Cunliffe Won’t Be Prosecuted, Atty. Gen. Says

Sylvia Cunliffe, the fiery city department head forced from office in a wave of scandal, will not be prosecuted for disclosing the arrest records of an employee critic, the state attorney general’s office announced Thursday.

State prosecutors concluded that as General Services Department chief, Cunliffe was neither authorized to possess nor distribute the records of former employee Robert O’Neill, who had “blown the whistle” on certain of her activities.

“But in order to charge Cunliffe . . . with criminal receipt or possession of rap sheet information, the burden on prosecutors would be to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she knew she was not authorized to obtain it,” a department statement said. “As no evidence was uncovered to establish she knew she was not authorized to possess the rap sheet in violation of the law, no charges could be filed under that statute.”

Cunliffe, 55, was also cleared of criminal allegations concerning nepotism in the hiring of relatives, favoritism in the rental of city property at below-market prices and mismanagement involving cost overruns in the defunct Street Scene Festival, which she had helped organize.

Tumultuous Period

Thursday’s decision effectively ends a tumultuous period in city politics in which Cunliffe was simultaneously at the core of a controversy over her conduct and the 1989 mayoral race. Cunliffe and her supporters insisted that Mayor Tom Bradley moved to fire her last fall only to escape charges by rival Zev Yaroslavsky that the mayor was ignoring his appointee’s transgressions.

Yaroslavsky said, “I’m not going to second-guess the attorney general,” but he added that neither does he owe Cunliffe an apology.

“She was asked to leave because of the manner in which she was managing the department,” Yaroslavsky said. “With or without any criminal charges, I don’t think it would change that result.”

After disclosures that Cunliffe had hired relatives and had given rental breaks to friends, Bradley placed the department head on a paid leave of absence last June pending an internal investigation of the charges. Last October, the mayor took the unprecedented step of asking the City Council to fire her.

Council Balked

But a bitterly divided council balked at ousting the 30-year bureaucrat. After extensive negotiations she agreed in effect to step down, to drop a lawsuit against the city and begin an unpaid leave until she formally retired on March 4, at an annual pension of $58,000.

Yaroslavsky and several other council members had argued that the settlement would send a clear message that wrongdoing would be tolerated in certain cases.

Councilman Hal Bernson, who first suggested the early retirement plan, said Thursday that the attorney general’s decision vindicated those on the City Council who refused to fire Cunliffe.

“I always like to presume that someone is innocent until proven guilty,” Bernson said. “This only points out the majority of the City Council did the right thing.”

The attorney general took over the investigation of Cunliffe last February after Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner determined that a conflict of interest might exist if his office prosecuted her. Reiner was city attorney while Cunliffe headed the department, creating an attorney-client relationship, said Cunliffe attorney Mark Beck.

The most serious allegation against Cunliffe was that, with the help of departmental security officers, she had improperly obtained arrest records showing that O’Neill had been convicted of several misdemeanors more than 20 years ago. Cunliffe compounded her problem when she then sent a scathing memo about O’Neill, complete with arrest records, to Bradley and several council members.

Attorney’s View

Cunliffe did not respond to a Times request on Thursday for an interview, but her attorney, Beck, said that he was not surprised at the attorney general’s decision.

“I thought all along that an objective prosecutor would decline prosecution,” Beck said. “This (arrest record possession charge) is an extremely technical offense.”

Beck added that Cunliffe remains “extremely distraught” that her career with the city is at an end and said “she will now begin looking for an appropriate position in the private sector.”