ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Family Planning in Seal Beach

At the heart of a recent controversial grand jury report citing nepotism in the Seal Beach Police Department was a recommendation that the City Council accept some responsibility.

It’s disappointing to find out now exactly what the city interprets as responsibility. Just call it “Family Planning in Seal Beach.”

The grand jury report had noted that the police chief supposedly gave preferential hiring consideration to his wife for a court liaison job. It included a strong suggestion that the council address the nepotism issue simply by making sure that the city’s personnel rules, which say that no two relatives can be employed in the same city department, are observed.

When the report was issued, Mayor Edna Wilson professed surprise at the jury’s conclusions and appeared to set the city on the right track by offering a strong pledge to do whatever was needed to address the panel’s concerns.

So now, a month later, we have Seal Beach’s idea of a solution. Instead of requiring the players to play within the rules, the city instead will simply change the rules to accommodate the players.

The city is proposing a relaxation of the existing requirement to bar two relatives from working in the same department only if one relative would directly supervise the other, or, if the city decided that, for other reasons, the potential for conflict of interest would be greater than for two unrelated persons.

Under this system, a police chief at the top of his department’s organizational chart would not be supervising a court liaison, who might just happen to be his wife. So everything would be fine.

When this proposal was announced, there was enough of a howl in Seal Beach to embarrass the City Council into a holding pattern. It put off a vote on the new policy until September.

That’s time enough to affirm the value of the existing rules and to decide to enforce them.