The secret retirements of Police Chief Gregg Giusiana and
Assistant Chief Lanny Brown not only represent colossal errors in
judgment on the part of City Administrator Jay Baksa, the actions
taken are just plain wrong.
The secret retirements of Police Chief Gregg Giusiana and Assistant Chief Lanny Brown not only represent colossal errors in judgment on the part of City Administrator Jay Baksa, the actions taken are just plain wrong. Wrong for our city, wrong for our community and wrong for the greater good of our society.
While it’s understandable that Mr. Giusiana and Mr. Brown desired to double dip into public funds and double their annual income to $277,772 and $247,426, respectively, it’s wrong. Where does that $525,198 per year come from?
Taxpayers, just like you.
For Mr. Baksa to claim that there is a “savings” to the city of $116,000 annually is, though factual on one level, disingenuous. Moreover, it deflects the conversation from the central issue: one of ethics.
At some point, Mr. Baksa, a man with a great wealth of administrative experience, made a conscious decision not to inform Mayor Al Pinheiro and City Council members that the two top law enforcement officials in the city of Gilroy were retiring. Are there not issues related to replacement strategy, setting precedent – and thereby city policy – for top department managers that should be discussed openly with the elected Council? Is there not an obligation to inform, and seek advice and consent?
Mr. Baksa explained his actions: The city desperately needed Mr. Giusiana and Mr. Brown to see the police department through the transition to the new police station that is scheduled to open next month. At the urging of Mr. Baksa, would Mr. Giusiana and Mr. Brown, after very long careers in Gilroy, not agree to delay their retirement a few months to ease their city through a major transition into a project both professed to hold dear and necessary? Has the city not been, in turn, as good to them as they to it?
The news that the department’s two leaders had retired without informing the rank-and-file officers went over like a ton of bricks in the department. Surely, Mr. Baksa and Mr. Giusiana could have anticipated the risk involved in attempting to keep this information from the public. How can the officers maintain trust and confidence with such perceived purposeful deception?
The decision to keep the retirements a secret from the Council represents a wholesale departure from past practice. When Norm Allen and Bob Connelly retired from planning and community services, respectively, the Council was informed. The notion that retirement only counts when the desk is cleaned out, ignores reality. It is spin that cannot sweeten the sour grapes and mistrust harvested from these grave events.
That the city attorney, in a blatant end run around established law, attempted to grab at straws to find a legal argument to conceal the post-retirement employment contracts of Mr. Giusiana and Mr. Brown from the public’s eyes only rubs salt in the controversy. The attorneys from Berliner Cohen not only gave poor advice, but subjected the city to further divisiveness. Shall Gilroy sign contracts with police employees using public funds shielded from scrutiny? If so, how is the public – let alone the Council – to judge the wise use of resources? Our attorneys should be working toward disclosure and transparency, not bolstering the perception of hidden agendas nor fomenting mistrust.
That leaves the Council with two significant leadership challenges: the formal establishment of policy going forward related to the obligation of the city administrator to inform and seek consent from Council on retirements of top department employees, and the questioning of the closed-government course repeatedly taken by the city’s hired attorneys. On the latter, a second, and perhaps a third, independent opinion should be sought.
How the Council takes up and resolves these issues will say much about how we do things in Gilroy. Hopefully, we will do them openly, with concern for the greater good that acknowledges and affirms, through actions, a common purpose.
