To the Editor:
What a long awaited relief to see the continual overempowerment of Geoff Dolan finally come to a screeching halt. Even in his release, Dolan managed to again snooker the sitting City Council to follow his lead (by paying him full severance when his employment contract called for no such payment given his immediate resignation – or, say, firing for cause). His final brazen attempt to further extort us for yet another $2M (!!) was thankfully met by our City finally recognizing it was the patsy in Dolan’s greedy game.
The significance of our City’s new stance in this case cannot be overstated. Huge kudos to those who helped finally lead our City to this long awaited turn toward not only recognizing, but actually defending the public’s interest in transparency and open government.
Now, to stay on this most welcomed new path, our City must take three additional steps to successfully find its way past the mismanagement of Dolan’s release:
1) successfully collect any and all associated legal fees from Dolan (as specified in his Resignation and Release Agreement);
2) release the only remaining sealed document from the McKee case, the City’s summary report of investigating the claims from the anonymous/‘whistleblower’ letter;
3) issue an explanation of why, in direct conflict with his employment contract, full severance was paid to Dolan.
Anything less will call into question our City’s true commitment to the very principles of transparency and open government that we just used to successfully defend ourselves in the Dolan case.
Gerry O’Connor
Manhattan Beach
