City Aide Backs Bill Tied to Study That Earned Him $30,000

After getting paid $30,000 to conduct a study for a California landlord group, a mid-level employee with the city’s Rent Stabilization Division submitted an official report last week urging the city to support proposed state legislation that is backed by his private research.

Senior management analyst James C. Fleck in his personal time produced a study last year that concluded California landlords lose up to $270 million annually because of the lag time between filing a lawsuit for nonpayment of rent and seizing the property.

Last week, he prepared a city evaluation of a state bill that would require tenants to post rent deposits if they go to court to contest eviction notices for nonpayment. The legislation is supported by the California Apartment Law Information Foundation, the group that paid Fleck to conduct the study last year.

Fleck’s dual role as city analyst and landlord consultant is “outrageous,” said Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival.

“For a tenant to see someone in that department actively working on behalf of landlords, one has to question what kind of fair shake they are going to get,” Gross said. “I think it is totally inappropriate for someone there to be involved in legislation that basically takes away rights from tenants.”

Fleck and his city supervisor said that he has done nothing improper.

However, the mayor’s office last week moved quickly to “insulate” Fleck from any further discussions or decisions on the proposed legislation, said Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani. Moreover, the city will take no position on the proposed legislation because of Fleck’s role in the bill, Fabiani said.

Although Fleck’s activities raise conflict-of-interest concerns, Fabiani said, the mayor’s office has no plans to to file a complaint with the city attorney’s office.

“Since he’s been insulated, for our purposes that solves the problem,” Fabiani said.

“Concerned parties,” he said, could request an opinion from the city attorney on the matter. Conflict-of-interest provisions of the City Charter have been used to bar people from matters when their involvement might give the appearance of a conflict, Fabiani said.

Assistant City Atty. Tony Alperin declined to comment on the matter or to discuss city conflict-of-interest regulations.

Fleck and his city supervisor, Barbara Zeidman, insisted in separate interviews that he has no such conflict and handled the matter properly. Fleck said he received approval from Zeidman and the city’s Community Development Department to work for the California Apartment Law Information Foundation. He also publicly disclosed the $30,000 fee on his statement of economic interest.

“There can’t be anybody in the city who has been more open about this than me,” Fleck said. “If you want a model of someone who has followed every rule the city has, that is what I have done.”

Fleck suggested in an interview that the mayor’s office is waging “a last-minute political effort” to attack a bill that it doesn’t support, even though the city passed a similar ordinance several years ago.

“They have succeeded in intimidating this department into not taking a position that the mayor’s office doesn’t like,” he said.

As a $49,000-a-year city analyst who is responsible for reviewing all pending legislation on rent control, Fleck said he was following his routine duties when he issued an assessment of the state bill last week. In his city report, Fleck said, he noted that he had conducted the field research that was used to help prepare the bill, introduced by state Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco).

Fleck said he recommended that the city support the bill because Los Angeles already has a similar ordinance, not because he was paid to do the survey. The city ordinance has not been enforced by the courts because of the cost of establishing escrow accounts to hold rental deposits.

“I am a technician,” Fleck said. “I do research for the city, no question about that. What I did for the landlords, frankly, was get information that the city was interested in as well. The city was able to get $30,000 worth of information for free.”

The study examined a sampling of 2,400 unlawful-detainer cases in 21 counties and concluded that landlords lose up to $270 million a year because of delays between filing a lawsuit for nonpayment of rent and the seizure of property, Fleck said.

The mayor’s office has no problem with Fleck’s conducting the study, Fabiani said.

“It is one thing to work on a report on your own time,” Fabiani said. “It’s another to come back to your job and work to influence the position that your department or the city takes on that report.”

Fabiani said that Fleck’s supervisor should have known of Fleck’s previous involvement in the study and assigned someone else to review the bill.

But Zeidman, head of the city’s Rent Stabilization Unit, said she did not hesitate to have Fleck evaluate Kopp’s bill.

“I do not see a conflict of interest,” Zeidman said. “Jim is a mid-level staff person. He does not make policy. . . . He is the head of the research unit. The other (researcher), frankly, has been with me three months and doesn’t know enough to do a fast piece of legislative analysis.”