How is Jim Dear, the controversial city clerk of Carson, holding up under the very public glare of racism charges that practically have narrowed his job to observation status in the first year of his four-year term?
“I have my hands full with all of this baloney that is going on,” he tells the newspaper.
Summoning traditional logic, he wonders out loud why, if he is such a bad guy, there is no history of complaints prior to a recent city-sponsored investigation he castigates as phony?
After all, Mr. Dear says, he has not been a shy mouse in a corner.
Someday the strange story of Mr. Dear’s political career may be told to an audience of dropped jaws.
The path he treads seldom is so publicly measured, weighed and judged.
Logic of Phony Rap
“They hired an attorney from Riverside to do a bogus report on me,” Mr. Dear said of the probe that resulted in numerous employees scorching him.
“The report is full of unbelievable stuff,” Mr. Dear said. “Hard to believe one person could do all that they charged.
“It is a joke. No validity to it whatsoever. If any of it was true, there would have been reports to the (Human Resources) Dept., reports to the union representatives. There would have been grievances.
“The report is nothing but hearsay and gossip.”
Just as LAUSD and other lax school districts pay certain teachers to sit in a room and cross-stitch, schmooze or play poker for their standard salaries, Carson is paying Mr. Dear $115,000 annually – nearly a half-million over his term – to watch his five-person staff execute duties.
“They fired one member of my staff,” Mr. Dear said, “suspended another, and moved the other three to a separate office in City Hall.”
To state the obvious, “what is going on is not normal. It is a burden on the staff.”
Wrists in Cuffs?
What can Mr. Dear do about the situation?
“Not much,” he said. “The City Council controls the city manager. The city manager controls all the staff in a council-manager form of government.”
Mr. Dear said he comes to work and leaves at the same times as before the recent Council crackdown.
“I am out in the community a lot,” he said. “I may go out and run an errand and come back. Go to a meeting and come back. Go to a senior event and come back. I am coming back and forth all day long, like I normally do. City clerks do that.”
Mr. Dear said that under the current extreme punitive circumstances, it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of his department. “My staff is working constantly,” he says, “to keep things flowing as they did before. Just that they are doing it in a different office.”
Between charges of racist slurs and temper outbursts, both the veteran politician – whom the people like and numerous influential colleagues do not –and the City Council are frying on the griddle.
Unable to fire him because he was elected by popular vote, the City Council this month voted, unanimously, to limit where Mr. Dear may go, at what hours he is to be present, and persons he must avoid at his workplace in Carson City Hall.
The outspoken mayor for 11 years at 10 percent of his present salary, Mr. Dear plainly has his ardent backers and equally loyal enemies, rivals being too tame of a characterization.
In the middle of his mayoralty tenure, he neatly beat back a recall effort.
This week it seems likely he will need to do it again.
Outspoken persons simplify the task of choosing sides. No one denies the label fits Mr. Dear.
In June, a mere 90 days after he was elected, longtime public enemies of Mr. Dear planted and nurtured the seed of yet another recall election.
Twelve thousand names were turned in two days ago, 50 percent more than are needed to trigger a recall election. The County has 30 working days, not counting weekends and holidays, to examine the signatures and determine how many are valid. Deadline for recruiting 8,059 names in the city of 92,000 is Dec. 16.