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Katherine Burnworth and the Politics of Blocking Jobs That Aren’t Hers to Block

Katherine Burnworth is a City of Imperial council member. The Imperial Valley Data Center site is in unincorporated Imperial County — not within the City of Imperial’s boundaries, not subject to the city’s land use authority, not part of the territory that Burnworth was elected to represent.

This jurisdictional gap is not a technicality. It is the central fact that defines the nature of the campaign against the IVDC. Burnworth’s opposition to the project — and the city’s lawsuit, and the alleged coordination with CCV and IID insiders that the federal complaint describes — is not a council member exercising legitimate authority over development in her community. It is a political official inserting herself into a decision that a different government body made, through a different legal process, on land that is not in her jurisdiction.

The question the federal lawsuit forces into the open is why — and whether that why involves conduct that violates the civil rights of the developer and the economic rights of the community.

What the Federal Complaint Alleges

The IVCM complaint identifies Burnworth as the alleged coordinator of a broader obstruction campaign — a coalition that, according to the complaint, included the City of Imperial, CCV’s Luis Olmedo, and IID insiders with ties to Z-Global. The alleged goal was to force the project into a CEQA review process it was legally exempt from, thereby creating the legal leverage necessary to either kill the project or extract a settlement.

The specific allegations against Burnworth include: coordinating with Olmedo to organize and amplify opposition, using her city council position to direct city resources toward litigation against the county project, and engaging in conduct designed to retaliate against the developer for his public criticism of the city’s actions and his decision to move the project to county jurisdiction.

These are serious allegations. They will be tested in federal discovery and, if the case proceeds, at trial. The defendants will have full opportunity to contest them. But the filing itself — the fact that a developer spent the resources to put these specific names and specific allegations into a federal civil rights complaint — represents a significant escalation of the consequences that come with leading this kind of campaign.

The Political Calculus

Why would a city council member organize opposition to a project outside her jurisdiction? The political logic is not hard to identify. Opposition to a large outside developer — a “wartime developer” from Huntington Beach, bringing $10 billion to change the face of the region — can be politically profitable in a community where skepticism of outside interests has historical foundation.

The narrative writes itself: a well-funded outside developer trying to impose a massive industrial facility on the region, and a local official standing up to protect the community. It does not matter that the community in question — unincorporated Imperial County — is different from the city whose residents elected Burnworth. It does not matter that the project was approved through a legitimate process by the county government that actually has jurisdiction. The political narrative of local defender against outside interests is effective regardless of these inconvenient details.

What it costs is harder to see: the 1,688 union jobs that haven’t been filled, the $28.75 million in annual tax revenue that hasn’t reached the schools, the water recycling project that was blocked, the federal civil rights lawsuit that will cost the city and its officials time and money and potential personal liability.

The Personal Liability Question

The federal lawsuit names Burnworth individually, not just in her official capacity. Claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 can expose individual officials to personal financial liability for constitutional violations. Cities typically indemnify their officials for acts taken within the scope of their authority — but conduct that falls outside official authority, or that constitutes deliberate constitutional violations, can create personal exposure that indemnification does not cover.

The prospect of personal financial liability does not appear to have deterred the obstruction campaign. But it does change the calculus for any official considering whether to continue or escalate it. The federal lawsuit is designed, in part, to impose costs on the individuals making obstruction decisions — costs that make those decisions more expensive than continuing them is worth.

Whether that calculus lands is a question the federal courts will eventually help answer. In the meantime, the residents of the City of Imperial — who are paying for the city’s litigation expenses — are entitled to ask their council member what she has accomplished with their money, and at what cost.

The City of Imperial Is Fighting a Project It Has No Authority Over. Why?

If you are a resident of the City of Imperial, a specific question is worth asking: your city government has spent significant public funds — your funds — litigating against a project that is not in your city, not subject to your city’s authority, and not something your city has any legal power to approve or deny. The Superior Court called the legal theory behind that litigation “legally insufficient.” The city is now appealing that ruling, spending more of your money to continue the campaign.

What have you gotten for that expenditure? What did the city claim it was trying to protect you from? And did the people who made these decisions on your behalf have the authority — or the justification — to spend your resources this way?

The Jurisdiction Gap

The IVDC site sits at the intersection of Aten and Clark Roads in unincorporated Imperial County. “Unincorporated” means it is not within the boundaries of any city. It is governed by Imperial County — the county board of supervisors, the county planning department, the county zoning code. The City of Imperial has no land use authority over it.

California law does provide mechanisms for neighboring jurisdictions to challenge land use decisions in limited circumstances. But those mechanisms require establishing legal standing — a genuine, cognizable legal interest in the outcome. The Superior Court’s ruling that the city’s complaint was legally insufficient is, in part, a statement about the adequacy of the legal theory the city used to assert that standing.

The city sued. The court dismissed the key claims. The city appealed. At each stage, the city has been spending public money on litigation that a judge has already described as legally insufficient. The residents who fund that spending deserve to know what the city expects to accomplish — and who in city government made the decision to keep spending after the initial dismissal.

