Redondo Beach City attorney Mike Webb retires after five terms

by Garth Meyer

Mike Webb has spent half his life at Redondo Beach City Hall.

The just-retired five-term city attorney, and before that 11-year city prosecutor, started at age 31.

He is now 62. Five of his six children are pursuing law, the sixth is an actor.

A career prosecutor, he spent the first season of “Law and Order” talking back to the T.V.

“It’s a definite life change,” Webb said of leaving City Hall April 1. 

He sought a final term, in part, to defeat the application to build a new power plant at the AES site, and to feel good about where he would be leaving the city’s Enhanced Response to Homelessness. 

Webb started with the City of Redondo Beach on March 1, 1994, working for city attorney Jerry Goddard.

Webb had, and has, never worked in private practice – always a prosecutor.

“We cut crime by more than half, we were the first suburban city to get a judge to issue a gang injunction – against a multi-generational gang in 1996 – we had the most successful fake chop-shop sting in California history…” he said, talking about a 10-month mock-second hand store on Artesia Blvd. and undercover operation in a van that drew 96 arrests, all of the accused convicted of felonies by Goddard’s office. 

The operation had undercover Redondo Beach police officers using decoy luggage at LAX to catch a baggage handler stealing from travelers; also people in car dealerships offering to sell master keys for certain models. 

After Sept. 11, the Redondo city attorney’s office created a local agency to combat terrorism, which the state adopted.

“We did a lot of different, creative things that most cities our size can’t do,” Webb said. 

He was educated at U.C. Law – San Francisco, after playing football at U.C.-Santa Barbara, a cornerback in the defensive backfield.

Goddard was in the Naval Reserve and when he would go on leave, Webb stepped in, gaining experience.

In 2005, he first ran for city attorney upon Goddard’s retirement. 

Elected four more times, Webb named as a career highlight the long-sought shutdown of the AES power plant on Dec. 31, 2023, along with his six years working on the city’s homelessness project. 

Raised in Manhattan Beach, Webb had always known an active power plant in Redondo Beach. 

“I was very happy that (the late) Mayor Brand lived to see it shut down. My marching orders were to oppose it. We had to explore every avenue to show the energy wasn’t needed here.”

His work on behalf of the homeless was unexpected, asked to take it on by Brand.

“It’s not something I even saw myself doing, but one of the most rewarding parts of my career,” Webb  said.

Changes he made as city attorney included adding the quality of life prosecutor (Joy (Ford’s job before being elected to succeed Webb as city attorney) and increased case filings.

“As we saw with D.A. Gascon, it doesn’t matter how many arrests police make if prosecutors don’t (prosecute),” Webb said. “Many in city hall see public safety as just police and fire.” 

As far as the hardest projects he has worked on, Webb cites differences of opinion.

“We have tremendous success when the city council all agrees, but when it is split, it can be hard. When I state the law, I may agree with one councilperson one time, and with another another time, and they see it as playing favorites,” he said. “In two lawsuits related to CenterCal, I had half of the council rooting for me to lose one, and the other half wanting me to lose the other.”

Former Mayor Steve Aspel would call Webb “The last Boy Scout.”

“I think that’s what this job should be,” said Webb.

Is he fully retiring?

“I think it’s more of a career change. To take a couple of months to recharge my batteries. This is a very high-stress position.”

CenterCal – the proposed $400 million public-private revamp of the waterfront – was another source of that stress.

“At the end of the day, I was happy we were able to resolve it (in a way that) both CenterCal and the city were okay with. Overall, it shows the challenges of government planning something on a large scale,” he said.

The matter concluded in 2023 with the city paying $2 million to settle five lawsuits.

“I’m happy that it all ended successfully for the city,” Webb said.

As a Redondo city prosecutor, he created a domestic violence advocate program in 1997. He started his career as a clerk in the district attorney’s office in Orange County, then worked as a deputy city prosecutor in Hawthorne. 

He ran for Congress in 1998 as a Republican.

“It was my Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment,” he said.

