Despite Grand Jury finding of malfeasance by Malia Vella and Jim Oddie, no remorse, no apology, demonizing accuser
A county civil Grand Jury this week reported that two Alameda City Council members committed malfeasance by violating city charter prohibitions against meddling in hiring decisions.
Yet to hear Malia Vella’s and Jim Oddie’s responses you’d think they had been exonerated of wrongdoing for their actions during the city’s 2017 recruitment of a new fire chief.
In separate Trumpian statements, they do not acknowledge error nor show contrition. Indeed, Vella doubles down on her claim of innocence, lashing out at the grand jury investigation and falsely claiming the findings show a former city manager’s allegations against her were “baseless.”
This after the Alameda County Grand Jury found “a pattern of conduct by two council members that, taken together, amounted to inappropriate interference in the fire chief hiring process.”
It was a “fiasco that cost the city well over a million dollars, the loss of multiple talented and hard-to-replace senior staff and a government body with a very damaged reputation.”
Adding insult to taxpayer injury, Vella and Oddie are seeking city reimbursement of more than $200,000 for legal bills stemming from the two-year drama they created.
Alamedans’ best hope to right this ship rests with the November 2020 election, when they can get rid of Vella and Oddie if they seek re-election.
This was the third investigation confirming that Oddie tried to sway then-City Manager Jill Keimach to hire the fire union’s preferred candidate for chief and the second to show that Vella did.
The meddling was first reported in this column in October 2017. Subsequent inquiries by a city-commissioned investigator, District Attorney Nancy O’Malley and, now, the Grand Jury have all recounted the same events.
Keimach was trying to conduct an open and rigorous recruitment process to find the best-qualified candidate. The city firefighters’ union was heavily lobbying for its favored pick, Alameda Fire Capt. Dominick Weaver.
According to the police chief, Oddie told him that Keimach’s job was on the line if she didn’t make the right selection — a threat predictably relayed to the city manager. Oddie also wrote a letter of support for Weaver on city stationary.
Then, on Aug. 16, 2017, Oddie and Vella met with Keimach to discuss the hiring. Keimach secretly recorded the meeting — a recording the district attorney and the Grand Jury reviewed for their investigations.
“While the councilmembers were careful not to make any direct threats, their message was clear,” the Grand Jury concluded. “They supported the labor-backed candidate and pressed the city manager on that point.”
Meanwhile, the council was conducting a parallel review of Keimach’s performance. “Rather than using the evaluation process as a tool to communicate expectations, goals and priorities,” the grand jury concluded, “it appeared that the process was being hijacked to accomplish individual councilmembers’ goals of installing their preferred candidate for fire chief.”
The city charter forbids such meddling: “An attempt by a Councilmember to influence the City Manager in the making of any appointment … shall subject such Councilmember to removal from office for malfeasance.”
The city investigator, who didn’t listened to the secret recording, found that Oddie violated the city charter. The Grand Jury did listen, and concluded that both Oddie and Vella committed malfeasance.
As for District Attorney O’Malley, she drew no conclusions of whether Oddie or Vella violated the city charter. That wasn’t in her legal purview.
The question for O’Malley was whether Keimach broke the law by secretly recording the meeting. The answer was no. O’Malley determined that the secret recording was permitted under a state law because Keimach believed she might be extorted or bribed.
After all, as the Grand Jury reaffirmed, Oddie had already warned that her job was on the line if she didn’t make the right fire chief pick.
The report describes how two council members bent the rules to support a politically powerful fire union’s candidate. But Vella and Oddie offer no apology.
Instead, they separately tout that the grand jury declined to take action against either of them. Oddie said he was “happy that the Jury determined that no further Accusation proceedings are warranted.”
Neither council member mentioned why the Grand Jury didn’t act: While it found that they violated the city charter, it noted that the charter contains no enforcement mechanism.
The Grand Jury also had separate power to file an “accusation” against the council members, which would trigger a jury trial on whether to remove them from office for “willful or corrupt misconduct.” But the Grand Jury determined that the council members’ actions did not warrant overturning the will of the voters.
While the Grand Jury didn’t punish Oddie and Vella, its report was no exoneration. The two council members had violated city charter protections designed to “prevent cronyism and political favoritism by giving the responsibility of hiring and firing to a nonpolitical city manager.”
Vella’s four-year term expires in 2020. As for Oddie, he lost his re-election bid in 2018. But, because he was the election runner-up, finishing third in a race for two seats, he automatically, under the city charter, filled the remaining two years of Councilwoman Marilyn Ashcraft’s term after she was elected mayor.
It’s time to ensure Alameda leaders represent the island’s residents, not the powerful fire union. That requires electing council members who abide by the rules.
June 28, 2019
The Mercury News
Opinion by Daniel Borenstein
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