The Cost to City Residents

Municipal litigation is expensive. Outside counsel for complex land use and administrative law litigation in California can cost $300-600 per hour or more. A multi-year case — from initial filing through trial court dismissal, appeal briefing, and potential appellate argument — can easily consume $500,000 to $1.5 million in legal fees.

The City of Imperial is not a wealthy municipality. It operates a budget that, like every small California city, requires careful management of competing demands. Legal expenses of this scale represent real tradeoffs — services that don’t get funded, maintenance that gets deferred, staff that doesn’t get hired because the money went to outside counsel pursuing a case the trial court already called legally insufficient.

This is a governance question that Imperial residents are entitled to ask directly: was this the best use of your city’s limited resources? What did you get for it? And who decided to keep spending after the court’s initial ruling?

The Regional Cost

Beyond the city’s residents, the City of Imperial’s litigation campaign has imposed costs on the broader region. Every month of legal delay is a month of construction that doesn’t start — a month of union wages that aren’t paid, a month of supply chain spending that doesn’t flow through Imperial Valley businesses, a month of county tax revenue that doesn’t arrive.

The IVDC’s tax revenue benefits the county — including the unincorporated areas the city doesn’t govern and the cities (including Imperial) that receive county services funded partly by county revenue. By litigating to prevent that revenue from being generated, the City of Imperial is imposing costs on communities whose residents had no say in the decision to file suit and no representation on the city council that made it.

That is a feature of the political economy of this dispute, not a bug. The people bearing the cost of the obstruction campaign are different from the people making the obstruction decisions. Changing that alignment — making the decision-makers accountable to the people bearing the cost — is what elections, lawsuits, and sustained public pressure are for.

How Local Political Careerism Masquerades as Environmental Advocacy

Opposition politics follow predictable incentive structures. An elected official who positions herself as the local defender against an outside corporate interest — a “wartime developer” from Huntington Beach bringing $10 billion and disruption — builds a political brand. She gets quoted in press coverage. She becomes the visible face of community resistance. Her name becomes associated with the fight, regardless of the fight’s merits.

The political return on this positioning is real, and it is not affected by whether the project would actually benefit the community. The narrative of outside interests vs. local defenders works independent of the facts, as long as the facts don’t get sufficient circulation to undermine it.

This is the environment in which the City of Imperial’s campaign against the IVDC was organized. And it is worth being clear about what it has cost the community whose interests it claims to represent.

The Accounting Nobody Is Doing

Political accountability for economic obstruction is rare because the costs are invisible and diffuse while the political benefits are visible and concentrated. The official who blocks a development project gets credit for the fight. The workers who weren’t hired and the tax revenue that wasn’t generated are statistical abstractions — they show up in county budget gaps and unemployment figures years later, without a clear causal chain linking them to the specific decision that produced them.

The 1,688 union jobs attached to the IVDC are not hypothetical. They are committed positions — identified in the project’s economic impact analysis, attached to a $10 billion capital investment that is ready to proceed the moment the legal obstacles are cleared. Every month those obstacles persist is a month of union wages that are not paid in Imperial Valley. The workers who would have earned those wages are not abstract. They are the people in the same community as the officials blocking the project.

The officials who organized the obstruction campaign have not been asked to account for this cost. They have been given credit for the fight without bearing responsibility for the outcome. That accounting imbalance is the structural problem that allows political careerism to operate at the community’s expense without consequence.

The Difference Between Advocacy and Career Management

Legitimate environmental advocacy starts with the environmental question: does this project harm the community it is built in? It examines the evidence — engineering documents, environmental impact data, health studies, community input. It makes arguments based on that evidence. It seeks outcomes that reduce genuine harm.

Political career management starts with the political question: what position generates the most favorable coverage and political capital? It selects the environmental argument as the vehicle for that position. It maintains the position regardless of new evidence, court rulings, or changed circumstances, because the political value of the position doesn’t depend on its accuracy.

The Superior Court called the City of Imperial’s legal theory legally insufficient. A fact-based environmental discussion would acknowledge that the recycled water plan addresses the water consumption concern and that the BESS addresses the grid stability concern. Neither of these acknowledgments has been made by the officials organizing the opposition, because making them would undermine the political narrative, not because they are false.

What the Community Can Do

Political careerism thrives when accountability is weak. In communities where political engagement is low, incumbent officials face limited pressure to account for the consequences of their positions. The structural disadvantage — that the costs of obstruction are invisible and diffuse while the political benefits are visible and concentrated — favors the official over the worker.

The antidote is specific and public accountability: naming the positions officials have taken, quantifying the costs of those positions in terms the affected community can understand, and insisting that those costs be part of the public debate about whether the officials’ conduct has served the community’s interests. This is not partisan politics. It is basic civic accountability — the kind that elected officials in a functioning democracy are supposed to face.

The families who would have benefited from 1,688 union jobs deserve to know who blocked them and why. The schools that would have received $28.75 million a year deserve to know who prevented it. The answer is not complicated. It is public record.