Civil grand jury said actions cost city more than $1 million, violated charter
ALAMEDA — The City Council has agreed with a grand jury that two of its members’ interference in the hiring of a fire chief violated the city charter and was a fiasco that cost the city more than $1 million, yet stopped short of calling for their resignation.
Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft described the 2017 meddling into the chief’s hiring — which prompted an independent city investigation and led to former City Manager Jill Keimach’s departure — a “regrettable chapter in the city’s history.”
Along with Keimach, four other top officials left city employment within about a year after what the grand jury called the pandemonium surrounding the fire chief’s hiring.
Among them were Janet Kern, the city attorney, and Jennifer Ott, an assistant city manager. A consultant brought in by the city to help with Keimach’s performance review also quit before completing the work, the grand jury noted.
“The cost to the city was not just financial,” Ashcraft said Tuesday, when the council drafted its response to the report from the Alameda County civil grand jury. “Public trust in government was diminished, and our city’s reputation has been tarnished.”
The report determined that council members Jim Oddie and Malia Vella used their political influence to put pressure on Keimach to try to get her to hire a union-backed candidate as fire chief.
Alameda’s charter says the city manager makes hiring decisions, not the council.
Council interference is prohibited and can be grounds for the grand jury to file an “accusation,” a legal charge that would start the process to remove an elected official from office for malfeasance.
The grand jury, however, decided it would not take that step because of the high threshold needed to effectively usurp the will of voters.
Vice Mayor John Knox White said at the meeting, “There needs to be some acknowledgment” from Oddie and Vellie about their interactions with Keimach.
“We had the opportunity to have the grand jury look at this,” Knox White said. “They looked at this and they did not recommend for either council member that they be removed. To me, that suggests that there is a spectrum that influence and interference happens, and they did not feel that the spectrum was crossed to the extent that anybody could go to the DA and be successful (in securing removal).”
He said the council’s response to the report was now “the end of the process.”
But Councilman Tony Daysog said he believes the public wants more information about what happened, such as the release of an audiotape that Keimach secretly recorded to document Oddie and Vella interfering with her selection of a new chief.
“I think there’s a scab that has not healed yet,” Daysog said.
The council does not have the option of removing a member under the Alameda city charter, City Attorney Yibin Shen said at the meeting.
A council member can be removed, however, after a felony conviction, through a recall at the ballot box or if the grand jury recommends it. Shen noted the grand jury did not recommend Oddie and Vella be removed.
Several speakers at Tuesday’s meeting called for Oddie and Vella’s resignation.
“The proposition that the offending members did not know that this was a violation of the law and also a violation of common sense and honor is truly unbelievable,” former Alameda police Chief Burny Matthews told the council.
Matthews called it “simply laughable.”
About 20 public speakers showed up at City Hall for Tuesday’s meeting, including some supporters of Oddie and Vella, who both recused themselves from the discussion.
Resident Bunny Duncan praised the two council members for their efforts on behalf of tenants amid the Bay Area’s high rents.
“They fought for us,” Duncan said. “They backed us up. As far as I am concerned, if you get rid of them, you are getting rid of the two people who are really good on the council.”
Vella and Oddie reportedly wanted Keimach to pick Domenick Weaver — the candidate favored by the firefighters union — as head of the $33 million fire department. Instead, Keimach tapped Edmond Rodriguez, then chief of the Salinas Fire Department, saying he was more qualified.
“I join the city in thanking the members of the grand jury for their deliberation and service and embrace several of its key findings and city responses, particularly the benefit of additional training for council members and the need to update and clarify the city’s outdated charter,” Oddie said after Tuesday’s meeting via email. “We all look forward to putting this behind us and continuing to focus on the important work of serving Alamedans with the leadership and services they expect and deserve.”
Vella did not immediately return a request for comment.
In the letter that the council approved sending to Alameda County Superior Court Judge Wynne Carvill, the grand jury’s presiding judge, it agreed that lack of training for new council members contributed to the inappropriate interference in hiring a fire chief, and that the charter does not provide enforcement mechanisms for when officials violate its provisions, which the jury said creates “uncertainty when such violations occur.”
Daysog and Know White are serving on a council subcommittee working on drafting recommendations on revising the charter. They have hosted public workshops at Mastick Senior Center and the Alameda Free Library.
As part of reviewing the grand jury report, the council accepted that Oddie and Vella helped edit the independent investigator’s report about their actions during a closed-door council session, but noted that ultimately the edited and full versions of the report were both released to the public.
The council’s responses to the jury’s recommendations include agreeing to annual training for elected officials and senior city staff on ethics and governance, and creating a handbook that will lay out a code of conduct for council members.
The grand jury said the attempt to influence the hiring of the fire chief cost the city more than $1 million in legal and other costs, including a $945,000 separation agreement with Keimach in May 2018.
The city is required to respond to the grand jury’s findings and recommendations within 90 days of receiving the report.
July 19, 2019
East Bay Times
By Peter Hegarty
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