Piercy wants voters to clarify auditor oversight.

Byline: Edward Russo The Register-Guard

Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy said Friday that she wants the City Council to consider putting a measure on the Nov. 7 general election ballot that will clarify who has the authority to hire, fire and discipline the staff of the city's yet-to-be-hired police auditor.

The council would have to act fast to meet Piercy's request. The deadline for approving a resolution putting a measure on the November ballot is Monday.

That's when the council is scheduled to offer the police auditor's job to their top candidate, Cristina Beamud, legal adviser to the Cambridge, Mass., police depart- ment.

Piercy, seeking to resolve a long-festering difference of opinion, said she wants the council "to ask the voters' intention regarding the oversight" of the auditor's staff.

She said it's important for Eugene residents, including those who have interactions with the police, to believe that the auditor's office is independent.

"I want this new department to have the trust of the public, and most especially the trust of those who have felt the most vulnerable," she said.

"I don't want there to be a question about voters' intentions, nor a question about the legal basis for oversight of the staff of that department."

The dispute is whether the auditor or City Manager Dennis Taylor will have authority over the auditor's staff. Historically, the city manager has had ultimate authority over all city employees except the municipal court judge and, now, the new auditor.

Voters approved a City Charter amendment last fall that gave the council the authority to hire a police auditor and appoint a civilian review board. However, the amendment didn't say who should hire the auditor's staff.

Taylor agreed to accept the police auditor's recommendations on hiring, firing, transferring and disciplining the auditor's staff, so long as the recommendations don't violate laws or city policies.

That arrangement didn't satisfy some police auditor proponents, who claim Taylor's approach would be thwarting the will of the voters. They say voters thought they were creating an auditor's office independent of the city manager, who oversees the police department.

Taylor's proposal "seems like a very back-door way to sabotage the intent of the voters," said Ron Chase, director of a Eugene nonprofit agency who worked on the campaign to create the auditor position.

The city Police Commission, which recommended creation of the position, voted 9-3 last month to endorse Taylor's approach. Piercy's Friday proposal was a reaction to Taylor's latest word on the subject. In a Thursday memo to councilors, he said he stands by his May decision to retain final authority over the auditor's staff.

Councilor George Poling said he supports Taylor's position, which was reinforced by a written opinion from city attorney Glenn Klein. "I'm 100 percent in support of the city manager's decision," Poling said.

Art Johnson, a private attorney who supported the auditor ballot measure, said in June that the voter-approved charter amendment created a city police auditing function, not just the single police auditor position.

"The independent police auditor and the staff of that office are accountable not to the city manager, but directly to the City Council," he wrote. "That is the only way in which the police auditor can be truly independent."

At Piercy's request, Taylor met with Johnson on Monday to see if the two could reach a compromise. Taylor said he didn't hear anything from Johnson that convinced him that his position is wrong. He said Klein, who also attended the meeting, wasn't convinced, either.

In his written opinion, Klein said the wording of last fall's ballot measure, reinforced by proponents' arguments in the Voters' Pamphlet, didn't give the council or the auditor the power to hire the auditor's staff.

The pamphlet explanation "reveals that at least some of proponents of the amendment were concerned that expanding the City Council's authority to appoint city employees would be controversial and might cause some voters to oppose the measure," he wrote.

Johnson on Friday said he hadn't yet reviewed Taylor's and Klein's writings, but giving the city manager even partial authority over the auditor's staff "creates potential bureaucratic confusion and inefficiency, and would compromise the auditor's independence from city administration."

"It remains a puzzle why the city manager and the city attorney want to continue to compromise this important reform of city administration," he said.

The ballot measure to create the auditor position arose from the sex-crime convictions of former Eugene police officers Roger Magana and Juan Francisco Lara, allegations of racial profiling by Eugene police, and other incidents.

In letters this week, attorneys who represented Magana and Lara victims asked the council to give the auditor complete authority over staff.

"It is a conflict for the city manager, as direct supervisor of the police department, to retain authority over the staffing of an office whose duty is to provide independent investigation into allegations of police misconduct," attorney Greg Velarud wrote.