It’s seven o’clock on the evening of July 27, 2011, and Ken Hampian is sitting in the front row of the city council meeting in Bell, California. After a thirty-minute conversation with the city council, he now waits in the packed auditorium as the four newly elected members of the council and the Mayor privately discusses whether he will step in as the city’s interim Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). Five days prior, Hampian had been enjoying life as the retired City Manager of San Luis Obispo, with hardly a passing thought about Bell, but a single word, emailed to Hampian on the night of July 22nd changed everything.
The city of Bell, with a population of 35,000, sits just southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The two and a half square miles that make up the city are bisected by the 710 freeway. It’s a modest city, and probably never expected to make national headlines until scandal shook the local government in July of 2010. [Right: Kevin O’Rourke with ICMA stands outside Bell city hall]
The CAO of Bell at the time was Robert Rizzo, a name now synonymous with fraud. He and seven other city officials are currently awaiting trail for several felony charges including misappropriation of public funds and falsifying official records. Special elections were held after their arrests, and a new city council and mayor stepped in without any official training or preparation.
The interim CAO, Pedro Carrillo, was tasked with finding his replacement. However, the first recruitment effort, which ended on July 8, didn’t produce a single applicant for the position. The City Council extended the application deadline to July 22 – Carillo’s last day.
Bell’s inability to attract even one CAO applicant in their first RFQ was a big red flag. It quickly caught the attention of Robert O’Neill and Kevin Duggan at the International City/County Management Association (ICMA)[Pictured right]. “Up until that point there was an assumption that Bell was doing fine,” said Duggan, “that they were getting things resolved themselves.” But the situation was worse than it appeared. The damage caused by poor and dishonest management, along with the ensuing controversy, all but dismantled Bell’s local government. When the dust settled, only one department head remained. With little or no general policies in place – not even an employee handbook – the organization was reeling. Trying to make sense of the mess left after Rizzo’s arrest, while managing the day to operations of the city, required not just a CAO, but a great one. Someone with enough experience to help get them back on track.
With ICMA’s help, word of the CAO opening in Bell was more widely promoted. When Carrillo’s term ended on July 22, 2011, the extended recruitment had produced 40 applications, but due to significant understaffing, the application envelopes had not even been opened. With no near term options available, Mayor Ali Saleh reluctantly stepped in to serve as city manager – an unsustainable arrangement, to say the least.
The Friday that Mayor Saleh stepped in as CAO, the members of ICMA took it upon themselves to help spread word of Bell’s immediate need for an interim CAO, starting with their associates at the League of California Cities (LCC) and the California City Management Foundation (CCMF). “Within 2 hours we were all brainstorming,” said Duggan. “There was such a quick recognition of the opportunity here. It just clicked.”
Before the night was through, Wade Mckinney of CCMF [Pictured left], who had been lobbying Hampian previously about Bell with messages like “It could be fun!” forwarded ICMA’s urgent call for short-term help with only a one word: “Interested?” By Sunday, Hampian had committed to the very short-term assignment. “The past leadership of (Bell) obviously did great harm to the community and the city government,” Hampian said, “but harm was also done to the City Management profession and to public servants in general. This was an opportunity to show Bell what honest, ethical, professional service can do for a community.”
Hampian agreed to take on the job for one month, but insisted it be pro bono. In exchange for a $59 a night motel room, a modest per diem for food, mileage reimbursement and a cell phone, Hampian jumped in to tackle three main challenges; to find a longer term interim (and perhaps permanent) CAO, to assemble a team of pro bono assistants like himself to help Bell get back on its feet, and to confront the facts of what challenges Bell’s city council will have to deal with in the coming years.
The council and mayor considered his offer. When they came back out into the open session on that fateful night of July 27th, they informed Hampian that he had been confirmed by a 5-0 vote, and welcomed him to sit in the CAO’s seat straight away. Hampian had every intention of just observing that first meeting, but it wasn’t long before the council was turning to him for advice. “This is a really bright, smart city council, but none of them have served in elected office before,” said Hampian. By the end of the night there was no question he was fully engaged as the city’s CAO. “If you had told me five days earlier where I would be that night, I would have said you were out of your mind.”
That council meeting went until two in the morning. Six hours later Hampian was back at City Hall to begin his first full day as CAO. Dave Mora was waiting for him and they were soon joined by Kevin Duggan and Kevin O’Rourke of ICMA. The three set to work sorting through the 40 unopened applications for CAO. There were a handful of promising applications, but the recommendation to Hampian was to extend the deadline once again, to allow CCMF, ICMA and LCC to launch an all-out direct, personal outreach effort on Bell’s behalf.
“ICMA has people in Iraq, Afghanistan and all over the world trying to help communities restore or establish good effective local government,” said Duggan. “If a city council in east LA was in need, it just didn’t seem reasonable that our profession wouldn’t step in to help.” Five days later, the additional recruitment push resulted in another 20 applications – including some very strong ones.
“Once CCMF, ICMA and the League put their blessings on this effort,” said O’Rourke [Pictured left], “good managers began to step up.” What’s more, offers for pro bono assistance came flooding in from all over the state. Finance directors, independent consultants, police deputies, city managers and assistant city managers both active and retired have contacted Hampian to add their names to the list of people willing to come help in any way they can, all pro bono. The Institute of Local Government sent a proposal for training workshops they were prepared to offer for free on topics such as Effective city council meetings and Involving the public in the budget process. When asked why they have offered to help they all give a variation on the same answer: it’s just the right thing to do.
“Something about this crisis struck a nerve with those of us in City Management,” said Hampian. “Most of us got into local government because we’re passionate about service.”
By the end of Hampian’s second week the applicant pool for the CAO position had been pared down to three excellent contenders, and on August 12th Arne Croce was named the next interim CAO of Bell. Croce served as City Manager of San Mateo, California for eighteen years before retiring in 2008. In addition to his time working in the bay area, Croce has worked with USAID on a local government project in Iraq, assisted with the modernization of the financial system in Lebanon, and consulted on projects in Singapore and Mexico. [Right: Ken Hampian, seated, at work for the City of Bell]
Due to restrictions set forth by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), Croce will not be able to come on as a long-term replacement, but his term as CAO will represent a crucial phase in Bell’s recovery and development. Croce will work pro bono during his first week, overlapping with Hampian’s final days, to assure the smoothest possible transition. “It couldn’t have turned out any better,” says Duggan.
Croce’s appointment is just one of the many ways in which Bell is getting back on its feet. With the support of the city management profession as a whole, Bell is taking its first steps toward a complete overhaul of its local government. City council meetings have already begun to transform from cacophonic, eight-hour ordeals to calm and respectful assemblies. The financial challenges ahead are being addressed methodically and (with the help of pro bono consultants) expertly. Trust is beginning to build again, and if there is a plus side to the ordeal that Bell has been through, it is a highly engaged populace. Lead by a City Council that is unwavering in its commitment to reform – and with continuing guidance from professional managers – Bell has the potential not just to survive, but to thrive.
-Written by April Davila of Tripepi Smith