Bradley Hears of Absences by Housing Chief, Ousts Liaison

Mayor Tom Bradley has dismissed a longtime top aide as his liaison to the Los Angeles City Housing Authority Board after learning recently that the board’s chairman had not attended a board meeting for six months, Deputy Mayor Michael Gage said Sunday.

On Saturday, Bradley reprimanded Gage, his chief of staff, for a “breakdown in the staff” and removed Deputy Mayor Grace Montanez Davis from her duties as Housing Authority liaison, Gage said.

The mayor, according to Gage, was displeased that his staff had failed to alert him to Chairman Alvin Greene’s repeated absences. As liaison, Davis regularly attended the board’s meetings.

But in an interview Sunday, Davis said that she repeatedly advised Bradley that Greene, a Pacific Palisades businessman, had missed all twice-monthly board meetings since May.

“The mayor knew about it,” Davis said. “I kept (him) informed of these things.”

Bradley decided to seek Greene’s resignation last week, aides said.

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who is expected to oppose Bradley in next year’s mayoral election, demanded Thursday that the mayor remove Greene from the commission.

Bradley could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Despite Davis’ statement Sunday, Gage said Bradley was unaware of Greene’s attendance problem until the mayor’s office was notified last Monday by a KCBS-TV Channel 2 reporter.

“When I talked to (Bradley) on Monday, he did not know the extent of this guy’s absences, period, no matter what Grace Davis said,” Gage said. “He was stunned and said, ‘Please find him and ask him to resign.’ ”

The mayor’s office could not locate Greene, who was out of town on business, until the end of last week, when Bradley asked him to resign, Gage said.

From now on all city boards and commissions will be required to report attendance directly to Gage, the chief of staff said.

Bradley plans to name a replacement for Greene, his appointed chairman of the housing board since 1983, and has instructed Gage to reassign Davis’ liaison duties to another staff member. Gary Squier, the mayor’s aide on the homeless and housing, will probably assume the liaison duties, Gage said.

In a bizarre twist, Davis said that Bradley failed to inform her that she was being stripped of her Housing Authority responsibilities during telephone conversations on both Saturday and Sunday.

‘Ought to Consider Changes’

“He said that maybe we ought to consider changes for this department and we ought to talk about them (today),” said Davis, a member of the Bradley administration since 1973 and a key adviser on Latino issues.

“I don’t know that I have been deficient, and I don’t think that he meant to reprimand me. . . .

“Is there an indication he is unhappy?” Davis asked.

Gage, after conferring with Davis, said that Bradley advised Davis of his plans to relieve her of her housing board role “in the broader context of several staff assignments to be shifted.”

Gage also said that Davis had failed to alert the mayor of Greene’s continuous absences because “there wasn’t a problem with a quorum,” the minimum number of board members needed for a meeting.

But Davis told The Times on Sunday that she first informed Bradley of Greene’s absences in June and later followed up with two informal memos. Davis said she also notified the mayor as recently as two weeks ago during a meeting in Bradley’s office.

“We talked about this and said he is still not attending the meetings,” Davis said. “We weren’t complaining. The board continued to function. It’s just a question of not being there at the meetings. . . . Nothing was decided at the time” regarding Greene’s attendance.