COSTA MESA UNPLUGGED:

In one respect, the clown shoes are on me. I blew it.

A fortnight ago, this column slapped a pair of those big, floppy zapatos on the Costa Mesa City Council. I assumed — bad form for anybody in this business — the council had “voted” to chase the prosecution of Benito Acosta on two misdemeanor violations of municipal code for his ill-advised flame-fanning at the now-infamous Jan. 3, 2006 council meeting.

Days later, City Attorney Kimberly Hall Barlow dropped a note to the Daily Pilot to report — among other the things — that the City Council had nothing to do with the decision to prosecute Acosta.

“The City Council had no say in whether criminal charges were filed against [Acosta],” Barlow wrote.

I was wrong. And to each council member, my apology.

That aside, I’m still of the thought that the Costa Mesa city attorney office’s decision to haul Acosta into court — even after the Orange County District Attorney declined to try him on separate and more serious charges — was a gross mistake. And I wanted to know more.

So I e-mailed Barlow a few questions. Was it Barlow’s decision alone to prosecute Acosta? Who made the decision to retain Jones & Mayer attorney Dan Peelman to represent the people of Costa Mesa? Can — and if it can, will — Costa Mesa appeal Judge MacEachern’s ruling? If MacEachern’s ruling is appealed and overturned, is Acosta eligible for retrial? If he is, will the city pursue a second prosecution?

Barlow declined to answer, save for the second question.

“Part of our proposal for contract city attorney services included that Dan Peelman would be delegated the prosecutorial function that normally rests with the city attorney,” Barlow wrote. “When we met with the council at a study session in October 2004, they were presented with a written transition report again identifying Dan Peelman as the person handling the city prosecutor function.”

This seems to imply that the discretion to pull the prosecution trigger rests with Peelman. Or, that Barlow makes the prosecutorial decisions and Peelman tries the cases.

Either way, the arrangement raises a troubling specter.

Barlow and Peelman are attorneys with Jones & Mayer, the law firm Costa Mesa has contracted to provide city attorney services. That means when the Costa Mesa city attorney’s office (Barlow or Peelman or both) makes decisions to prosecute cases — which seems to be a power exclusive to the office, according to Barlow — it’s triggering the expenditure of taxpayer dollars that, in large part, compensate the law firm that employs Barlow and Peelman.

At the very least, that’s not a perception with a handsome odor.

It’s made worse by the remaining fact that a very high-profile prosecution initiated by the Costa Mesa City Attorney’s Office had its wheels fall off, and the public is out tens of thousands of dollars, many of which are now with Jones & Mayer, as a result. And the wheels came off because either Judge MacEachern blew the call, or the city attorney’s office booted its job at a very basic level.

The citizens of Costa Mesa have a right to know which it is if they’re to have any confidence in its legal representatives going forward.

That can only happen, it seems to me, if Costa Mesa appeals Judge MacEachern’s ruling.

It should do so. And Jones & Mayer should foot the bill.

BYRON DE ARAKAL is a former Costa Mesa parks and recreation commissioner. Readers can reach him at cmunplugged@yahoo.com.