Alameda will not reimburse elected officials who knowingly violate city charter
ALAMEDA — As part of the fallout from a scandal that got two City Council members in hot water for allegedly trying to influence the hiring of a fire chief, Alameda will prohibit council members or city employees from being reimbursed for legal costs if they violate the city charter.
The new policy stems from an Alameda County Civil Grand Jury report that found Councilman Jim Oddie and Councilwoman Malia Vella violated the city charter by putting political pressure on then-city manager Jill Keimach as she was hiring a fire chief in 2017.
Keimach secretly recorded a phone call between herself and Oddie and Vella as evidence that they were trying to pressure her to hire a union-backed candidate for fire chief. The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office cleared Keimach of any wrongdoing in making the recording.
Alameda’s charter says the city manager makes hiring decisions, not the council.
Both Oddie and Vella continue to deny wrongdoing and last year filed claims with the city to recoup roughly $90,000 each in legal bills incurred defending themselves against Keimach’s allegations.
Keimach said she was subjected to “unseemly” and “intense and unrelenting” pressure from Oddie and Vella in an October 2017 letter to the council, which prompted the city to commission an independent investigator and Oddie and Vella to secure legal help.
Oddie has since withdrawn his claim, and last month the City Council denied Vella’s claim, which also alleged she suffered from defamation and invasion of privacy over what the former city manager alleged.
“The city of Alameda is making an attempt to rectify past situations and to follow the grand jury’s recommendations,” Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft said Tuesday, when the council voted 3-0 to adopt the policy. Both Oddie and Vella recused themselves from the council’s discussion and vote on Tuesday.
In addition to violations of the city charter, the new policy says a council member or city worker who knowingly commits a crime or violates a code of conduct connected with their city employment cannot receive legal fee reimbursements.
ella 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 selected Edmond Rodriguez, then chief of the Salinas Fire Department, saying he was more qualified.
The interference by the two elected officials cost the city more than $1 million in investigation and legal fees, eroded morale among city employees and “damaged public trust in government at a time when such trust is so important,” the grand jury wrote in its final 2018-19 report.
As is its common practice, the grand jury did not name Oddie and Vella, though it was clearly referencing them based on previous reports by this news organization and others.
The grand jury stopped short of calling for their resignations and did not file an “accusation,” a legal charge that would start the process to remove an elected official from office for malfeasance.
The new reimbursement policy follows some of the recommendations in the grand jury’s report, which also included annual training for elected officials and senior city staff on ethics and governance, and creating a handbook on a code of conduct for council members.
City staff will bring draft policies based on those recommendations for the council to consider at its next meeting.
Keimach quit her position amid the controversy in May 2018 through a $945,000 separation agreement with the city.
December 6, 2019
The Mercury News and Milpitas Post
By Peter Hegarty, Bay Area News Group
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