Santa Ana’s City Manager censured due to his relationship with a city employee

Santa Ana City Manager David Cavazos has finally paid a price for his sordid behavior at city hall. He was publicly censured by the International City/County Management Association, an international association of government leaders that Cavazos belongs to, for being in a relationship with a subordinate Santa Ana employee, according to the O.C. Register.

You might recall that Cavazos dumped his wife when he left the City of Phoenix for a bigger paycheck here in Santa Ana, where he is the highest paid City Manager in Orange County.

The executive board of the International City/County Management Association voted on June 4 that they found it to be inappropriate for Cavazos to have a personal relationship with a city worker.

In case you are wondering who she is, all I can say is that she works in the city’s Planning Agency and she is a divorced mother.  I know exactly who she is but am keeping her name out of the fray so as to not hurt her family.

The association stated in a letter to Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido that Cavazos’ conduct “violates two tenets of ICMA’s code of ethics. One tenet relates to public confidence; the other spells out members should disclose personal relationships to the governing body when it appears there could be a conflict of interest.”

Every state has harassment laws that are used to prosecute managers like Cavazos for workplace dalliances. The tough part to figure out is if the subordinate was treated differently by Cavazos because of their relationship or if she even was all that willing in the first place.  It is, needless to say, extremely ill-advised for Cavazos to purse sexual relationships at city hall, particularly after what happened to former Santa Ana City Councilman Carlos Bustamante, who was convicted of trying to sex up his colleagues at the County of Orange, where he used to work.

There are 10,000 city and county managers and other government leaders worldwide, who belong to the association in question, including Cavazos.

Apparently Cavazos will get away with his behavior as the City Council majority supports him. In fact the brazen Cavazos plans to attend the association’s annual conference in September. Yes we the taxpayers will be paying for that trip.

Cavazos claims that his workplace relationship is not prohibited by any federal, state or city rule. Maybe so but it is a pretty stupid thing for Cavazos to do!

Despite Cavazos’ ridiculous behavior, the Santa Ana City Council majority voted this February to extend his massive contract until February of 2019.  And the City Council gave this creep a 5 percent bonus in January. He makes $372,165 a year – which is almost as much as President Barack Obama makes. President Obama makes $400K a year according to Wikipedia.

We will have a chance this November to vote against some of the Council Members who so richly rewarded Cavazos, as they will be up for re-election.