Friday, Oct. 23, 2009

Treasurer appointment turns into tiff about importance of the job

Councilman takes on mayor about 'token' issue

Councilman Mike Villalta, who had already voiced his support for one of the two candidates for the appointment, was angered when Mayor Tommy Jones referred to the title of treasurer as "a token position."

Villalta then requested to speak. Jones told Villalta he had already spoken and he could speak again after the vote. Villalta became incensed.

"I'm not going to speak after the vote. You speak before the vote," he screamed. "I'm going to speak anyway. This is not a token position. Don't ever mention tokenism when it comes to handling city finances."

The council eventually voted 3-2 to allow city Accountant Martha Brazil to serve as treasurer, a position formerly held by retired Chief Financial Officer Melinda Wall. Wall resigned as treasurer Sept. 30. She resigned her position as CFO in favor of retirement Aug. 31, after the arrest of former utility billing technician Mary Ann Jones on suspicion of embezzling nearly $2 million from the city. Jones pleaded no contest to six felonies this week.

Brazil, who has worked in the city's finance department for the past seven years, was competing with only one other person for the treasurer appointment.

Mark Bodley, a retired former employee of the Los Baños Unified School District, also applied for the position.

Councilman Tom Faria nominated Bodley for the job, saying that since Brazil already works for the city he could be an extra set of eyes keeping track of Los Baños' financial records. As a high school teacher, Faria has experience working with Bodley.

"I'll never forget when I went to a music teachers' convention in the early '90s and half the music teachers there had their pink slips because of budget cuts. Los Baños didn't have that problem because of the management skills of Mr. Bodley," Faria said.

Councilwoman Elizabeth Stone nominated Brazil.

When the votes were announced Stone, Jones and Councilman Joe Sousa voted for Brazil. Villalta and Faria voted for Bodley.

Jones thanked both candidates, and then seemingly contradicted his earlier statement that city treasurer is a token position.

"Forever we've always had this as an inside position. One of my concerns was how do we know what difference if we had an outside candidate not here every minute with the CFO, what kind of additional problems would be made. I was not really sure about that."

Treasurer is an elected position. Brazil will have to run for re-election next year if she wants to remain in the position past the end of Wall's term.

Enterprise reporter Corey Pride can be reached by phone at (209)388-6563 or by e-mail at cpride@losbanosenterprise.com