Levin Resigns as City Attorney!

By: Dave Emerson

November 20, 2012 in Uncategorized By: Dave Emerson

(Los Alamitos, 11/20/2012) The Los Alamitos City Attorney who advised the City Council they were following the law “to a T” dropped a bombshell at last night’s City Council meeting.

Early in the meeting, just before Public Comments, she announced she would be gone no later than January 31 of the new year.

It was both a smart and gracious move on her part, a move which should help our new Council turn the page on four ugly years of litigation, recrimination, and a flood of accusations of Brown Act Violations.

Hopefully our new Council can find someone so outstanding that they can all agree on our new City Attorney, as was the case with our current City Manager.

I found Levin to be professional, gracious, and thoughtful one on one, but I was repeatedly confounded by the legal advice she provided our Council:

Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew Banks certainly didn’t agree with Ms. Levin’s analysis of the trash contrace, ruling that Council Members Troy Edgar, Ken Stephens, and Marilyn Poe had “voted to break the law” in awarding the bid to the second highest bidder. Sadly, Levin and her firm apparently made hundreds of thousands of dollars because of that bad advice.
Levin also apparently gave less than accurate advice regarding alleged Brown Act violations by Council Member Kusumoto while apparently giving the Council advice that led to additional Brown Act violations.
In addition, at last month’s Candidate Forum all four City Council Candidates questioned the expansive nature of the “telephone users tax reduction and modernization” Levin authored.

After the forum Dean Grose told me that he thought it was time for Levin to move on. [ad]

Apparently Levin could read the writing on the wall and graciously saved the City and herself what might have been another ugly and divisive battle, and for that I say a loud “thank you!” to Ms. Levin.

The resignation clears the deck for the Council to move forward and work together for a brighter future for Los Alamitos’ future.

One more thing we can all give thanks for this week!

6 Comments »

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6 thoughts on “Levin Resigns as City Attorney!”

Giving thanks says:

November 20, 2012 at 4:32 pm

Edgar commented that Levin and the former City manager came in as a great team. Wonder why she didn’t see the writing on the wall as the CM did. They should have left as a team. As Dave said she is polite, but lacking in her advice.

A City Attorney can easily put out any fires brewing between council members, they can also fan the flames.

The evidence is before you community, you be the judge.

Oh wait…..you already did, at the ballot box. Thank you jury / community.

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los al resident says:

November 21, 2012 at 10:47 am

The terrible three can sing her praises all they want. She and two of them are now gone, only one more to go.

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Scott says:

November 21, 2012 at 12:04 pm

It’s an early Christmas gift for Los Al! Maybe at the end of the next fiscal year the legal expenditures portion of the budget will actually have monies left over. But then again, we now have Grose back on the council.

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Patch on Levin says:

November 21, 2012 at 2:22 pm

Click here for the Patch’s report on Levin’s resignation:

http://losalamitos.patch.com/articles/los-al-city-attorney-announces-resignation

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JM Ivler says:

November 21, 2012 at 3:28 pm

I doubt the following had anything to do with the decision of the City Attorney to resign as there was not enough time between the date that the following was sent to the State Bar and the announcement of the resignation by Ms. Levin for the item to have been received and processed by the State Bar.

Unlike what was done to the late Mr. Sheridan Esq. by Mr. Zarkos, Mrs. Poe, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Edgar and City Attorney Levin, there was no “public threat” that there would be a complaint to the State Bar, no Sword of Damocles held over anyone’s head.

I’m sure that the fine people in Sierra Madre can think of some things they too might want to share with the State Bar. A copy of the ethics complaint follows.

To the State Bar of California
Ethics Division
1149 South Hill Street
Los Angeles, California 90015-2299

Not being a member of the State Bar I have no idea of whom to address my concern to. Normally if you are a client for an attorney, you can go to the Bar if you think there may have been a violation of professional ethics, but in this case I am not the client, but am affected by the attorney and the decisions that she makes for the client. The client is my City Council here in Los Alamitos, California and the City Attorney who works for them, and through them I guess she works for us, the residents.

The issue at hand goes back over a year ago, and has been run in a way that I believe is questionable at best, and ethically challenged would be an understatement.

Let’s start in December 2011 when the City Council as a body voted/instructed the City Attorney to look into the actions of one of the City Council Members and determine if the Member of the City Council had violated the State’s Brown Act (a criminal violation) by his actions and bring the issue back to the City Council (body) with her opinion and their options.

