Tustin Mayor Proposes Mandatory Drug Tests

Drug screening--including lie-detector tests--would be mandatory for all Tustin municipal employees and elected officials under a proposal before the City Council.

The proposal, made by Mayor Donald J. Saltarelli, also calls for thorough background checks and lie-detector tests for all future applicants for city jobs.

“It’s only fair that everyone takes them,” Saltarelli said of the drug tests. “And it’s important for the people to know who they have working for them.”

Three of the other four members of the City Council said Monday night that they support Saltarelli’s proposal in concept. The three are John Kelly, Richard B. Edgar and Ronald B. Hoesterey.

Edgar said he wants to be sure of the legal ramifications of the proposal before he backs a specific plan. City Atty. James G. Rourke is examining the legality of Saltarelli’s proposal and will report back to the council.

“We want to be sensitive to legal questions,” Edgar said. “We don’t want to do anything foolish.”

Tests ‘Degrading’

Council member Ursula E. Kennedy, who was on vacation when Saltarelli made his proposal at the council’s last meeting, called drug testing “very degrading” but said she will not take a position on the proposal until the city attorney has reviewed it.

It would be the most far-reaching drug-testing program instituted by any Orange County city, officials in Tustin and other local agencies said.

Saltarelli said he thought of the idea some time ago and decided to propose the action after President Reagan announced an attack on drug abuse at the user level.

“If this is a national priority--and I believe it is--then we at a municipal level are going to do anything possible to address it,” Saltarelli said.

He added that municipal employees found to have a drug problem should be rehabilitated rather than fired.

The city employees he has talked to support the idea, he said. “They’d like to work in a drug-free environment. I’m sure they (employee groups) will support it.”

Must Be Negotiated

The presidents of the two unions representing Tustin’s 184 employees declined to comment until a proposal is drafted, but Tim Tucker, president of the Tustin Municipal Employees Assn., said employee-conduct policies must be negotiated with the unions.

The council is expected to discuss the proposal at its Sept. 2 meeting, when Rourke will present a report on its legal ramifications.

“There are lots of problems I don’t think I’d like to get into at this point,” Rourke said. Beside civil rights, other concerns are “questions of (drug tests’) reliability and how it can influence someone’s performance.”

The council, Rourke said, would take a risk by implementing a policy that has not been clearly defined by the courts.

Although he said he knows of no city employees with drug problems, Saltarelli said drug users are liability risks.

“The public interest . . . is not to have taxpayers support other people’s drug habits,” he said.

Broad Proposal

John O’Malley, an administrator with the Orange County Municipal Employees Assn., said the use of polygraph tests and the inclusion of management makes Tustin’s proposal broader than any discussed by other Orange County cities.

“They (other cities) keep talking about it, but they never do anything about it,” he said.

In Newport Beach, where officials have studied the idea of drug testing since early this year, personnel director Duane Munson said Tustin’s proposal is “rather dramatic.”

He said Newport Beach officials have been deliberately slow to adopt a policy while waiting for the courts to interpret civil rights pertaining to drug exams. But polygraphs are already illegal for continued employment, he said.