Dear Editor, In the front page article in the Saturday, April
30, edition of The Times headlined
“Council: Little reaction to city attorney settlement,” Mayor
Dennis Kennedy and council members Steve Tate, Greg Sellers, Larry
Carr and Mark Grzan all commented about the lack of negative
comment regarding the settlement with our now former city
attorney.
Dear Editor,
In the front page article in the Saturday, April 30, edition of The Times headlined “Council: Little reaction to city attorney settlement,” Mayor Dennis Kennedy and council members Steve Tate, Greg Sellers, Larry Carr and Mark Grzan all commented about the lack of negative comment regarding the settlement with our now former city attorney.
For me and others in the community I have spoken with, it’s been like watching the proverbial train wreck in slow motion.
As soon as the issue surfaced, we could predict the outcome would be significant money out of our pockets (the taxpayers) spent needlessly and most likely ending up in the pocket of the attorneys. Yep, that’s how it ended. For a quick recap of this oft played out scenario in local government:
n A special interest manipulates an issue for personal gain (could have even made it up in the first place, who knows?).
n The mostly volunteer elected officials (Hedy Chang and another councilman) take the bait and mishandle the issue.
n Those in an oversight position (the mayor and the other councilmen) let it spin out of control.
n The situation evolves until there is a “victim” with various “injuries” who threatens to sue, but agrees not to sue if they are paid a large sum of money from the most accessible deep pockets (the taxpayers).
n In the end there’s a closed-door settlement that costs us tax payers real money ($273,055,80 plus benefits and untold attorneys’ fees) and obscures both the nature of the “injuries” and the level of mishandling/possible malfeasance that occurred.
So our lack of negative comment about the settlement is mostly due to the predictability of the whole affair.
Moving on, I support the efforts of the editor of The Times in his filing a request to make the details of the settlement public. If the former city attorney is in such a strong legal position that the council was wise to settle, what were the specific actions by the council or the city that support this position?
At a minimum, those should be made public so we, the citizens and taxpayers, can monitor both the direct actions of our elected officials and how they are managing the higher level salaried city employees who report to them.
Matt Penry, Morgan Hill