In January 2012 the item was on the agenda for discussion and a vote. The agenda included a nine page document completed by the City Attorney that outlined her legal opinion as to whether the Brown Act had been violated. During City Council discussion on the document and the recommendation the Mayor stated that the issue was “binary” either these were violations or they were not. The Mayor Pro-Tem stated that if they were violations of the Brown Act and the City Council failed to take action on them, then the City Council was equally libel for the violations by their inaction.

In the end the City Council majority voted for the City Attorney to take the following actions on the charges leveled against the Member for violations of the Brown Act as per the nine page indictment that the City Attorney created.

On January 17th 2102 the City Council voted to do the following list of items as prepared by the City Attorney:

2. Establish a policy or ” code of conduct” for the handling of confidential closed session information and adopt specific rules for all future meetings.
3. Retain a City Prosecutor to seek a court order, writ of mandate, or injunction preventing further disclosure of confidential closed session information by Council Member Kusumoto and/or barring him from further closed sessions regarding the litigation at issue.
4. Direct the City Attorney to refer the matter to the District Attorney. The matter may be investigated and may or may not be prosecuted under state law.
5. Direct the City Attorney to refer the matter to the Attorney General. The matter may be investigated and may or may not be prosecuted under state or local law.
6. Direct the City Attorney to refer the matter to the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury may investigate the matter and determine whether to initiate removal proceedings.
7. Direct a City Prosecutor to prosecute the matter as a misdemeanor under the Municipal Code. This option is not recommended as there is a potential bar to prosecution due to pre-emption.

I would like to direct your attention to items 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Items 4, 5 and 6 of the instructions were very clear and concise and aligned with the Mayor Pro-Tems statement that to NOT take action was not an acceptable thing for the City Council, as a body, to do. They were clear instructions that three government agencies were to have the complaint forwarded to them so that they could choose to take action on the criminal charges as outlined in the nine page document prepared by the City Attorney.

Items 3 and 7 were clear instructions to file something with a court that would generate a writ that would order the Member to follow the Brown Act (item 3). And Item 7 is for a city paid prosecutor to also then prosecute the Member for those infractions as detailed in the nine page document.

Of these five items that the City Counsel ordered performed based on a vote by the majority of the body (the client) only one seems to have been done as of this date over 10 months later.

Per requests to City Council as of 10/01/12 there has been no action taken on Items 4, 5 and 6 of the instruction to the City Attorney. The District Attorney, the Grand Jury and the Attorney General have not had the nine page document sent to them for them to start an investigation, or a prosecution for the criminal charges of violating the Brown Act as was documented in the nine page memorandum from the City Attorney.

Since there was no other vote by the body instructing the City Attorney to cease filing the complaint to the agencies listed, and since that task takes minimal hours to complete and can be delegated to lower level staff if the City Attorney chose to do so, it appears as if the City Attorney has chosen to willfully ignore the specific instructions provided to her by the client.

Actions on Items 3 and 7 actually are a bit confusing. The City Manager hired an external law firm to handle the prosecution. The firm selected has billed the City and has been ordered by the City Council to be paid for their work. But since there is no work product for the money spent (according to the City Attorney), no action was taken outside of paying for nothing.

A look at the invoices shows that the outside counsel did research, which would have created a work product of notes and points of law regarding the nine page document of charges the City Attorney produced. In addition a different attorney at the firm charged for services in producing a “draft” document. This too would be a work product produced by the counsel hired to prosecute the case. Since it is unclear by the public responses if the outside counsel was working on item 3 or item 7, a viewing of the work products produced would indicate which of the two items the outside counsel was working on, and would also provide input to the body that would allow them to know if they should continue on Item(s) 3 and or 7. When asked for the work product of outside counsel by members of the City Council body, the client, the City Attorney claimed there was none, although the invoices paid by the city clearly show that there was work product, even if it was not in final deliverable form that could be produced for the client to review.

It should be noted that work by the outside counsel has apparently been stopped even though there has never been an instruction by the body (there has never been a vote by the body) to cease work.

The concern of the City Council as a body may have been that the work product was not aligned with Item 3 of the instructions, but was in fact the City Attorney moving forward with Item 7 of the instructions. The review of the work products requested but not delivered to the body (City Counsel’s refusal as stated above) would have indicated which of the two items was being worked on by outside counsel. The reason this is important is due to the fact that Government Code Section 41803.5(a) states that any prosecution by the City Attorney must get authorization from the District Attorney. There is no record of the City Attorney asking the District Attorney for authorization to prosecute the Member.

If Item 7 was not executed as instructed, it follows with the same insubordination as outlined in Items 4, 5 and 6.

