SLO County’s top lawyer Rita Neal will retire after 26 years. ‘It’s been a great career’
San Luis Obispo County counsel Rita Neal will retire in March after nearly three decades working with the county’s legal team.
Of the 35 years she’s spent practicing law, 26 of them have been with the county.
“This is the best way to practice law, at a county counsel’s office,” Neal, 59, told The Tribune ahead of her retirement. “I found it kind of my calling, if you will. Public service is the most amazing job you can do.”
As the county’s chief legal adviser, Neal had a hand in most every department and agency directly connected to SLO County, responsible for presenting up-to-date legal summaries and advice to all county departments, commissions and boards, including the Board of Supervisors, the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments and Regional Transportation Agency, the county said in a news release.
“It’s so varied,” Neal said of her work at the county. “There are so many issues that the county deals with that it just opened up this whole window for me of a different type of law that I just really enjoyed.” She had previously worked in private practice.
Neal’s most consequential role at the county, in her eyes, was guiding the board through legal crises and complex, high-profile matters, such as redistricting.
In 2023, the county was sued over the district map they had adopted in 2021 on the grounds that it unfairly favored Republican voters. The map was subsequently overturned by the board as a result of the lawsuit settlement.
“We count on her in so many ways in everything we do,” Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg said in a county news release Monday. “What can one say about a public servant who has given so much during her career, other than a heartfelt ‘thank you.’ The Board has the deepest respect and gratitude for Rita and her years of service to the county.”
Supervisor Bruce Gibson worked with Neal for much of her career at the county.
“Rita is an exceptional person and attorney, and it’s been a great pleasure to know and work with her for more than 25 years,” Gibson said in the release. “During my time in office, she helped guide the county through extremely difficult events, always with her calm good nature and solid legal advice. Her strength, composure and commitment to public service are extraordinary — I, along with our organization and communities, will miss her greatly and wish her the best in her next phase.”
In retirement, Neal plans to spend more quality time with her mother and her significant other, and doing the things she loves like hiking, running and gardening. She also wants to travel and volunteer for local charities.
“I want to be healthy in retirement, and I want to go out on a high note, and I feel like now is a great time to hand it over to someone else,” Neal said.
Neal will go into closed session with the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 4 to consider how they will choose her successor for the next four-year term.
The board has the option to either appoint someone internally from the county counsel’s office or go through the state recruitment process. While the former would only take a few weeks, even an expedited statewide recruitment process could take months. In that scenario, the board would appoint an interim counsel from Neal’s office while they process applications and conduct interviews.
Her last day at the county will be March 14.
“It’s been a great career,” Neal said.
California native came to SLO to attend Cal Poly
Now a Shell Beach resident, Neal was born and raised in California, having grown up in the small town of Sonora in Tuolumne County.
She first came to San Luis Obispo in the mid-1980s to attend Cal Poly. She majored in home economics and planned to move back home and become a teacher, though it was not her true calling.
“Growing up, that’s what I thought was expected of me,” Neal said.
While in college and at her older brother’s suggestion, Neal took an internship at the District Attorney’s Office in the consumer fraud division, now the Special Prosecutions Unit, and quickly discovered her love of law.
She graduated from Cal Poly in 1987 and went directly into law school at Santa Clara University, spending her summers clerking at a branch of a private law firm in San Luis Obispo that dealt in insurance defense, then called Hoye, Fenton, Jones and Appel.
Neal started at the firm as an associate right out of law school in 1990, litigating civil defense cases for eight years.
In 1998, she joined San Luis Obispo County first as deputy county counsel, then advanced up to chief deputy in 2009. Within six months, Neal was promoted again to assistant county counsel, which she served as for four years. In 2012, the Board of Supervisors appointed her to head of the department as county counsel.
“It’s really been an absolute honor to serve the Board of Supervisors,” Neal said. “I took that responsibility very seriously and I just have been honored to work with some really smart, committed, devoted people. That’s what I’ll miss the most.”
This story was originally published January 27, 2025 at 12:59 PM.
