What we know about the surprise departure of San Diego County’s top attorney

San Diego County supervisors won’t say what led to this week’s abrupt retirement of County Counsel Claudia Silva, just after a new Democratic majority took control of the board.

Supervisors named an acting county counsel on Thursday to replace Silva, who just before her departure had faced an unexpected performance evaluation outside of the normal schedule for how the board typically assesses top officials’ performance.

Silva appeared to be in the good graces of supervisors just at the end of last year, when she got a more than 7% raise that brought her salary to $363,000 per year. That pay hike came less than two months after Silva’s last performance evaluation in October.

Here’s what we know:

What happened?

On Tuesday, new board chair Terra Lawson-Remer called a special closed session of supervisors for the following day to evaluate Silva’s performance as the county’s top attorney.

The snap evaluation was a departure from the usual way supervisors assess the handful of county officials for whom they have direct oversight.

Four officials — county counsel, the clerk of the board, the chief administrative officer and the chief probation officer — typically have performance evaluations once a year. All of those officials except Silva already faced performance evaluations in June.

Silva’s last performance evaluation came in October, just nine months ago.

Whatever happened in Wednesday’s closed session, it was followed by Silva announcing her retirement to staff in an email.

County administration confirmed Silva’s sudden retirement with well wishes for her “next well-earned chapter” and the “opportunities retirement brings.”

A spokesperson for Lawson-Remer deferred questions on Silva’s retirement to county administration, citing personnel matters.

“I enjoyed working with Claudia Silva,” Supervisor Joel Anderson said in a statement. “I thought she was doing a great job, and it’s a loss to my district.”

What happened in the last performance evaluation?

The last time supervisors assessed Silva’s job performance in October, one topic was top of mind: the mounting litigation faced by the county over the deaths of people detained in its jails.

During that meeting, supervisors went into private session, out of view of the public, to get updates from county lawyers on 22 lawsuits against the county, all but two of them involving in-custody deaths.

The agenda for the closed session concluded with a performance evaluation for Silva.

The next day, the county inked a $5 million taxpayer-funded settlement with the mother of Michael Wilson, who died in 2019 in jail after going days without being given the medication he needed to treat his lifelong heart conditions.

Diane Castañeda, a spokesperson for Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, called ongoing litigation against the Sheriff’s Office “an area that will require significant attention and scrutiny by the new county counsel.”

“Supervisor Aguirre is still in the process of receiving briefings on the county’s legal matters, including those involving the Sheriff’s Office,” Castañeda said.

The board’s other three supervisors — Jim Desmond, Lawson-Remer and Monica Montgomery Steppe — did not immediately return a request for comment.

What happens next?

On Thursday, supervisors tapped county official David Smith to temporarily replace Silva and serve as acting county counsel.

A county official for more than two decades, Smith has been acting county counsel before and previously served as chief deputy county counsel.

Since 2022, he has worked in the county technology office, serving as chief information officer.

A recruitment effort for a new county counsel will begin soon, county spokesperson Sarah Sweeney said on Thursday.