Oceanside City Manager Resigns for Accounting Position : Government: City Hall officials said Ron Bradley wasn’t asked to leave, despite some frictions. Bradley had undertaken an investigation of three City Council members.

Oceanside City Manager Ron Bradley, a former police officer who last year publicly announced that he was forwarding to the district attorney’s office allegations of wrongdoing by three council members--announced Monday that he is quitting his $101,000-a-year job to go into private business.

Bradley, 50, said he is accepting a job with the nationwide accounting firm of Ernst & Young, and will handle local government affairs out of the company’s regional office in Irvine. The resignation is effective Sept. 28.

Mayor Larry Bagley said he hopes the city can get by with a temporary city manager and delay recruiting a permanent successor until after the City Council election in November.

Bagley said Bradley’s resignation came as a surprise to him.

“He was doing a heck of a good job,” Bagley said. “I think it’s a loss to the city. When he came in, we told him we wanted him to do certain things, and he was doing them.”

Bagley and other council members said the city manager was not asked to leave the job, despite growing criticism of him in some corners of City Hall.

One city official, who asked to remain anonymous, suggested that Bradley had been looking “for a back door out” of City Hall because of growing friction between him and council members.

In particular, Bradley has sparred with one council member over the direction of the city’s redevelopment plans, and with another because of supposed confusion in explaining the city budget.

And one council member, who asked not to be identified by name, said there was lingering resentment over the way in which Bradley handled the investigation into alleged wrongdoing by three council members.

That eight-month investigation was concluded in March when San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller announced that his office had found no wrongdoing by council members Melba Bishop, Sam Williamson and Ben Ramsey.

Allegations had been presented to Bradley by the city’s public works director, Glenn Prentice, that the council members were involved in bribery, conflict of interest and misuse of public funds. Bradley, with the support of his police chief, hired a private investigator to look into the accusations. The city manager disclosed the allegations to the City Council last August, then gave his findings to the district attorney’s office.

In his own response to the city, Miller mildly criticized Bradley for publicly releasing copies of the private investigator’s memorandum on the very day of his announcement that he was seeking the district attorney’s review. That action, Miller said, was made “over our objections--due to the need to preserve the confidentiality and integrity of any pending investigation.”

“I don’t think that endeared him to members of the council,” the council member said of the public disclosure of the investigation. “He put us through months of hell that none of us wanted to go through.”

There was also growing discontent at City Hall between various department managers and Bradley--a division that became more obvious in recent weeks while the city hammered out its new budget, the council member said.

Indeed, one council member, Melba Bishop, said she was “not sorry” to see him go.

“I’m not a hypocrite,” Bishop said. “We didn’t have the best working relationship. My complaint with Ron was that I didn’t think he was giving me enough information to do my job. I wasn’t told things at all, or I was told too late. And I had serious disagreements on how he handled some personnel issues.”

Answered Bradley: “Melba and I disagree on some fundamental issues about local government. That is her right and responsibility. I’ve never felt it prevented us from working together. A good, healthy debate creates a more open and effective government.”

Bradley said he was under no pressure to quit. He described his relationship with the City Council as “cordial.”

Bradley said the information about the pending investigation was released on the advice of the city attorney’s office--and, looking back on it now, he said he wondered if he acted “out of ethics or naivete.”

Nonetheless, he said, he believes he is leaving the post on good terms with the council and looks forward to a change in career--his third, from police work to city management to the private sector.

“Ernst & Young offered me a chance to use my training, experience and education in an area where I’m vitally interested--local government,” Bradley said.

During his tenure in Oceanside, Bradley, implementing the recommendations of a management consulting firm, reorganized the Police Department “to more traditional lines of responsibility and reporting,” he said.

Bradley said he is also happy that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ experimental sand-bypass operation system has successfully gone into operation. The sand pipeline sucks up sand captured on the city’s northern beaches, next to its harbor, and carries it south to sand-starved beaches.

Among the challenges for his successor, Bradley said, are the continued redevelopment of the city’s downtown and beachfront properties and the completion of a study determining the need, design and location of a new police headquarters.

“In local government,” Bradley said, “there are always grass fires to put out.”

Bradley said he will continue to live in Oceanside and commute to his office in Orange County.

Bradley started his public service as a police officer in El Centro and later in La Mesa, where he was elevated through the ranks and became city manager. He was hired in Oceanside in 1988, at an annual salary of $90,000, replacing Suzanne Foucault, who had resigned as city manager under pressure from the City Council.