So, from the California Rules of Professional Conduct for the California State Bar it states:

Rule 3-110. Failing to Act Competently.
(A) A member shall not intentionally, recklessly, or repeatedly fail to perform legal services with competence.
(B) For purposes of this rule, “competence” in any legal service shall mean to apply the
1) diligence,
2) learning and skill, and
3) mental, emotional, and physical ability reasonably necessary for the performance of such service.

This appears to be violated in the fact that the directive provided by the body to the City Attorney by a vote of the body was either willfully ignored or not followed for in excess of nine months even though the actual time it would have taken to complete the instructions of Items 4, 5 and 6 (and potentially Item7) were minimal. At no time has the body provided instructions through a vote of the body to have the City Attorney NOT complete the instructions; therefore the vote of the body has been and is being willfully ignored by the City Attorney.

Additionally, requests by the body for work product items that invoices show were produced and have been paid for have been denied to the body by the City Attorney.

Not to beat a dead horse, but on that last item it appears that the City Attorney may have also violated

Rule 3-500. Communication.
A member shall keep a client reasonably informed about significant developments relating to the employment or representation, including promptly complying with reasonable requests for information and copies of significant documents when necessary to keep the client so informed.

While the City Attorney does NOT report to me, a citizen of the community, it is my tax dollars that pay for the City Attorney’s time and charges as billed to the City of Los Alamitos. I am deeply concerned that the willful acts of ignoring the instructions of the City Council as ordered by a vote of the majority of the body reflects not only insubordination to the employer, but also is unethical for paid legal counsel.

The lack of action against the Member as stipulated by the instructions voted on by the body has left the Member formally accused by the City Attorney of performing criminal acts (the nine page memo). The Member has failed to have a chance to have his name cleared by prosecuting agencies since the City Attorney has willfully not completed the actions she was instructed to complete. This has left the Member in a position where he has been accused of a criminal act, yet has been unable to have his day in court in order to clear his name from the City Attorney’s nine page accusation.

I believe that this may violate the spirit, if not the letter, of:

Rule 5-100. Threatening Criminal, Administrative, or Disciplinary Charges.
(A) A member shall not threaten to present criminal, administrative, or disciplinary charges to obtain an advantage in a civil dispute.
(B) As used in paragraph (A) of this rule, the term “administrative charges” means the filing or lodging of a complaint with a federal, state, or local governmental entity which may order or recommend the loss or suspension of a license, or may impose or recommend the imposition of a fine, pecuniary sanction, or other sanction of a quasi-criminal nature but does not include filing charges with an administrative entity required by law as a condition precedent to maintaining a civil action.

As the nine page memorandum details criminal charges against the Member, but since the City Attorney did not send these charges to the appropriate prosecution agencies as instructed, the Member has been threatened with criminal wrongdoing by the City Attorney. The City Attorney has willfully failed to forward, as instructed, the charges to any agencies that can either prosecute the charges made by the City Attorney or clear the Member from the accusations, thus leaving the Member under threat for in excess of ten months without the ability to be cleared.

Based on the above I have a deep concern that the City Attorney has been unethical as defined by the California State Bar. The law firm in question is Colantuono & Levin of Los Angeles. The City Attorney to the City of Los Alamitos is Sandra J. Levin.

While I am not the client, as a member of the public for the public agency which the City Attorney works I have deep concerns that there have been multiple violations of the California State Bar ethics, as well as potential violations by the City Attorney of Government Code Section 41803.5(a). Additionally, as a member of the State Bar and an Officer of the Court, I have deep concerns that the City Attorney may have violated other ethics or laws in that she has created a nine page document that states that a member of the City Council for the City of Los Alamitos has performed criminal acts, and she has not, as an Officer of the Court or member of the State Bar felt the need or the desire to report such criminal actions to the appropriate authorities, even if she was without the clear instructions from the City Counsel (her client) to do so.

I look forward to hearing from the State Bar as to my questions regarding the ethical lapses documented above, as well as addressing my concerns that the nine page indictment of the Member should have been sent, instruction not withstanding, to the appropriate agencies for prosecution of the criminal acts.

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

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Art DeBolt says:

November 22, 2012 at 7:15 am

What an insult to Angie by Troy Edgar to refer to her as the second part of a team with Sandra Levin. Edgar and his majority hired Levin to insure what the majority wanted to happen, happened. She did that job well, perhaps a little too well for her own good and that of her benefactors.

Former city manager Jeff Stewart saw the handwriting on the wall and resigned. Poe was next deciding not to run and finally the voters dealt the finall blow to Stevens and Edgar at the polls.

With Edgar not even carrying Los Alamitos in his assembly bid Levin saw her job as completed. The real team Edgar has been revealed. Leave Angie out

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Lets Fix Los Al

By: Dave Emerson