Precedent For Elk Grove City Council Investigation of City Manager, Attorney

By Connie Conley


The agenda is out for next Wednesday's city council meeting and the postings on Elk Grove News and emails are coming in. We all can see that the council has a closed session item regarding the City Manager and the City Attorney.

Without rehashing the most recent complaints, the Elk Grove City Council has an obligation to assure that said complaints are thoroughly investigated to protect the public interest and the interests of the City and its employees and to provide for the appropriate investigation of specific complaints.

This is one of the drawbacks of not being a charter city. Most charters have a vehicle upon which any council member can call for an investigation. For example, in the San Diego charter since 1973, "Section 128 of the Charter establishes a procedure for the investigation of charges of misconduct or inefficiency against any employee or office in the classified service by the Civil Service Commission."

Furthermore in another city, Lowell, MA, when calling for an independent investigation of their assistant city manager, City Councilor Jim Milinazzo, when on the opposing end, challenged his co-councilors stated, "I would think that my colleagues would welcome the investigation in that a majority of them feel that nothing wrong was done. We need to get an opinion on this one way or the other."

In yet another city, a citizen's association stated, "Although they may not recognize it, it is in the Council's interest to support an outside investigation."

The association's letter goes on to state regarding their city manager, "Some City employees will no doubt welcome an outside, independent investigation as a way to remove any “cloud” that may surround their professional reputations. Also if the City Manager proposes now to disciple an employee, the employee could claim (probably successfully) that he or she is being singled out without there being a complete investigation by an objective party of all the facts surrounding the situation. Unfortunately the City Manager is not viewed as a neutral party because of his connection to the events."

With precedents in other cities, I would hope this council will see that we citizens are within our rights to request an independent investigation.

In closing the same letter sums it up best, "The goal of this process is not a “witch hunt” to identify a “guilty” party. We need to find out what happened, what should have happened, what didn’t happen, and why. We need to address the system and systemic problems that an investigation would reveal. An independent outside investigation would provide that information and would be viewed by the public as reliable."

In the past, we asked and and asked for an audit of our contracts because we knew something was amiss. The council, after the 2006 election, finally approved an audit. From that audit came the Sinclair Report and look what that report garnered.