The City Attorney’s office released a statement Wednesday saying charges against some of the people arrested for violating park curfew hours at Cesar Chavez Plaza will be dropped and the cases dismissed “in the interest of justice.” City Attorney Eileen Teichet said in a press release that a limited number of cases against people charged with only one violation of the city code would be dismissed. “After evaluating the facts of each case and criminal history of each defendant,” Teichert said in the press release, “the City Attorney’s office has determined that the arrest and jail time that each dismissed defendant served achieved the People of the State of California’s demand for substan

A number of recent City Council meetings relating to Interim City Manager Gus Vina, including the council’s January vote against his promotion, have been closed to the public. An attorney and open government advocate commented on the Brown Act Friday, saying he opposes “closed session” meetings on hiring and firing matters affecting the city manager. Terry Francke, an attorney for the nonprofit open government group Californians Aware said city manager hiring and firing decisions should be made public. Central to the issue of closed meetings is the way city officials interpret the Brown Act, a state law intended to make government meetings open to the public at the local level. The City

The city’s search for a new city manager has been delayed for weeks, according to the consultant leading the search. The exact reasons for the delay are unclear, but a discussion at Tuesday’s City Council meeting indicated that the delay involves miscommunication between the City Council, City Attorney Eileen Teichert, city Human Resources Manager Geri Hamby and the consultant, Stuart Satow, an executive recruiter for CPS Human Resource Services. Council members had been scheduled to tell Satow their opinions on city manager characteristics Feb. 22, but decided then that they didn’t want to have that discussion at that meeting. Satow said Tuesday that he has not yet received direction f

Five months after a consultant released a scathing audit of the city’s Community Development Department, the department is making headway on correcting its practices, according to City Auditor Jorge Oseguera. However, it’s still unclear when or if the city can obtain $2.3 million in developer fees that the department did not collect. Oseguera presented a report on the department’s overhaul to the City Council on Tuesday. The council accepted Oseguera’s report and did not take any formal action on it. The October audit, conducted by Sjoberg Evashenk Consulting, Inc., faulted the department for not collecting more than $2.3 million in fees in recent years. The firm also accused city employ

The local police union is reviving an effort to create a “strong mayor” form of government in the city, according to Det. Mark Tyndale, vice president of the Sacramento Police Officers Association. Tyndale said in an interview on Monday that SPOA is “actively talking” to other groups on how to move an effort forward. SPOA is in discussions with the Sacramento Metro Chamber, Sacramento Area Fire Fighters Local 522 and the Sacramento 60, a group of powerful business leaders, Tyndale said. Sacramento 60 and the Sacramento Metro Chamber backed last summer’s strong mayor proposal. The City Council and interest groups for and against a strong mayor government fought bitterly over previous cam

Outgoing Sacramento City Councilman Robbie Waters is giving the Sacramento Public Library Authority up to $150,000. Waters specified at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting that he wants his donation to go toward materials at the Robbie Waters Pocket-Greenhaven Library. He announced at the council meeting that he scrapped his earlier terms for the donation. Last week, Waters had planned to give the money to the Library Authority only if the City Council retains the name of the Robbie Waters Pocket-Greenhaven Library. If the City Council changed the name of the library, Waters had planned to give the money to the Sacramento Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Waters said t

The Sacramento City Council will decide later this month whether to bill at-fault drivers in collisions requiring an emergency response. The city has released its draft ordinance for charging fees for emergency services. The fees for emergency responses would charged to all at-fault drivers, including residents and non-residents. Fire Department responses to car wrecks would include a range of fees. On the low end, the city would charge $435 each time the department responds to an accident. A major wreck, meanwhile, could cost at least $2,000 in fees. Council members are expected to discuss the ordinance at their Nov. 23 meeting, said special projects manager Mark Prestwich. City staff

The city is changing the way it manages illegally dumped garbage after the city attorney’s office found that the city’s old program might have broken state law. The City Council agreed on Tuesday to make the city’s code division responsible for the city’s illegal dumping program, meaning the Utilities Department will no longer handle it. City Attorney Eileen Teichert’s office found that the city’s funding system for the program may have violated Proposition 218. That state law says that utilities fees from ratepayers must correspond to the costs of delivering the utilities services. “The city attorney’s office has determined that under Prop. 218, garbage rate revenues may not be used to

An audit report stating that the city’s development department failed to collect more than $2.3 million in fees from developers raises a host of questions. The audit’s finding that city employees broke state and city laws makes the situation even more complex. The audit, prepared by Sacramento firm Sjoberg Evashenk Consulting, Inc., investigated the department’s work from fiscal years 2007 through 2010. “In summary, the weak system of internal controls allowed employees to disregard state and city building laws, codes, and regulations aimed at protecting the public’s health, safety, and general welfare,” the audit states. Read the full audit report here. The City Council is expected to

Sacramento’s city auditor is exploring the idea of creating a whistle-blower hotline for City Hall. City Auditor Jorge Oseguera told the city’s audit committee on Tuesday that he was talking to City Attorney Eileen Teichert’s office about the idea. The audit committee is composed of City Council members Lauren Hammond, Robbie Waters, Ray Tretheway and Steve Cohn. Whistle-blower hotlines are “a common topic right now in the auditing community,” Oseguera said on Wednesday. The plan is in its early stages, Oseguera said, and no details have been established yet on how the hotline would work or when it would start operating. In a Tuesday e-mail, Teichert said she could say only that the pl

