Super Charged

San Diego — The sister of Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris has filed suit against the San Diego Chargers, alleging that the team fired her "as a result of racial discrimination and harassment," a San Diego Superior Court complaint says. Luana Harris-Scott, the suit recounts, called Chargers general manager Bobby Beathard in February 1996 and was hired to work as a secretary in the Chargers' front office. Between that time and December 31, 1998, the complaint charges, Harris-Scott, wife of KUSI weatherman Dave Scott, was the only black employee in the team's front office. After becoming an assistant to Eric Ashlock, the Chargers' head of "Premium Seating/Sales/Executive Suites," the suit says, Harris-Scott repeatedly asked to be promoted to a job selling skybox suites but was told that the team's chief financial officer and administrator, Jeanne Bonk, might "not allow" her "to be promoted to sales." After subsequently being allowed to do some skybox sales "on the side," the suit says, Harris-Scott discovered that other employees were being promoted into highly paid sales jobs and she was not. At one point, the suit says, Harris-Scott "called her husband Dave Scott at KUSI-TV Channel 9 in San Diego. She told him she was going to resign and tell the San Diego Chargers how she felt about their treatment of her. Mr. Scott persuaded [his wife] not to 'burn any bridges' and make it a friendly resignation." Following her husband's advice, the suit says, Harris-Scott "e-mailed her two weeks' notice" to Bonk and Chargers president Dean Spanos. Then she called the National Football League human resources department in New York. A few days later, the suit charges, Spanos called Harris-Scott into his office and offered her a $6-an-hour sales position. "If she didn't accept it that day, she was then supposed to get her paycheck and told to leave the building immediately." Harris-Scott ultimately accepted the job, according to the complaint, but had to do her work at a desk in the hallway and was told she couldn't accept incoming calls. Despite these handicaps, the suit maintains, she sold a $75,000-a-year stadium skybox to Gateway Computers. But after Harris-Scott submitted a request to work at home or at the Chargers' stadium ticket office "because of the hostile atmosphere and discrimination toward her in the front office," according to the complaint, she was fired on December 28, 1998.

All Politics

San Diego congressman Bob Filner, a Democrat generally reviled by local conservatives, may not be that liberal after all. At least not according to California Peace Action, which bills itself as the state's "largest peace and justice organization." The group rates Filner only a "B" for "Wasteful Military Spending," "Nuclear Weapons," and "Arms Sales/Human Rights"... San Diego Unified School District boardmember Frances O'Neill Zimmerman has turned down an invitation from the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce to seek its education-committee endorsement for reelection. "I had misgivings when I learned the Chamber of Commerce had broken state law by illegally electioneering with its nonprofit funds on behalf of 1997 school board candidates, including myself," says a statement from Zimmerman.

Déjà Vegas

Ex-San Diego city councilman Tom Hom has reportedly been working on a big development in Las Vegas. Back in 1971, Hom was acquitted of all charges during a complicated trial involving the town's C. Arnholt Smith Yellow Cab bribery scandal. The bribes were alleged to have been funneled through Smith's attorney, John A. Donnelly, who was a partner with Cleveland mobster Moe Dalitz in the Desert Inn in Vegas. Six other councilmembers were also indicted along with Mayor Frank Curran, who was also acquitted but lost his reelection bid. Critics said that the case against the council was doomed after the failure of the Nixon justice department to cooperate with local prosecutors. Smith, whose bank collapsed in 1973, was one of Nixon's biggest financial backers. These days the Tom Hom Group seeks to use $4.1 million in state-bond funds to build a 47-unit apartment building on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Gass Avenue, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Contributor: Matt Potter