For This Orange Mom, City Government Got Personal

Pamela Pratt is new to this City Council business. She’s not used to the intrigue, the cabals, the “official” stories that conflict, the occasional marathon session that exhausts everyone but triathletes. That may explain why at Tuesday night’s Orange council meeting, she got there about 4:30 in the afternoon and stayed only a couple hours.

Don’t worry, Pratt isn’t a council member. It’s not like she abdicated.

She was a spectator.

As a novice, she just didn’t have it in her to go the distance, which in this case meant adjournment sometime after midnight. That was shortly after a 3-2 council majority voted to oust Police Chief John Robertson and put a temporary coda on a City Hall power play that began months ago but isn’t really going away.

So, while Pratt missed this particular ending, she’ll be back. The fact that she was there at all--along with a crowd that filled the council chambers--is what’s telling.

At 38 and the mother of three young girls, Pratt has lived in Orange since she was 8 and now considers herself a fairly typical citizen, which is one who hadn’t been overly involved in local government. But that changed in recent months as the increasingly rancorous infighting among the council, city manager and the chief began lapping at Pratt’s door. One of her daughters plays in a nearby park. At one point, Pratt had to pass through gang turf to get to the park. Now, she doesn’t.

She credits Chief Robertson. As such, a coup to remove him is an issue that matters to her. A city government that once seemed anonymous has gotten personal. A woman who never made time for council meetings now wants to see what’s going on.

What’s been going on began with allegations that an official connected with the city’s longtime private trash-hauling company may have misappropriated at least several million dollars in city funds. The Police Department began investigating, and along the way, Robertson surreptitiously ran background checks on City Council members and other officials while trying to track down a news leak of a crucial search warrant affidavit.

That action was the crux of the council majority’s rationale in firing Robertson, a recommendation made by City Manager David Rudat. Robertson’s detractors say his investigation of superiors was out of bounds; his supporters say the chief was perhaps getting too close for comfort in investigating the city’s long-standing relationship with the trash haulers.

The Orange County district attorney’s office now is handling the trash-hauler investigation, and an official said no decision is imminent. Adding to the intrigue of the Robertson-Rudat skirmish, it’s been reported that Rudat himself was under investigation by the D.A.’s office for possible conflict of interest in regard to the trash-hauling company.

The result is a square-off at City Hall. Is Robertson being railroaded, as one of his council supporters say? Or was he fired for breaching personnel rules, if not protocol?

Once upon a time, such Machiavellian matters might have sailed past Pamela Pratt. Not now.

“I feel helpless,” she says. “I feel like I’m an average person. I don’t have political clout. I’m not really involved in a party or the political system. I don’t have large amounts of money to make a difference. I’m new to all this, but it seems to me the whole structure is of a good ol’ boy network, and ‘we’re going to pass the baton to you and you carry on the agenda.’ ”

She’s suspicious of Rudat’s motivation in recommending that Robertson be fired. She thinks the charges against him are trumped up and that his ouster has more to do with personality conflicts and policing philosophies than with any improprieties alleged against him. Yet, she also acknowledges that the swirling controversy would have made it difficult for Robertson to do his job.

She has not yet learned to enjoy such palace intrigue. “I’m angry because I’d like to see the city punished [over its firing of Robertson],” she said. “But I don’t know how to punish a city. But I also want the city to heal. . . . It’s just very frustrating.”

If nothing else, Orange officials have awakened a whole new group of citizens who suddenly are quite curious about how this place called City Hall works. Meetings that once drew flies now draw packed houses.

“The people are waking up,” says longtime citizen activist Carole Walters and leader of fledgling effort to recall Mayor Joanne Coontz, who voted to fire Robertson. “That’s the whole thing in Orange. People are waking up and they’re saying they’ve had it.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com