The Legacy of Oceanside’s Defunct Council Majority Lives On

After a bitter race, amid tears and jubilation, Oceanside’s recently elected City Council members took their seats Dec. 1 to herald a “new beginning” for the strife-torn city.

The Nov. 3 defeat of Councilwoman Melba Bishop splintered a three-member voting bloc that had been in tight control of city politics for the past two years. But the legal fallout from the council majority lives on:

Claims and lawsuits are steadily being filed by city employees who say they were harassed, disciplined, demoted and fired for refusing to accommodate the political whims of the council majority.

According to the claims and the plaintiffs’ attorneys, the Bishop-led council majority and other city employees acting on their behalf cast a pall of fear and intimidation over city government, infringing on free speech rights and demanding that certain employees carry out unethical and illegal acts or risk termination and demotion.

The plaintiffs include:

* Former City Manager John Mamaux and former director of public services Glenn Prentice, both of whom say they were fired this year after refusing to carry out or questioning unethical practices.

* Fire Battalion Chief Henry Thompson, who says he was disciplined after speaking out against a Bishop-inspired reorganization of the Fire Department.

* Former superintendent of the city’s Solid Waste Division, Ester Rilea-Beatty, who has filed a claim alleging she was demoted for working to unionize mid-management city employees after being warned by acting City Manager Jim Turner that “the City Council did not want the employees to meet or organize.”

Rilea-Beatty’s attorney said he plans to file a lawsuit before Christmas, and at least one other city employee says she plans to file a claim--which must precede a lawsuit--as early as next week. At least two city employees have filed discrimination claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

While Bishop is named as a defendant in the suits filed by Mamaux, Prentice and Thompson, she said she has been served only with the Mamaux suit.

“All the things that Mr. Mamaux says in his claims are untrue, other than the date he was hired and the date he left,” Bishop said. “Mr. Mamaux is a politically vindictive man. He knew the terms and conditions of his hiring when he was hired.”

The claims and lawsuits should not be lumped together as an indictment of Oceanside city government, she added.

“Each of those claims is individual. It’s not an unusual number for Oceanside, and it’s not unusual for employees who have been fired to file claims,” Bishop said. “It’s very traumatic to lose a job. I don’t think it should be looked upon as any particular weakness in the city of Oceanside. It just so happens that Oceanside is a place where the budget crunch hit particularly hard.

“It’s a lot easier to blame that on a person than to blame that on a set of circumstances, and I think the City Council ultimately gets the blame,” she said. “We’re the people responsible for administering the cuts.”

Part-time City Atty. Dan Hentschke said his office would not comment on the cases now in litigation.

“They’re all very new and very recent,” Hentschke said of the suits. “We obviously have positions on them, but until we make those positions known in court, I prefer not to comment on them.”

The stunning upset of Bishop and the election of a new mayor and two new council members mark a changing of the guard for Oceanside. The city experienced an exodus of top-level officials who say they resigned or were “forced out” after Bishop allies Nancy York and Don Rodee were elected in 1990, creating a majority on the council.

York and Rodee each have two years left in their City Council terms.

Those who left City Hall in the aftermath include the police chief, fire chief, city manager, city attorney, redevelopment director, harbor chief and human resources director.

While many Oceanside watchers look forward to a more stable future and a healing of morale among city employees, the financial impact of the litigation could burden an already strapped city.

“They’re going to have to expend a lot of time and resources. I think a couple of those lawsuits are slam-dunk against (the city),” said Larry Bagley, who just retired after three terms as mayor. “It’ll have a devastating effect, whether they have to settle them, whether they defend them, win them or lose them. Even if they won every lawsuit, the cost would still be devastating. And they will not win every lawsuit.”

Mamaux was fired Jan. 29, and his lawsuit--filed in July--claims the termination came after he refused “to carry out illegal acts, or to undertake conduct unethical or otherwise not in the best interests of the city of Oceanside.”

Those acts included promoting city employees as a political favor to the council majority, and questionable real estate transactions that benefited friends of the council majority, said Mamaux’s attorney, Peter Dean.

“I was asked to promote three firefighters without testing, and that was wrong,” Mamaux said. “I wasn’t going to do that. An employer can’t ask you to do something that’s illegal.”

“The three-member council majority asked him to do that,” Dean said, “over a period of time, jointly and separately, in and out of chambers.”

Mamaux is seeking $1.3 million in damages for loss of income and retirement benefits and for emotional distress.

