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Voters to settle City Hall spat
by Jason Dietrich
Redondo Beach voters will have the final word on which city department head will oversee the city’s finances.
If ballot measure "D" passes in Tuesday’s election, it would place the oversight of the city’s expenditures under the office of the city manager.
Until recently, the city clerk supervised the finance department, which helped prepare the city budget with the city manager’s oversight. In late October, City Manager Lou Garcia placed Finance Director Agnes Walker on administrative leave. Walker resigned, but the move sparked a conflict in City Hall over the control of the finance office.
City Clerk Sandy Forrest, an elected official, said Garcia didn’t have the authority to put her employees on leave. Garcia disagreed, saying that as a member of the city staff, Walker answered to him.
The city council sided with Garcia, giving the city manager control of the finance office. If Measure D passes, it will clarify ambiguous language in the city charter that led to the dispute in the first place. A ballot initiative that would have allowed voters to choose to keep the finance office as a ward of the City Clerk was not allowed to on the ballot by the city council.
Redondo Beach mediator and lawyer David Serena, said that the structural change in the city government would streamline the city’s financial planning process.
"I was on the charter review commission the last time around, and it was a good idea then and it’s a good idea now. It only makes good business sense in a city of this size to have a professional instead of elected official managing the finances. There’s too much money involved," Serena said.
Serena also said that the motives for keeping the clerk in charge of the finances were political, rather than practical.
"I believe the reason that it wasn’t on the ballot before is because [former City Clerk] John Oliver had too much political clout. Everybody who has a supervisory job wants to protect their turf," Serena said.
The measure’s opponents said the measure puts too much power in the hands of the city manager, and that an elected official is necessary to keep an eye on the city’s checkbook.
"The City Clerk should be watchdog over the budget and the city’s finances. The more eyes on these things the better. How is a City Manager going to say ‘no’ to an expense report turned in by the mayor, his boss? We need an elected official overseeing these things," said Chester Powelson, the former building license manger for the city of Redondo Beach who authored the opposition to the measure.
Councilman John Parsons (District 5) said the measure was a way of modernizing the city’s financial system. The way the charter currently reads, the chief finance officer answers to both the City Clerk and the City Manager.
"The way it is now, it allows people to pass the blame if something’s not done right from elected official to an appointed one and back and forth. If the change goes through, now it’s under an individual person, there’s kind of a ‘buck stops here’ situation," Parsons said.
City Clerk Sandy Forrest said that there hasn’t been a problem with the city finances, and that there had always been the highest standards of professionalism in the finance department. The department has won several awards for outstanding financial reporting in recent years.
"It’s up to the people whether they want an elected official, answerable to them. It’s not up to what the council the city manager want. How many times are they going to keep asking the people same question? Until they get the answer they want?" she Forrest. ER