Last week, like a number of Culver City residents, I received a rather unusual email from Councilmember Scott Malsin.
It seems that the city has changed its retiree medical benefits program in a way that negatively affects employees, including Council members, who have relatively few years of service when they retire, unless they retire by the end of 2011. So Mr. Malsin might be forced to quit the Council before his term ends, to preserve his benefits; some other city staff face similar choices.
While Mr. Malsin's objections to this situation, and his attempts to ensure the city is fair to employees, seem, perhaps, legitimate, there is also the question:
Whose actions helped get the city into such financial hot water in the first place, so that bad economic times could not be ridden out?
Looking at the Answer
For the answer to that, Mr. Malsin should look directly into the mirror.
The best way to avoid trouble in bad times is to spend prudently and build a reserve during better times.
We need to go back a few years to see what was actually done, back to the time when Jerry Fulwood was retained as City Manager. Mr. Malsin cast the deciding vote with enthusiasm, calling Mr. Fulwood “just what Culver City needs right now.”
If he'd said that with a sarcastic tone, he might have been correct. Unfortunately, he didn't. Thro
ughout his tenure, Mr. Fulwood treated the city government as though it existed of, by and for Jerry Fulwood; his primary purpose was to consolidate his own power and image, whatever the cost to taxpayers and to the careers of people in his way.
Such ethics are not a recipe for prudent financial management.
For example, in a most unusual request, Mr. Fulwood got the City Council to spend taxpayers’ money for his son’s police academy training, on the premise that our city would thereby gain a fine new police officer. When that training was complete, the son remained on the force for less than a week before departing for a higher-paying position elsewhere.
Much more expensively, Mr. Fulwood insisted that unlike previous heads, he needed not one but two Assistant City Managers, promoting Marlee Chang to the second position. She did not come cheap, with total compensation around $1 million per four years.
Fundamental Qualification
Ms. Chang lacked even a college degree, and before Mr. Fulwood’s arrival was a low-to-mid-level staff member in the Budget Office.
Mr. Fulwood promoted her rapidly, first to Budget Manager, then to Controller (ostensibly the official who oversees all accounting operations), then to Assistant City Manager.
As she rose, it was not apparent to managers in City Hall what productive work Ms. Chang actually did, but Mr. Fulwood seemed to like her very well, nonetheless. After holding the Controller position for some time, Ms. Chang still had to ask whether the city had a cash or accrual accounting system (which is a bit like being manager of the Dodgers while not knowing which way players are supposed to run around the basepaths.)
Later, as Assistant City Manager, she was given the supposed responsibility of overseeing Risk Management, but a consultant soon had to be brought in to “assist’’ Ms. Chang in doing those duties, this despite the fact that, pre-Fulwood, the duties had been handled by one lower-level manager, at a small fraction of the combined salary paid to Ms. Chang and the consultant.
Besides her high salary, the city had to pay six-figure sums for the consultants hired to do her actual work.
Another six-figure consultant was hired purely to facilitate Mr. Fulwood's consolidation of power. Prior to the City Charter change, Mr. Fulwood had no formal control over most financial operations—the elected City Treasurer oversaw accounting, tax collection and investments, essentially everything except the budget.
This did not please Mr. Fulwood. He set out to diminish the power of the City Treasurer’s office. The consultant’s primary job was to prepare an extensive management audit critical of the City Treasurer’s office—with no input or feedback whatsoever from that very office.
This unusual approach practically defines a hatchet job; it would be unthinkable in any organization actually interested in operational improvement. It was money wasted purely to further the power-consolidation interests of Jerry Fulwood.
Culver City's City Council is a part-time group. The City Manager is effectively the full-time surrogate they choose to act on their behalf in matters of ethics (among other things.) As such, each Council member who, like Mr. Malsin, voted to hire, endorse and re-hire Mr. Fulwood bears direct ethical responsibility for Fulwood's actions; those actions rightly go on the Council member's own “ethical scorecard.”
In that respect, it is Mr. Malsin's own ethical failure that is coming back to bite him. Now he wants voters to bail him out by voting him back in after he resigns. Okay, yeah, let me think on that.
In truth, I do recognize that Mr. Malsin has done positive things for the community.
But it's simply impossible for him to do enough to balance out the damage he did through his approval of Mr. Fulwood as his surrogate.
It is fortunate for taxpayers, and, ironically, also for Mr. Malsin, that there has been no other City Manager (or CAO) remotely like Mr. Fulwood in Culver City's recent history.
But the fiscal and ethical damage Mr. Fulwood wrought with Mr. Malsin's backing was more than enough. Besides the million dollars every three years or so for Mr. Fulwood's compensation, there was the wasted million or so every four years for Ms. Chang, and hundreds of thousands for useless consultants. All that money could have bought a lot of medical benefits.
Mr. Alexander may be contacted at soon2bparted@yahoo.com
