Treasurer’s Wife Appeals Plan to Water Down Job : Torrance: City Council delays final action on investment officer position. The decision to create the job is prompted by the loss of $6.2 million in funds.

The wife of embattled Torrance Treasurer Thomas C. Rupert appealed to the City Council this week not to be hasty in removing some of her husband’s powers to invest city funds.

“Please don’t be so fast to strip the office,” Marie Rupert asked the council Tuesday night as it considered changes in the city’s investment procedures in the wake of what appears to be a $6.2-million investment loss.

The council later set in motion plans for hiring a new investment officer but postponed deciding who that person would report to, the treasurer or another department.

Just hours earlier, the city received a workers’ compensation claim from Rupert, who has been on sick leave for more than two weeks. City officials have 90 days to determine if his illness is job-related. If the claim is found to be job-related, Rupert would receive 90% of his annual salary of about $68,000.

In an emotional speech, Marie Rupert told the council that her husband is still very sick, but promised that he will return to work.

“It takes time to gain your confidence back, and your strength, when all of this has come down on you and it is being blamed on you alone,” she said.

“No, Tom is not going to run with his tail between his legs, like a couple of you would like--he is going to get well and be back stronger than ever. All he needs right now is a little support and understanding from all of you.”

In a later interview, Marie Rupert said that her husband is suffering from “deep depression and stress.”

Rupert, 58, an elected treasurer who has served for 28 years, was thrust into the spotlight two months ago with news of the apparent loss of more than $6 million in city funds that he had entrusted to Steven D. Wymer, an Orange County investment adviser who has pleaded innocent to charges of securities fraud. Rupert has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The council long ago had delegated the responsibility for investments to Rupert. But after questions surfaced this winter about his investment decisions, the city manager’s office and the city’s outside auditors, Deloitte & Touche, recommended a series of procedural changes that diluted Rupert’s authority. The council adopted a number of those changes Feb. 4.

On Tuesday, council members took up Deloitte & Touche’s recommendation to create a position for a new investment officer with “an educational background and experience in fixed-income and money-market investments.”

But Rupert, in a memorandum to the council dated Saturday, called the hiring of an investment officer premature. He suggested that the city rely on a senior accountant in the Finance Department. Rupert wrote that he expects to return to work by March 23.

After Marie Rupert’s speech, the council rejected Councilman Bill Applegate’s motion to start developing an investment officer’s position in the Finance Department. Instead, the council voted to begin developing specifications for the job--but to delay deciding whom the officer would report to.

City Manager LeRoy J. Jackson said his office will prepare a job description and return with it in 60 to 90 days.

“We’re not locked in on anything,” Mayor Katy Geissert said Wednesday.

In her speech to the council, Marie Rupert praised her husband’s abilities. “He has been and still (is) the leader in his field and has made millions and millions for this city,” she said.

“Now you’re trying to strip his office of all of the duties and him of his dignity and self-esteem.”