The City Council on Tuesday revisited the city’s 2003 loan agreements with the Sacramento Kings and decided to keep them in effect. City Treasurer Russ Fehr said he discovered the possible issue with the old loan agreement a few months ago. He said he discussed the matter with City Attorney Eileen Teichert, and she suggested that the current City Council examine the contract because it didn’t go before council members in 2003. The Kings’ remaining debt to the city is $68 million, according to Fehr. In 1997, the Kings and the city signed a contract that permitted the Kings to pay back its loans to the city after reimbursing $30 million in debt to another party, Fehr said. Then, in 2003,

Mayor Kevin Johnson’s strong mayor campaign has released a draft of Johnson's proposal and plans to pitch it to the City Council in July. The release of the new report marks a change in tactics for Johnson’s campaign because third-party attorneys — not the city attorney — wrote the draft. For weeks, Johnson’s strong mayor campaign has said that City Attorney Eileen Teichert should write the formal language for the proposal. But the City Council prevented Teichert from writing the draft in a 7-2 vote last month. The first strong mayor initiative was written by Thomas Hiltachk, a third-party attorney. That initiative was struck down by a Sacramento County Superior Court judge in January.

An audit of the city's Community Development Department could be finished in September, said Kurt Sjoberg, one of the consultants working on the project. Sjoberg Evashenk Consulting Inc. of Sacramento is carrying out the audit of the department. Auditors from the firm are tackling numerous issues at the department, including claims that the department broke the city's planning rules and did not gather fees from developers. The City Council voted to hire Sjoberg in April. In a June 10 oral report to the city’s audit committee, Oseguera said the Sjoberg auditors are developing findings that they think will be “very useful to the city.” Oseguera declined to elaborate on that statement Monda

Mayor Kevin Johnson said he thought it would be a 9-0 vote. He said he thought the Sacramento City Council would unanimously support his effort to ask City Attorney Eileen Teichert to draft official language for his updated strong mayor plan. When seven of his City Council colleagues voiced opposition to his effort at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, he let them know exactly what he was thinking. In a 7-2 vote, the City Council prevented Teichert from drafting the language of Johnson’s new plan. Johnson and Waters voted in favor of asking Teichert to write the proposed measure. Under the city’s current government structure, the mayor votes on City Council issues. After it was clear that

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has released a new chart on his “strong mayor” proposal, which includes plans for changes to the city budget and the veto powers of the mayor’s office. But local labor leader Bill Camp is saying the chart should not be considered a draft of Johnson's proposal. Johnson is referring to the new chart as a draft proposal, while Camp said it contains "ideas that we ought to talk about." In the lawsuit over the first strong mayor proposal, Camp was the plaintiff.  The City Council will weigh in on Johnson’s new plan June 15. Johnson’s office hopes the City Council will vote in mid-July to place the new proposal on the November ballot. Read Johnson’s new chart on

City Councilman Ray Tretheway has claimed that opponents of his re-election campaign have stolen his online identity. In a May 21 letter addressed to several local agencies, including the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office, Tretheway alleged that the Sacramento Police Officers Association illegally registered the website domain name raytretheway.com. The police officers’ union acknowledged that it has registered raytretheway.com but said it has not violated any laws. Campaign statements show that SPOA provides financial support to Angelique Ashby, one of Tretheway’s competitors in the District 1 City Council race.  “It’s identity theft, clear and simple,” Tretheway said in an

The city attorney’s office is not providing information on how the city will respond to claims of potential quid pro quo in the development department. Allegations of possible quid pro quo at the Community Development Department were mentioned in a Jan. 26 report from the offices of the city attorney and the city manager. But it’s unknown when an investigation into the allegations may begin. In a Monday e-mail response to questions from The Sacramento Press, City Attorney Eileen Teichert referred to the claims of possible quid pro quo as a “personnel issue.” She indicated in her response that some information about the issue may eventually become public depending on whether the city tak

At least two Sacramento City Council members don’t want to let bygones be bygones when it comes to fees that the city’s community development department may not have collected from developers in recent years. Council members Sandy Sheedy and Kevin McCarty said Tuesday that they want the city to see if it can retrieve unpaid fees from development projects that took place in the past few years. Sacramento City Attorney Eileen Teichert released a 2,529-page document last week containing claims about the department’s noncollection, waiver, underassessment and deferral of development fees.  The discussion of fees takes place as the city faces a $35 million-$40 million budget gap. McCarty sa

A series of issues at the city’s Community Development Department — including the noncollection, waiver, underassessment and deferral of fees charged to developers — are presented in a 2,529-page document the city attorney’s office released Thursday. The document is an offshoot from a separate investigation by City Attorney Eileen Teichert’s office and the law firm Renee Sloan Holtzman Sakai. In that investigation, Teichert and Renee Sloan examined city building permits that were approved last year for a flood zone in Natomas. As they investigated that issue, they discovered other issues at the department. These issues are the subject of the lengthy document released Thursday. City offi

Sacramento’s business community has said repeatedly that former City Manager Ray Kerridge established a customer-service culture in the city’s development department. At the same time, the department is wracked with investigations into possible breaches of laws. Now that Kerridge has left the city — March 11 12 was his last day of work — how will the culture of the Community Development Department change? New leadership and the findings from an audit are two upcoming developments that may change the department. The recent resignations of Kerridge and department director Bill Thomas have created job openings. At this point, both positions are being held by interim officials. Gus Vina is i