San Bernardino’s city council attempted to fire their city attorney in what could be described as a bizarre turn of events. Southern California News Group columnist and veteran journalist David Allen was at the meeting and wrote about in his latest column. He shared his perspective with KVCR last week:
You said in your column that this was one of the craziest meetings you’ve covered in your 37 years as a journalist. What made this meeting so chaotic?
ALLEN: Virtually every moment of it – it seemed like. Even just the routine act of going into closed session turned into [Mayor Pro Tem] Fred Shorett arguing with [Mayor Helen Tran] back and forth, and them talking over each other, and council members walking out because they thought it was unfair that the city attorney and the city manager both weren't present. And that the city attorney didn't even have an opportunity to listen to the mayor's statement that she was going to fire her. Even that like 20 minutes, before they went into closed session, I could have probably done a whole column just on that.
Why is the city attorney being targeted by some members of the council for termination?
ALLEN: That’s a good question, and it wasn't really answered, at least not directly. You know, when I spoke to the mayor, she told me that [Councilwoman] Kim Calvin had provided a list of concerns to her and other council members. But the mayor didn't really want to go into those because she thought they should just fire the city attorney without cause. I think it was probably a wiser strategy legally because she's an at will employee, and they could just terminate her. If they get into a lot of issues, then she could refute. That might be dicey legally for the city. It’s simpler to just cut her loose.
There were sort of hints of things. They thought that she was keeping them in the dark on certain things. She hadn't called for a special meeting at some point or another and or maybe had misled them on something here or there over the recent months. But, nothing was really stated clearly.
How do the actions of the Mayor and council make an impact on the morale of residents?
ALLEN: Well, this kind of infighting out in the open certainly doesn't present a very professional face to the public, or I would say, to anybody who might want to do business with the city to see this kind of level of disarray, mud slinging going on. It certainly affects my morale.
I like covering city government meetings now and then. It’s something I've done throughout my career. But the level of negativity from either the dais or from some pot stirrers in the audience; there are people who just want to burn everything down. And it's discouraging to someone who's been idealist, and I imagine it's discouraging for an awful lot of residents who would tune in and listen to this.
We saw Councilwoman-elect Kim Knaus make some comments during the meeting that signaled a call to action. Do you think Knaus and Treasure Ortiz will help shift the culture at city hall?
ALLEN: Well, it remains to be seen. And there's also Mario Flores, who's going to be taking office, and they all seem like very different people. Kim certainly being, I think, very kind of pragmatic and level-headed. And Treasure is, like deeply conversant with city issues, but also is kind of a fire brand and has probably called out everybody on the council at some point for something. So how this is all going to gel once they’re sworn in. It’s hard to say. It really is.
What kind of alliances might form or shift. Three people leave, three new people join. It's an open question what the outcome will look like over the next few months or years.
You can read David Allen’s column on any of SCNG’s news sites.
