I heard a rumor

As promised by City Manager John Russo, the City has, starting in September, made the agendas for the City Council meetings available ten days in advance of the meeting.     So the agenda for the  first meeting for September is already up and has been since last week which is a marked change.   John Knox White blogs a bit about it here and this is good news since it comes on the heels of the City posting the meeting agenda for the Special City Council meeting before the August break at the very last minute per state law for noticing special meetings.

One very interesting agenda item comes in the Council Referrals section from Councilmember Doug deHaan, which is:

There continues to be a complete lack of confidentiality inside of city hall regarding identification of applicants for posted positions. This occurred during the selection process of the City Manager, as well as the recent selection of the City Attorney. It is standard practice in the public and private sectors not to reveal applicant names for any position for which they wish to apply. Confidentiality must be upheld throughout all stages of the process, and particularly during the interview portion, thus not to jeopardize present employment of the applicant. However, the selection criteria and timeline used in this process must be transparent and open to the public.

Recently, Mayor Gilmore adamantly expressed concerns of the continued lack of confidentiality. Similar complaints of this nature have also been expressed by a councilmember, as well as candidates themselves. Lack of integrity on behalf of the City of Alameda representatives has caused undue personal consequences to applicants and has compromised the validity and merit of the selection process.

These actions are not in the best interest of the citizens of the City of Alameda. These council selections have been conducted in closed session. It is therefore requested that a complete review be conducted to determine the root of this ongoing problem and that immediate and necessary action be taken and procedures adopted.

For those that don’t read David Howard’s Action Alameda blog, there was a “tip” that was not verified by any secondary source that Danny Wan, former Oakland City Councilmember and now City Attorney for Morgan Hill, was in the running for the City Attorney position.  I believe that was the only name “leaked” to the public.

In fact, during the public comment for the July meeting one of the speakers representing Alameda Citizens Task Force made a reference to not wanting anyone else from Oakland to come to Alameda about two and a half minutes into the audio track which appeared to be a reference to the Danny Wan rumors.

As an aside, it should be noted that this comment which attempted to speculate as to who one of the finalists was for the City Attorney position was completely erroneous.  Evidently this commenter believed that she had spotted Benjamin Reyes (Alameda resident and City Attorney for both Pinole and Union City, he works at a private law firm which those two cities contract with) at City Hall West on that Saturday morning.  It turns out that Benjamin Reyes was in Hawaii at that very moment.   Let me just point out the obvious that not all Asian people look the same, I know it can be hard to tell us all apart, but I promise, there are fairly distinct features for all of the Asian races.

Anyway, I think it was very wise of Doug deHaan to get in front of this issue, because when — not if — it becomes a bigger issue the pool of people that had access to the names of candidates is pretty limited.   It really is only the City Council itself and a handful of staff people.    Amongst the City Council, there are obviously individuals that would never ever ever in a million years ever leak anything to David Howard. And, let’s face it, most of the applicants probably aren’t leaking their own names either given that they probably don’t want their bosses to know that they are actively looking for another job.   Although honestly, I don’t know what the City is going to be able to do about the leaks.

And speaking of City Attorney news, apparently former City Attorney Teresa (Terri) Highsmith has taken on the interim duties for yet another city under her Colantuono and Levin contract.   Now she is working for the City of Sierra Madre in addition to her duties in Barstow.

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