Punishment Is Considered in Sex Scandal : Politics: City Council may seek disciplining of other city officials in cover-up case.

Moving gingerly toward resolving the San Diego City Hall sex-and-hush-money scandal, the City Council on Monday asked local and state authorities to consider disciplining the city officials involved and tentatively approved policy changes designed to prevent a recurrence.

By a unanimous vote, the council, following the recommendations of special counsel Josiah Neeper, asked the state Bar Assn., the city Civil Service Commission and City Manager Jack McGrory to review whether local officials’ involvement in the scandal merits disciplinary action against them. Councilman Ron Roberts was absent Monday.

Hoping to preclude similar cases in the future, the council also conceptually approved a series of policy changes proposed by Neeper, including a requirement that the council be notified--as it was not in this case--of any settlement above $20,000.

Another policy change specifies that the council be informed of any discrimination claims filed against council-appointed officials when there is “reasonable cause” behind the complaint.

Although Mayor Maureen O’Connor said Monday she believes that some city employees should be disciplined for their roles, other top city leaders suggested that most of the officials involved probably will escape even mild punishment.

McGrory, for example, noted that the two officials he is to investigate were “simply following orders” from former City Manager John Lockwood. And City Atty. John Witt, asked about the prospects of the State Bar of California’s ethics committee investigating his and his office’s role, said: “I think the state bar will handle it appropriately.”

Despite the council’s oft-stated desire for more public disclosure, however, no new specifics were provided Monday about the secret $100,000 settlement awarded to a former city planner who filed a sexual harassment claim against the city after an affair with City Planning Director Robert Spaulding.

But O’Connor stressed after the hearing that what Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer characterized as “the whys and wherefores” of the controversy are included in Neeper’s report on the settlement to former planner Susan M. Bray, a document that could be made public by city attorneys as early as today.

“As soon as Mr. Neeper’s report comes out, you’ll get the unearthing,” O’Connor said of Neeper’s still-secret 30-page report to the council last month. “We want to make as much public as possible.”

Concerns about violating a confidentiality clause in Bray’s settlement--and, thereby, subjecting the city to a possible lawsuit--have prompted the council to keep Neeper’s report and other internal city documents about the case private.

However, the council and other top city officials profess to want to make those documents public, and last week asked a Superior Court judge to advise them on the matter. In addition, local news outlets have requested the reports, some of which could be released after a closed council meeting scheduled for today.

Under Monday’s action, the council asked the local and state authorities to investigate whether the handful of city officials involved in the Spaulding-Bray case should be disciplined for keeping the council in the dark about the settlement.

By deciding to pay Bray $19,995, with nearly $80,000 to be paid over the next three years, Lockwood stayed below a $20,000 threshold that would have required disclosure to the council.

Though Lockwood asked Witt to review the deal’s legality and other city employees to examine other facets of it, the former city manager, by his own design, apparently was the only official familiar with every detail of the settlement--which may mitigate against severe disciplinary action against the others.

After Neeper’s recommendation, the council asked the state Bar Committee on Ethics to investigate whether Witt or his staff should be disciplined for not bringing the proposed settlement to the council’s attention.

As he has from the beginning, Witt argued after Monday’s hearing that he and his office handled the incident properly. As an elected official, Witt argues, his client is the city, not simply the City Council, and his actions were “based on what’s in the best interests of the city”--namely, protecting the city from a larger settlement if Bray’s claim ever reached court.

At the council’s request, the San Diego Civil Service Commission will probe the actions of Personnel Director Rich Snapper and Larry Gardner, who at the time of the settlement was the city’s equal employment investigative officer.

McGrory, meanwhile, was asked to review the performance of Risk Management Director D. Cruz Gonzalez and then-Labor Relations Manager Bruce Herring. Although saying he plans to “take a fresh look at it,” McGrory praised both Gonzalez and Herring as “excellent, outstanding city employees (who gave Lockwood) information he had asked for.”

The parallel investigations probably will be conducted on different timetables over the next several months and with varying levels of openness.

The Stat Bar probe, for example, is unlikely to become public unless disciplinary action is taken, according to Witt. The findings of the Civil Service study, meanwhile, probably will be made public after a private investigation. And it was left unclear whether McGrory’s report to the council would be public or handled privately because it deals with city personnel matters.

In a related development, a report issued Monday shows that the city received 23 complaints of sexual harassment in 1990, nine in 1989 and 18 in 1988. Snapper, who released the information requested two weeks ago by the council, did not report on the outcome of those complaints.

The city also paid $950,384 in long-term disability benefits last year, of which $181,522 went to 29 employees such as Bray found to be suffering from stress-related mental illness, according to a report released by McGrory.

Bray went on a stress disability in January, 1990, and received benefits for much of the year before filing her sexual harassment claim last December and hammering out the three-year disability settlement that Neeper has concluded was improper.

From 1988 to 1991, stress disabilities accounted for 10.9% of the payments and 17.1% of the program’s costs. The long-term disability payments, which totaled $662,281 in 1988, are projected to cost nearly $1.2 million this year, the report said.

City employees also will collect an estimated $7.9 million in workers’ compensation payments this year and another $1.4 million in “industrial leave”--a city administered benefit that gives “industrially injured” city employees full pay while they are temporarily disabled from work--during the fiscal year that ends June 30.

McGrory also reported that the city settled 22 liability claims in fiscal 1990 for sums from $18,000 to $20,000 and estimated that it will settle another 25 cases in that range before the fiscal year ends.

Sexual harassment claims constituted the largest category of the 116 complaints brought last year to then-equal employment officer Gardner. Gardner also looked into complaints of discrimination based on sex, age, disability, “retaliation,” sexual orientation and religion.

The vast majority of complaints are brought directly to the city, and, according to Snapper’s memo, are “almost always successfully resolved through discussion, training and adminstrative remedies.”

A few complaints, however, are first lodged with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing or the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. These “are more difficult to resolve, since a third party is involved, attorneys often are retained and a state or federal office controls the resolution process,” according to Snapper’s memo.

According to the statistics, Bray’s Dec. 21 complaint against Spaulding appears to be the only sexual harassment claim against the city filed with the state fair employment agency last year.