San Bernardino County’s Chief Manager Quits

The San Bernardino County chief administrative officer has resigned, and county officials said he is being investigated by the FBI.

Details of the investigation were not available, and the FBI refused to confirm or deny any investigation.

James Hlawek resigned Tuesday as the county’s top bureaucrat after four years in the post.

His resignation made no reference to the FBI probe. Hlawek had been placed on paid administrative leave the previous week, when news of the federal investigation surfaced.

Jerry Eaves, chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, said the board had recently received allegations against Hlawek that were, in turn, forwarded to the Sheriff’s Department for investigation. During the county’s probe, it learned that the FBI had mounted an independent investigation of Hlawek, Eaves said.

The FBI asked the county to defer to federal investigators, and the county agreed and promised to cooperate, Eaves said.

Neither Eaves nor Carol Shearer, a budget director who was named as acting chief administrative officer, would discuss the nature of the investigation, nor whether it involved Hlawek’s conduct in county government or outside work.

Two county employees have been interviewed by the FBI “in ways of information-gathering,” Shearer said. “But I’m not aware of anyone else being implicated.”

Hlawek’s attorney, Dennis Kottmeier, a former San Bernardino County district attorney, did not return phone calls.

Eaves said Hlawek, 52, had done “an outstanding job in the four years he was here. The good news is that we have an organization in place where one person leaving won’t have that great an effect on the entire organization.”