On March 21, Webb took down pictures at his office. The day before, at a staff retirement party, they presented him with a U.C. – Santa Barbara football shirt, “Undefeated Since 1992” – when the school disbanded its football program.

What compelled him to remain a prosecutor?

“You were fighting for the good; or fighting for what the mayor and council thought was best for the community,” he said. “A lot of prosecutors leave for defense work, but that was not my calling.”

Webb went to the former Aviation High School for one year before his  family moved to Santa Barbara. He went to law school thinking about corporate law. But in the D.A.’s office in Orange County he was hooked.

Webb and wife Deann’s children range in age from 23-32. 

“They all started in parochial school. As our family grew, that became less of an option,” he said.

For high school, the kids could choose. Half went to a Catholic school in San Pedro, Mary Star of the Sea, and half went to RUHS.

The Redondo Beach city attorney’s office includes three civil lawyers, three prosecutors and the quality of life prosecutor, who works between civil and criminal. The quality of life unit was created four years ago, in coordination with former police chief Keith Kauffman (when he moved money from his budget to allow for it).

Ford, Webb’s successor, has worked for him for more than 10 years.

“Working with Mike has always been amazing. An honor and a privilege,” she said. “I hear a lot of complaints from women and minority lawyers, I’ve had the complete opposite experience. He does everything he can to make sure we get promoted, get raises…”

In his final term, the city attorney’s office became all women but Webb.

“It has turned into that,” he said. “I always hire the best person for the job. It’s just been the people we’ve interviewed.” 

“I hope to emulate Mike’s temperament, his counsel in our office, his leadership, the creative programs, thinking outside the box,” Ford said. “And of course, winning our lawsuits.”

Webb finished moving out of his office Tuesday – a space that has been slated for an update for 20 years, though, since Webb kept getting re-elected, there never was an ideal time.

Until now; the office will be a worksite for four weeks before Ford moves in.

On Tuesday night, Mike Webb drove away from the city attorney’s parking spot for the last time.

“And I was able to sleep in Wednesday,” he said. 

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Response: Webb’s thoughts on 2025 city election 

This winter, during the campaign to succeed Mike Webb as city attorney, candidate Steve Colin asserted that Webb’s office hires too many outside lawyers to work on city cases; that it should all be done in-house.

“We don’t control what lawsuits the city is involved in,” Webb said. “We could cut outside counsel and just not oppose AES building another plant or SB9 (dividing residential lots). We could have the state decide when our elections are. All of which most cities don’t. It shows (Colin) doesn’t know what our caseload is. Most every item that appears on a city council agenda passes through the city attorney’s office. Every lease, every contract.”

Webb noted that the Redondo city attorney’s office lost a litigation paralegal in the mist of the 2008-10 recession, and just got it back in this year’s budget.

“We’ve hired for the position and have already started the process to assign more litigation in-house,” he said. 

Also in the 2025 campaign, for the mayor’s race, Webb endorsed an old adversary, Jim Light, who had been on opposite sides of lawsuits when Light was a resident activist. Light suggested then that city staff were trying to control the city agenda. 

“I think it’s been eye-opening for both of us,” Webb said of the past year in which Light served as appointed mayor after the death of Bill Brand. “He doesn’t just talk about city issues, he works as hard as any elected official I’ve seen in my time here. It’s been a surprising turn of events for everyone. I think a lot of assumptions he had made about city staff turned out not to be true. Or currently true.”

Webb also endorsed Zein Obagi, Jr.’s re-election in District Four. 

Suspended by the State Bar last year for two acts of “moral turpitude” for failure to distribute $515,000 to a former client, Obagi later entered a Deferred Prosecution Agreement on a related matter.

“That doesn’t involve his conduct as a councilmember. My support was based on his exemplary performance as a councilmember,” Webb said.

He pointed to a vote to expand the homeless pallet shelter, during an effort to recall Obagi,Jr., and the councilman voted “yes,”, after some in his district were opposed to the pallet shelter opening there in the first place.

Obagi said at the time that he could always find another job, but someone he met at the pallet shelter could not find another place to live.

“I incredibly admire that showing of political courage to do the right thing,” Webb said. ER

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