Gilroy
– Heading off potential controversy, Jane Howard has stepped
down from her role as chair of a local political body after her
recent appointment as interim director of a partly publicly funded
agency.
Gilroy – Heading off potential controversy, Jane Howard has stepped down from her role as chair of a local political body after her recent appointment as interim director of a partly publicly funded agency.
Howard, who served as chair of the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce’s Government Relations Committee last year, accepted the position as interim director of the Gilroy Economic Development Corp. last month, replacing Bill Lindsteadt, who ran the EDC for eight years until he died Jan. 13.
The GRC is a roughly 20-member political advisory committee to the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. If Howard had remained chair of the GRC, it might have been perceived as a conflict of interest because while taxpayers dollars help fund her EDC salary, she would have had oversight of the GRC, a political entity.
The city provides the largest chunk – $108,000 – of the corporation’s $198,000 annual budget. The remaining funding sources are $45,000 from business partnerships, $10,000 from grants and $5,000 from other income.
Howard’s $1,000 per week salary as interim director of the EDC is drawn from the corporation’s general fund, said Vic Vanni, president of the EDC board of directors. No one funding source – including the city – pays more for Howard’s position than another, Vanni said.
At a recent GRC meeting, a recommendation was made for Howard to step down and Rob Oneto, former committee vice chair and current chamber board member, to assume the interim position.
Like Lindsteadt, Howard will serve on the committee simply as a representative of the EDC and will not vote on committee matters.
“I will be attending (GRC) meetings, but I will be wearing the hat as the interim executive director of the EDC,” Howard said.
But GRC member Chris Coté said he thought a fairer, more Democratic approach would have been to hold a vote to appoint the committee chair.
“I would have voted for Rob Oneto, but we should have held a vote,” he said. “My reaction is, why is the leadership afraid of another vote? Perhaps because the results will not serve their ends. … I don’t think they did the right thing.”
Tim Day, GRC member and chamber president elect, said the committee’s bylaws specify that when the chair must take a short leave of absence for any reason, the vice chair automatically steps in for the interim, and no other committee members took issue with the process.
“It was absolutely fair. All chairs are appointed by the board of directors, not elected by the committee,” Day said. “Both Jane and Chris do a lot of good in the community, but I don’t really know what the problem is.”
GRC member Ky Lai said the process of Oneto’s appointment to chair followed the exact procedure he’s seen in his 25 years of experience serving on various boards and committees.
“This is the first time I’ve been in any committee that someone challenged the role of the vice chair,” Lai said. “You can be over-technical about it, but I think almost everybody’s opinion who was gathered at the meeting is that’s the whole reason for the vice chair: to take over when the chair goes on a short leave of absence. That’s how things are done.”
