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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.

By-Right Zoning and Why the IVDC Was Never the City of Imperial’s Call to Make

The first and most fundamental fact about the City of Imperial’s lawsuit against the IVDC is geographic: the project site is in unincorporated Imperial County. Not within the City of Imperial’s boundaries. Not subject to the City of Imperial’s zoning code. Not in the City of Imperial’s jurisdiction for land use decisions.

The city filed suit anyway — to block a project that its own land use authority does not extend to, on the theory that Imperial County had approved it incorrectly. The Superior Court’s February 10, 2026 ruling that the complaint was “legally insufficient” is, in part, a court’s answer to a jurisdiction that overreached.

What I-2 Zoning Actually Means

The IVDC site is zoned I-2 Heavy Industrial by Imperial County. This designation has a specific legal meaning: the zoning code identifies the uses that are permitted on I-2 land, and industrial uses conforming to those designations are allowed by right. “By right” means exactly what it sounds like — the owner of I-2 zoned land has a legal right to develop it for permitted uses without seeking discretionary approval from a planning board, a city council, or any other body with the authority to approve or deny the project based on policy preferences.

The by-right system exists to create investment certainty. A developer who buys I-2 land knowing it is zoned for heavy industrial use is entitled to build a heavy industrial facility. If that entitlement can be defeated by a neighboring jurisdiction filing a lawsuit claiming the project should have required a CUP, the entire by-right framework is illusory.

The Permit Streamlining Act reinforces this. California law requires ministerial approval of projects that conform to applicable development standards within specified time limits. The IVDC’s site plan was submitted. The county reviewed it against I-2 standards. It conformed. Approval was ministerially required.

The CUP Theory and Why It Failed

The city’s legal theory was that a project of the IVDC’s scale — 950,000 square feet, 330 megawatts, 1,688 construction workers — was too large to be processed as a by-right ministerial approval, and that its impacts required the discretionary review that a Conditional Use Permit process provides.

The court rejected this theory as legally insufficient. The reason is fundamental to how zoning law works: the size and complexity of a project that conforms to applicable zoning standards does not transform a by-right approval into a discretionary one. If I-2 zoning allows heavy industrial uses, a large heavy industrial project is permitted. The code does not have a size exception that converts conforming uses into discretionary ones when opponents find them inconvenient.

If the county’s I-2 standards need to be revised to address impacts from very large industrial users, the appropriate mechanism is a legislative update to the zoning code — a transparent public process in which the community sets the rules prospectively. What is not appropriate is using litigation to retroactively impose discretionary review requirements on a project that was approved under the rules as they existed.

The Jurisdictional Question

Setting aside the legal merits, there is a governance question that the City of Imperial’s lawsuit raises: what gives a city the standing to challenge a county’s approval of a project in unincorporated county land?

California law provides avenues for challenging land use decisions, and neighboring jurisdictions can sometimes establish the standing necessary to pursue those challenges. But standing is not unlimited. A city that claims standing to block development on county land — based on claimed impacts that the court has found legally insufficient to support a CUP requirement — is asserting a very broad version of municipal authority over regional land use decisions.

The implications extend well beyond this project. If any city can block development on unincorporated county land by filing a facially insufficient lawsuit and running out the clock on the developer’s financing, no county approval is ever secure. The investment certainty that I-2 zoning is supposed to provide becomes conditional on whatever neighboring cities choose not to challenge.

The February 10 ruling said, clearly, that the city’s challenge was legally insufficient. The rule of law requires treating that finding as what it is: the end of a legal theory that shouldn’t have been pursued in the first place.