Nathan Fletcher’s resignation leaves an even 50-50 divide on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, NBC 7’s Priya Sridhar reports.
The now-disgraced San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who announced last week that he had stepped down as chair of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System and planned on resigning from the county board in mid-May, will have to make do without a very expensive security detail and a very healthy paycheck.
To date, two women, one who worked with Fletcher at the MTS and a second, who interned at a nonprofit he founded, have alleged that Fletcher improperly touched them. Grecia Figueroa, a former public relations representative who worked at the MTS, has alleged in a suit that Fletcher sexually assaulted her twice. Fletcher stated last week that what occurred with Figueroa were "consensual interactions'; he has denied anything improper occurred involving the intern, who was 19 years old in 2015 when, she alleged, he called her "hot" and ran his hand over her buttocks.
As a county supervisor, Fletcher was making an annual salary of $208,056.60. Extrapolating from March 29, the day he announced he would be stepping down, to May 15, the last day of his self-imposed medical leave for the treatment of alcohol abuse and trauma, Fletcher could be paid as much as $26,791 for those 47 days he was not governing.
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
Fletcher was also compensated for his role as chair of the MTS. Per county guidelines, Fletcher was paid $1,500 per month for chairing the meetings and making public appearances — $18,000 per year.
Meanwhile, over at UC San Diego, where Fletcher is "not currently teaching," according to the school, but where he is still listed as a professor of practice in political science, he was paid $38,453 as recently as 2021.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars Fletcher will have to do without, though, seems paltry in comparison to costs the county paid for the soon-to-be former supervisor's security detail, whose efforts to protect him Fletcher seemed to attempt to circumvent, if texts between the two that are included in Figueroa's suit are to be believed.
Local
"Several days later, at 11:22 p.m. on Dec. 5, 2022, Fletcher sent messages to Ms. Figueroa requesting that she drive to his house that evening for another intimate encounter," the suit alleges on Page 16 of the complaint.
Screen grabs show Fletcher and Figueroa having the following exchange:
Nathan Fletcher: I could ditch security guys to go for late night walk but couldn't be gone long
Grecia Figueroa: Late night walk? Where ??
NF: Or we could try and plan another night I'm alone but not such short notice
GF: Nahhh… let's plan that better another time
NF: But you could drive close to my house and we could sit in car a little bit ;)
San Diego County spent $187,728.24 in an effort to protect Fletcher in December 2022.
Earlier that year, on May 12, according to the suit, Fletcher was successful in persuading Figueroa to come to a hotel he was staying at while his home was being repaired after that an arson incident.
"He convinced Ms. Figueroa to visit him but asked that she come after 10 p.m. because that’s when his security guards
would be off-duty," the suit alleges
San Diego County spent $159,096.88 in an effort to protect Fletcher in May 2022.
The bill for Fletcher's security detail ballooned in January 2022, when the arsonist sparked a blaze at the City Heights home Fletcher shares with his children and his wife, Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher, once a member of the state's Assembly and currently a leader of the California Labor Federation. That crime was never solved.
For example, in November 2021, San Diego County paid $38,815.69 to Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations for his security detail. Soon, though, those costs soared near or into six figures every month, with a cumulative cost from late September 2021 to the end of February 2023 reaching a total of $1,926,919.27.
County supervisors have the option to name a replacement to fill out Fletchers' term as District 4 supervisor, which ends in 2027, a possibility some consider unlikely considering that the board will be comprised of two Democrats and a pair of Republicans. If the board decides to go through an appointment process, interested candidates would have to submit an application with two 500-word essays on their qualifications and why they want the job, then, give an oral presentation at two public hearings before the supervisors vote.
In the event they cannot choose a successor, a special election, likely to cost millions of dollars, would have to be held. Chair Nora Vargas has said the board would take up the topic at its next regularly scheduled public meeting, on May 2.
With reporting by NBC 7's Priya Sridhar — Ed.
