Report puts lie to claim that city manager violated the law; reveals new evidence of Oddie’s and Vella’s actions
Blog note: this opinion piece mentions civil grand jury jurisdiction in the matter.
A new district attorney report not only exonerates former Alameda City Manager Jill Keimach for secretly recording a meeting last year with Council members Jim Oddie and Malia Vella, it also shows why the two elected officials should be removed from office.
The investigation findings put the lie to their claim that Keimach violated the law — a narrative Oddie has tried to peddle in his current re-election campaign to distract from his own violation of the city charter.
The Aug. 16, 2017, meeting was held as Keimach was in the middle of recruiting a new fire chief and under political pressure to hire Alameda Fire Capt. Dominick Weaver, the preferred candidate of the firefighters’ union.
District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s report, released Friday, provides the first public account of what’s contained in the secret recording of the meeting.
That account provides new evidence to bolster the case that Oddie improperly meddled in the city manager’s hiring of a new fire chief. And it shows that during the meeting Vella, who has two years left on her term, encouraged hiring the firefighter union’s preferred candidate.
Under the city charter, the city manager has the sole discretion for hiring department heads and the City Council is expressly prohibited from trying to influence the decision.
Yet that’s exactly what Oddie and Vella did.
The meeting, according to the report, “did concern the selection of the Fire Chief and during the meeting both Councilmember Vella and Councilmember Oddie supported and recommended Captain Weaver as the next Fire Chief.”
Rather than acknowledge their actions to influence the city manager’s decision, the two council members have tried to blame Keimach — and make the city foot the bill for their legal expenses.
Grand jury referral
It’s all further evidence of why voters should oust Oddie in the Nov. 6 election, and why the county civil Grand Jury should investigate Oddie’s and Vella’s conduct.
While the district attorney does not have clear authority to investigate violations of the city charter, the Grand Jury’s powers include oversight of public officials’ actions. And, according to O’Malley, questions in this case about possible charter violations have already been referred to the Grand Jury.
The Grand Jury has authority to file an accusation, a legal charge that could lead to removal from office for willful or corrupt misconduct.
Since it wasn’t in her legal purview, the district attorney drew no conclusions on whether Oddie or Vella violated the city charter. But a prior city-commissioned investigation found that Oddie did just that.
That report, by investigator and Manhattan Beach attorney Michael Jenkins, found that Oddie told the police chief that Keimach’s job was on the line if she didn’t make the right selection — a threat that was predictably relayed to the city manager.
Oddie also wrote a letter to Keimach on city stationary supporting Weaver, the firefighters’ candidate, and “to provide him with the highest recommendation.”
But, when it came to the Aug. 16 meeting, Jenkins relied on the accounts of the participants rather than listening to the tape. As a result, he dismissed Vella’s role as merely wanting to discuss the fire chief hiring process.
The district attorney investigation, which included listening to the tape, provides a very different account, noting that the two council members supported and recommended Weaver.
‘Not unreasonable’
Oddie did not respond to an email request for comment. Vella did, issuing a statement that doesn’t address the new information about what she said in the meeting.
The purpose of the meeting was not to demand that Keimach appoint Weaver, Vella says in her statement, which lambasts Keimach’s secret recording as “Nixonian.”
However, the district attorney’s report concludes that Keimach’s decision to secretly record the meeting was permitted under a state law that allows her to do so if she believes she might be extorted or bribed.
At the time, Keimach was feeling political pressure from multiple fronts to hire Weaver; the City Council’s evaluation of her job performance was going on concurrently; and she had already heard from Police Chief Paul Rolleri that Oddie had said she would be fired if she did not select the union’s preferred candidate.
Although the district attorney found that Vella and Oddie did not try to extort or bribe the city manager, “Ms. Keimach’s belief that recording the meeting may gather evidence related to such conduct was not unreasonable considering all of the circumstances,” O’Malley concludes.
Keimach never caved to the political pressure. She conducted an open and rigorous recruitment and hired a far-more-qualified person, the former fire chief of Salinas, to manage the 111-person fire department and its $35 million annual budget.
So here we are: A city investigation found Oddie violated the city charter. A new district attorney investigation found Keimach did nothing wrong. And the DA’s investigation provides new information that could support a determination that both Oddie and Vella violated the charter.
Those two helped create a toxic environment that set off this chain of events and Keimach’s departure with a separation agreement that cost taxpayers about $900,000.
Yet, Vella remains in office and Oddie is seeking re-election. Adding insult to taxpayer injury, Vella has filed a claim against the city for more than $10,000 for her legal fees and damage to her reputation, while Oddie seeks at least $63,000 from city taxpayers to cover his legal bills for his $500- and $900-per-hour attorneys to defend him during the city’s investigation.
Are these the sort of leaders voters want? Let’s hope not. Oddie, and eventually Vella, have got to go.
October 23, 2018
The Mercury News
By Daniel Borenstein
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