts. Former Huntington Beach Mayor Ralph Bauer held the same two seats Briscoe wants from 1968 to 1976.

Briscoe said he intends to stick it out, leaving it up to the districts to try to exclude him from either seat.

“It would have to be up to one or the other of those boards to have the temerity to say I can’t serve when Ralph Bauer did the same thing,” he said.

If Briscoe won, a citizen in the district could ask the attorney general for the right to sue, Bresee said.

“They would be asking ... to file a lawsuit to have that individual removed from the first office they held,” Bresee said. “Legal doctrine says that when you hold two incompatible offices, when you take the second office it acts as a forfeiture of the first.”

Briscoe will be running against three other candidates for two seats on the board: incumbent trustees Susan Henry and Michael Simons, as well as Cal State Long Beach professor Angelo Segalla.

Other Ocean View School Board trustees have been in conflict with Briscoe. Trustees formed a subcommittee in March to see if statements by Briscoe put them in legal jeopardy. In May, he unsuccessfully attempted to censure the board president.

Briscoe’s activities haven’t been confined to Ocean View School District; he has petitioned both Fountain Valley School District and Westminster School District to put up the motto “In God We Trust” in their board chambers.

Briscoe said his candidacy was also about attracting students back to public schools, coordinating elementary and secondary education, and boosting vocational programs.

“ ‘In God We Trust’ is just a small snippet of things,” he said.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at [email protected].