“The pressure that was placed on John in late 1991 and 1992 to fire people, to promote people over other people improperly, to basically do the will of the majority of the City Council in areas that are really within his jurisdiction” caused the emotional distress, Dean said.

Bishop said Mamaux had agreed to leave if the council was not satisfied with his service.

“We were more than in compliance with his contract, including his termination. He was an at-will employee and he knew it,” Bishop said. “He said he would go gracefully and with dignity and would help us find his replacement.”

Mamaux was replaced by Turner, who in April fired Prentice, the director of public services for nearly 10 years.

According to Prentice’s lawsuit, filed in Superior Court on Nov. 18, the firing occurred shortly after Prentice met with Bishop to voice concerns about the lack of competitive bidding for a particular facility.

“Glenn voiced some opinions on competitive bidding that are consistent with what the law requires,” said Dwight Ritter, Prentice’s attorney. “It became obvious to Glenn that certain members of the council were displeased. Shortly after, he was fired.”

The issue of competitive bidding had come under the scrutiny of the San Diego County Grand Jury, the suit says.

Bishop said the conversation with Prentice about his concerns never occurred and that she heard of the firing only after the fact.

“Glenn Prentice and Jim Turner never got along,” Bishop said. “I thought it was amazing that Glenn lasted as long as he did.”

The Prentice lawsuit also claims the firing came as an indirect form of retaliation for Prentice’s 1989 concerns that several city officials were breaking the law--concerns that ultimately led to a district attorney’s investigation, which found no wrongdoing.

The suit filed by Fire Battalion Chief Henry Thomspon on Oct. 29 claims his constitutional rights to free speech were violated when he was disciplined in October, 1991, for publicly speaking out against a Fire Department reorganization spearheaded by Bishop.

Thompson, acting as a civilian and wearing civilian clothes, held a news conference to criticize the reorganization and was suspended without pay, the suit says. An arbitrator ruled in Thompson’s favor last summer that he be reimbursed for lost pay and missed overtime, but the arbitrator stated that it was not within his jurisdiction to decide whether Thomspon’s free speech rights were violated or whether Thomspon should be reimbursed his attorneys’ fees. Those are the issues the lawsuit addresses.

The most recent claim, filed against the city by Rilea-Beatty, the former superintendent of the Solid Waste Division, alleges she was demoted May 8 to a position of code enforcement officer--at a salary loss of $19,000 a year--as retaliation for her efforts to unionize mid-management employees.

“On one occasion, I was specifically directed to cancel a union meeting by James Turner, the city manager, in the presence of (Acting Public Service Director) George Fields, because the City Council did not want the employees to meet or organize,” a supplement to her claim says.

Bishop said the council never formally took that position.

“The City Council never passed any resolution saying they wanted employees to not organize,” she said.

Turner did not return phone calls.

According to Rilea-Beatty’s claim, she was replaced by a man who does not have the educational or employment background required for the job. Although she was told she was being demoted for budgetary reasons, her replacement makes more than she did, said Rilea-Beatty’s attorney, Everett Bobbitt.

Rilea-Beatty first contacted Bobbitt, a labor lawyer, for help in organizing Oceanside city employees. Bobbitt, who often gives lectures to public employees, said he uses Oceanside as an example of low morale and bad work relations.

“All that we do here is represent unions,” Bobbitt said of his firm. “Oceanside has the lowest level of morale, the most adversarial employee-employer relationship of any agency that I’m aware of.”

According to Bobbitt, city officials told him city employees were not allowed to form a union.

“When I tried to organize, the city manager and personnel director said, ‘We won’t allow management to organize, so we’re not approving your petition,’ which is contrary to all law,” Bobbitt said. “It’s sort of like a police department saying, ‘We don’t recognize Miranda.’ You just don’t do that.”

The management association was formed several months ago, with about 100 employees from middle management, including the Police and Fire departments, Bobbitt said.

“They were getting sold down the river. I thought I was walking into Chicago in the 1950s,” Bobbitt said of the organizing effort.

Other city employees--including African-American personnel analyst Dwight Hill, as well as the only African-American member of the Fire Department--have filed complaints with the EEOC alleging discrimination.

While retired Mayor Bagley said he is confident the newly elected city officials will improve city morale over time, what he described as an atmosphere of fear among city employees “ran the city right into the ground.”

“It certainly decreased the efficiency of the Fire Department by 50%, the Police Department by a like amount, Public Services Department by at least that amount,” said Bagley, who has worked for the city for 30 years. “And the employees that were left there really didn’t have inducement to give their all. At 4:30 p.m., as soon as their shift was ended, they were out the door. You never saw that before.”