As a C-suite executive faced with an impending layoff because of an organizational restructuring, what do you do? Why, that all-American thing, of course: You sue.
Or, if you’re a government employee, the equivalent: You make an internal claim, seeking a cash settlement.
And if you’re current Los Angeles County Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport, you walk away with a cool $2 million at the taxpayers’ expense, a payout that was confidential until Pasadena public radio station LAist uncovered it in obscure language in county documents from a July 29 closed session in which the county Board of Supervisors approved a settlement agreement that was never reported to the public.
Davenport already cashed the check in August to compensate her for damages she claimed occurred in the campaign supporting passage of county Measure G, which created a countywide elected CEO position to replace her current appointed job — including what she claimed was “reputational harm, embarrassment and physical, emotional and mental distress caused by the Measure G,” LAist reporter Nick Gerda found in records obtained from the county.
What a sick trick this is on Angelenos already saddled with a county government in financial distress, to see the executive overseeing a problematic budget stick it to the citizenry by adding a new expense based on her supposed embarrassment.
As we said in our editorial opposing Measure G, the plan to create an elected CEO — a countywide mayor — is a terrible one, putting a pure politician who can win a campaign from Lancaster to Long Beach in charge of a $50 billion budget and labor relations when the job is better-suited to an appointed city manager-like executive.
But Measure G won, and the county mayor election will be held in 2028, and Davenport is free to run in it along with the assorted politicians salivating at the prospect of what will be one of the most powerful elected positions in California.
The CEO, on medical leave through the end of the year, says the measure impugned her reputation with this wording: “the lack of strong, elected executive leadership has impacted our ability to address these challenges.” She claims her new $2M is “not so beyond the pale to be unreasonable.” After all, her predecessor left with a $1.5 million payout.
Close enough, as they say, for government work.