Hiring Reversal Fuels Tension in Pasadena

Six weeks ago, it appeared that the Pasadena City Council had finally found a candidate to fill its long-vacant city attorney’s job.

It settled on Cheryl Ward, one of Los Angeles City Atty. James Hahn’s top deputies. The council offered Ward the job, which would have made her the first African American city attorney in Pasadena’s history.

Her supporters said her presence also could have brought change to a city department whose female attorneys have filed a suit alleging discrimination.

But the council announced Tuesday that it had decided on a 4-3 vote to withdraw its offer to hire Ward--an offer the majority said had always been subject to a background review.

“The background investigation raised issues and questions that ultimately led to last night’s decision,” said Councilman Paul Little, who opposed Ward, 53. “The question became whether this is a person whose judgment I can rely on.”

The council reached its decision in a closed-door session Monday evening, but postponed announcing it until Tuesday.

What had appeared to be an agreement to hire Ward began unraveling when a background check on her revealed that she had filed for bankruptcy at least twice.

Opposition quickly emerged as some council members alleged that Ward’s bankruptcies were reflections of a questionable character. But her supporters countered that the bankruptcies were only a screen hiding the real reasons some council members opposed Ward.

The council hired a private investigator to check civil and criminal court files in Los Angeles and Berkeley, where Ward went to school, said Mayor William Paparian.

“She was held to a new and different standard unlike any other council appointee in Pasadena’s history,” he said.

Ward’s supporters said the background check was not responsible scrutiny as much as it was the city’s old boys’ network playing dirty to hold on to its power.

To Ward’s backers, her failed appointment illustrates the continuing split between one council faction that sees Pasadena as the bucolic small town it once was and another that sees it as a dynamic part of a growing urban area.

Others see Ward as the victim of a fractious City Council--another pawn in a long-running battle between intransigent camps.

Vice Mayor Chris Holden called the decision not to hire Ward a setback for racial and gender harmony in a multicultural city of 132,000 people, nearly 18% of whom are African American.

Little, however, disputed Holden’s view. “If that had been the motive, she would have never been considered in the first place,” Little said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with gender or ethnicity.”

Ward, Holden said, was unfairly subjected to checks beyond any applied to other candidates.

Pasadena politics, Holden said, “caused a talented and highly qualified lawyer like Cheryl Ward to be dragged through the mud. It’s unconscionable.”

The background check found that Ward had filed at least twice for bankruptcy and had been hit with an eviction proceeding.

In a statement issued before Monday’s vote, Paparian called the Ward probe “a nefarious conspiracy of character assassination.” In an earlier interview, he said city staffers went out of their way to dig up negative data on Ward.

Some council members called the city’s Personnel Department, telling them what to investigate, Holden said. Ward did not return calls.

Some council members were infuriated to learn that Paparian had been briefed on Ward’s bankruptcies, but had not shared that information with the council when it offered Ward the job.

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Paparian said he withheld information on Ward’s bankruptcies because he believes that the law does not allow bankruptcy to be considered in hiring decisions.

Ward first filed for bankruptcy in 1975 after completing law school at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, council members said. She again filed for bankruptcy in 1991 and 1992, according to records, but those filings could have been part of the same proceeding.

The council will delay hiring a city attorney for another year, members said.