California Conservative

In August on Mayor Sam’s Sister City, we reported that Council Member Janice Hahn’s official city car was parked in a handicapped parking spot during a city event. This, despite that Hahn did not have a permit to park in such a spot.

Following our post, and the ensuing local and even national media coverage that followed, Hahn apologized for the mistake and said it would not happen again.

However, another misuse of a city vehicle has been brought to our attention and this time it involved use of the vehicle to attend a partisan political event, a clear violation of city rules. The good news is that the Council office was aware of the violation, has taken steps to correct the issue and has is making an effort to prevent further abuse.

An anonymous tipster sent us photos and claims that at least one staff member of Council Member Alex Padilla recently attended the San Fernando Valley Democratic Party’s annual Labor Day Picnic, held at Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Park, and did so driving a city vehicle. According to the flyer distributed, this event was a fundraiser for the local Democratic party.

We contacted Bill Mabie, Communications Director for Council Member Padilla, to get a confirmation or denial of the issue. Mr. Mabie was nice enough to respond to us and did confirm the incident had occurred and that the staffer(s) in question were reprimanded. Mabie further stated that all Council staff from District 7 will be attending a refresher course on city policies later this week.

Despite this, misuse of city vehicles is a persistent problem. City vehicles are provided to staff members to allow them to perform their job duties and serve the city. They’re not meant as your personal ride and certainly should not be used to attend political events. While we got some notice for the Janice Hahn car story, we had previously reported misuse of vehicles from the other side of the family. Staffers of then Mayor James Hahn were allged to have used city vehicles to attend Democratic club meetings in order to stack their endorsement vote meetings in an attempt to deny Antonio Villaraigosa various Democratic club nods.

We hope that other Council offices will follow the lead of Council Member Padilla and instruct their staff members in the proper use of city vehicles.

– by contributing blogger, Mayor Sam Yorty

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Author: Mayor Sam, California, Los Angeles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.