Martinez to Retire After 13 Years as L.A. City Clerk

Three years after a nasty and expensive struggle to save his job, Elias “Lee” Martinez announced his retirement Wednesday as Los Angeles city clerk, a post he has held since 1983.

The resignation marks the departure of a City Hall stalwart who began his career 36 years ago at the age of 22 parking officials’ city-owned cars and ended near the top of the bureaucracy, driving one. Running a largely invisible department of administrators, Martinez landed in the spotlight twice in recent years, first for refusing to remove from the ballot an initiative then-Mayor Tom Bradley said he signed by mistake, and then as the target of sexual harassment allegations by three employees.

Martinez, 58, said Bradley cooked up the sexual harassment charges as political retribution against him for their brawl over the 1991 ballot initiative, and successfully fought his firing by the City Council with an appeal to the Civil Service Commission. Cleared of the accusations, he won a $215,000 settlement from the city.

He said he plans to spend the next six months reading, then help his wife with her antiques business.

“I just want to relax--see if I can learn to relax,” Martinez said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s been a long time coming, I guess you might say. I’ve been mulling it over for about a year, and it’s time.”

In a letter to Mayor Richard Riordan, Martinez said he “never had the experience of getting up in the morning and not wanting to come to work,” but that his last day would be Sept. 14.

“Lee Martinez is a consummate career employee for the city of Los Angeles,” Riordan said in a written statement. “Lee served Los Angeles with pride and he leaves a solid track record of service on behalf of Angelenos. I wish him well in the next chapter of his life.”

Riordan named J. Michael Carey as interim city clerk. A graduate of Occidental College and Southwestern University College of Law, Carey has worked in city government since 1972.

Martinez started as a city employee earning $4,260 a year in 1960; his current salary is $126,674. His career included stints as a vehicle dispatcher, methods and standards technician, legislative analyst and mayoral administrative coordinator before landing at the city clerk’s office. He runs a department of 400 employees with a $37-million budget.

“For me, being appointed city clerk was a cap on a long career,” Martinez said Wednesday. “My serving in that position validates the Civil Service process, that a person can come in and work his way up through the system, work the long hard hours and get promoted.”