Great Park settles suit on resumes

The Orange County Great Park will let two of its board members look at resumes it received in a disputed search for a chief executive last year, according to a settlement reached Thursday.

The park board will allow Irvine City Council members Steven Choi and Christina Shea, in a closed session, to examine and make copies of resumes, e-mails, phone records and other documents from the job search, according to the settlement, which an Orange County Superior Court judge must approve.

In January, Choi and Shea sued the Orange County Great Park Corp., a nonprofit agency of the city of Irvine, asking to look at the 150 resumes that recruiter Lisa Mills said she received for the chief executive position.

They had raised doubts about the fairness and scope of the national search after it surfaced that the top two choices had ties to City Hall. Both rejected the post.

The position of the park’s chief executive, who will oversee one of the nation’s largest public works projects, has been vacant for more than a year. Irvine Assistant City Manager Sharon Landers has held the job on an interim basis.

Choi and Shea argued in the suit that as members of the park’s board of directors, they were entitled to see the documents. Their fellow board members voted to deny them access, citing concerns about the applicants’ personal information being leaked.

Choi and Shea have said they have no intention of leaking names.

Neither Choi nor Shea was on the six-person search committee, made up of board members and city officials, and have not seen the 12 resumes that Mills presented to the group in September.

Their attorney, Benjamin Pugh, said the settlement may not put the issue to rest, since his clients could find problems with the recruitment process or choose to contact candidates they feel were overlooked.

“Our intent is to look at the process and to understand if they actually did a full, extensive search,” Shea said. “The whole process appeared very tainted.”

Councilman Larry Agran, the board chairman who had opposed releasing the resumes, said he was “pleased that the matter can be concluded while protecting the principles of right to privacy and confidentiality.”

The park has come under greater scrutiny in recent months as some of the early preparation has stalled.

Lennar Corp., whose commercial, retail and residential development slated for the outer portions of the old Marine Corps air station were expected to provide most of the tax revenue to fund construction of the 1,347-acre park, has postponed plans to build hundreds of homes by this year.

Last month, the firm responsible for demolishing hundreds of acres of runways packed up and left with 98% of the job unfinished, saying Lennar didn’t have work for them.

The park last month hired Michael Ellzey, a former executive director of the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority in San Francisco and one of the five finalists from the search, to oversee the expansion of the park around the balloon and visitors center, creating the new position of deputy chief executive.

But deputy to whom?

There is no timeline for when the top post will be filled, Agran said.

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tony.barboza@latimes.com