In an article published on Friday, Santa Monica Daily Press editor Matt Hall repeats Oscar de la Torre’s false claims about what René Bobadilla said in his offer withdrawing his acceptance of the city manager position in June 2021. The council’s decision not to investigate this and other leaks, in large part because of the votes of de la Torre and running mate Phil Brock, has made the leaks a hot issue in the current City Council race.
Hall writes,
However, the candidate in question, Renee Bobadilla said the leaking of his name to the press wasn’t actually a factor in his decision. In an interview with the Daily Press he said the City of Santa Monica used an “unorthodox” process for hiring him that included listing his name as the city’s choice on a public agenda before securing a contract with him.
These comments echo what de la Torre said at the June 11 council meeting where the majority of de la Torre, Phil Brock, Christine Parra, and Lana Negrete not only once again killed an investigation into closed session leaks despite “we’ll investigate it if it happens again” being their excuse for killing the first investigation, but inexplicably added that councilmembers don’t have to follow any ethics rules until the new council is seated in December. As reported by Santa Monica Next editor Damien Newton,
De la Torre scoffed that he talked to the candidate, Rene Bobadilla and stated that there was no indication he rejected the offer to serve as City Manager because of the leak.
But the public record on this is clear.
On May 23, 2021, retired Montebello Fire Captain Vernon Creswell called into a special Sunday closed session city council meeting to give public comment in which he says he’s speaking based on “rumors that our city manager may have applied…for the position of city manager with the city of Santa Monica.” He proceeds to disparage Bobadilla and recommends that Santa Monica not hire him. This public comment starts at 5:15 in the recording of the meeting. (The original recording of the council meeting, which was not published on the city’s YouTube page, can be found here; I have reposted it to my personal YouTube channel for ease of embedding and sharing.)
None of the city council agenda packets from prior to or including this May 23 meeting make mention of Bobadilla’s name. His name was not (properly) made public until his selection was announced on June 8. To be extra clear, it’s the norm for a closed session candidate selection process to only reveal the name of the selected individual at the end of the process; the full list of applicants is not disclosed and neither is the list of applicants who ultimately withdraw or get rejected.
In short, at the moment that Creswell called into that meeting, the only people that officially knew of Bobadilla’s candidacy were Bobadilla, the City Council, staff working on the hiring and staff in the room. The purpose of a potential investigation into the leak would have been to determine which of those people leaked his name, and to whom the leak was made.
Then, on June 10, Bobadilla sent a letter to Mayor Sue Himmelrich withdrawing his application to be Santa Monica’s city manager in which he states “I am, however, truly disappointed by the way this matter became public. Unfortunately, this significantly compromised the situation and impacted my ability to have robust, confidential communications without undue external influence.”
Bobadilla’s letter makes it clear that his consideration to be Santa Monica’s city manager was made public in an inappropriate manner. And contemporaneous reporting in the Santa Monica Lookout from June 1, 2021 and June 4, 2021 corroborates that Bobadilla’s name first became public knowledge due to Creswell’s public comment.
So how did a retired fire captain from Montebello who was not privy to Santa Monica Santa Monica city council closed sessions know that his city’s manager was under consideration in Santa Monica over two weeks before his name first appeared in any Santa Monica city council agendas or press releases? And why is Hall helping de la Torre mislead the public about what happened when the real story is easily documented via the public record?
Creswell’s letter was not available to Santa Monica Next at the time of publication. If it becomes available, it will be added to this story.
