It appears that the Malibu City Council majority is engaging in subterfuge. Whenever public officials arrange a hush-hush meeting to make a major move, their action tends to look shady, especially when they conveniently neglect to videotape the meeting. That the council majority’s early Monday decision was to hire a contract city attorney without going to bid is downright suspicious.
Why do councilmembers Sharon Barovsky, Ken Kearsley and Jeff Jennings want to go through the convoluted exercise of creating the unnecessary position of assistant city manager? The city already has created and eliminated that post once. They’ll just have to eliminate the position again as the person they hire is shifted to the city manager’s post when Christi Hogin’s city manager contract expires June 1.
If their true objective is to give Hogin the power to pick the next city manager, why don’t they simply have her advise them of her choice then use their three-vote advantage to hire the chosen one? That would be a lot more straightforward.
If their goal is to make Malibu the laughing stock of the Southern California public-administration community, they are on the right track. Their move makes for really bad personnel and administrative policy. When and if Hogin begins advertising for a new city manager — er, “assistant city manager” — any professional in his or her right mind will say, “Why, so I can be hired on a 3-2 vote too?”
And what about the money? What sense does it make to shell out $216,000 a year plus nearly $200 an hour and litigation and “specialized” legal services fees and $150 an hour for management consulting services to the same attorney the city recently employed for an annual salary of $100,000 and change? I don’t pretend to be in a position to judge the quality of Hogin’s work, but has she done something in particular to merit a more than doubling of her salary?
For perspective on the insanity of paying what likely will be a minimum of a quarter of a million bucks a year for Malibu’s city attorney, the top municipal lawyer for the state’s largest city — Los Angeles — makes about $160,000 a year, according to the city controller’s office. Los Angeles’ city attorney is responsible not only for managing one of California’s largest law firms (400 lawyers plus 400 staff), but also prosecuting all misdemeanors committed within the city, filing and defending countless civil lawsuits, and giving legal advice to the mayor, 15 councilmembers and 37 city departments. As a Los Angeles resident, I guess I’m getting a really good deal.
The Malibu Times quoted Barovsky as saying, “Occasionally you have to put politics aside and vote for what you think is the right thing and pray that it’s right” (“City Council terminates city attorney’s contract,” March 29). But hiring someone for a top staff position on a 3-2 vote and scheming to deny the full council the opportunity to choose the person who will fill the other top staff position smacks of the very worst kind of politics — the kind I thought Malibu finally was beginning to cast aside.
Barovsky indicated that the council majority’s move might need a prayer to succeed. I’m pretty confident it’ll need more than that. Meanwhile, I’m left wondering if the council majority has been spending a little too much time with the SMP (as in “smoke more pot”) crowd.
I worked on Tom Hasse’s 1998 City Council campaign, but the views expressed in this letter are my own.
Chris Ford
Los Angeles