SAN DIEGO PERSPECTIVE : Discretion Wasn’t Better Part of Valor

The public, and its elected representatives on the San Diego City Council, are owed a lot of explanations about $100,000 in cash and benefits that former City Manager John Lockwood approved for a former employee who filed a sexual harassment complaint against her boss, Planning Director Robert Spaulding, with whom she had a personal relationship.

Lockwood, who is director of general services for the state, admits that he deliberately structured the payment arrangements to keep within the law so he would not have to report the settlement to the council. He said he wanted to protect the privacy of the employees’ families.

The families of both Spaulding and the woman deserve compassion. Spaulding is married and has four children. But compassion is not an appropriate basis for Lockwood’s decision.

Serious allegations of sexual harassment against any department head by an employee who reports to him ought to be brought to the council’s attention, as a matter of policy. Obviously, Lockwood took these allegations seriously enough to agree to a $100,000 stress-related disability.

The fact that Spaulding reports directly to the council, not to the city manager as do most department heads, makes full disclosure to the mayor and the council all the more imperative.

Lockwood, who was city manager for more than four years and was assistant city manager before that, should have known all of this.

So, too, should City Atty. John Witt, who says that all he did was approve the language of the agreement to protect the city from future claims. He says he was just following the direction of the city manager.

But Witt hardly needs to follow the dictates of the city manager, since the city attorney is elected independently.

At the very least, both should also have known that keeping such a payment secret was unrealistic.

Personal relationships are difficult to keep quiet in an office, in even the most discreet circumstances. When one of the partners is the boss and the other files a claim against the boss, the difficult becomes nearly impossible. Revelation of the secrecy will probably only magnify the families’ pain.

Lockwood and Witt owe the City Council better explanations than they’ve provided so far. And the public is owed a full explanation of the lack of checks and balances that allowed this to go undetected.