City Manager of Pasadena Agrees to Severance Package

Three months after the Pasadena City Council voted to fire him, City Manager Philip Hawkey on Thursday agreed to resign in return for a severance package worth more than $300,000, his lawyer said.

“He’s glad to put this behind him,” the attorney, Jim Harker, said. “It’s [also] in the best interest of the city.”

Said City Councilman William Paparian: “I am glad this has been resolved for the sake of Pasadena.”

The deal needs to be finalized in a special City Council meeting today. Though previous agreements have been scuttled at the last minute, officials Thursday said they believe the turmoil is over.

An interim replacement will probably be discussed at the meeting. City officials said a top candidate is Ramon Cortines, a former superintendent of the Pasadena Unified School District who also served as chancellor of New York City’s schools.

The standoff between Hawkey, 51, and the City Council had become a troubling distraction at City Hall, spawning a bitter war of words. Mayor Chris Holden earlier this week called Hawkey “the enemy of the city.”

Under Thursday’s agreement, Hawkey’s resignation is effective Sunday. He will help with the transition to new management, receive compensation for unused vacation and receive a settlement payment of just under $300,000, Harker said. In January, the council agreed to assume the mortgage on his $615,000 Pasadena home and reimburse a $70,000 down payment.

The tangled fight began in December, when the City Council voted to fire Hawkey two weeks after they had reaffirmed his contract, which ran through October 1999. He was hired in 1991 from Toledo, Ohio.

An angry Hawkey said he felt “ambushed,” and his lawyer wrote a letter informing the city that it would have to pay Hawkey $1.5 million or face a lawsuit alleging that efforts to oust him, a white male, amounted to reverse discrimination.

Five days later, the council decided that Hawkey could serve out his contract.

But in January, Hawkey’s settlement demand became public, along with the litany of complaints and allegations that his lawyer had included in the letter. Among the allegations: that council members tried to create a racial and political spoils system; that they attempted to “accomplish blatantly unlawful acts”; and that some hated Hawkey because he is white.

Hawkey’s support soon began eroding, and he indicated that he was ready to negotiate a deal.

In each of its last three meetings, the City Council tried to hammer out an exit agreement with Hawkey, but the deals fell through at the last minute--once when a councilman did not show up for the meeting. On Monday, an agreement seemed near but fell apart over the wording of Hawkey’s departure statement.

Holden sought a statement from Hawkey clarifying that the allegations he had made were not directed at any current council members.

Hawkey’s attorney said Thursday that his letter was not a formal complaint and that he did not believe that current council members engaged in discrimination.

“A lot of people have attached their own meanings to that letter,” Harker said.

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Before Thursday’s agreement was disclosed, local leaders were concerned that the feud was hurting city business.

“It is obviously slowing everything down. The yellow caution light is on,” Bob McClellan, president of the Chamber of Commerce, said Wednesday. “It cannot stay this way.”

“I don’t think anybody is talking about anything else,” one top city employee said. “Everyone is worried about the city’s good name and their credibility in the job market.”

Hawkey has never had more than four of the city’s seven council members in his corner as he struggled to balance conflicting demands from factions that divide the council.

Despite the sigh of relief that the Hawkey dispute had been resolved, one councilman cautioned that divisions in city government may not be easily healed.

“I think our long, dark nightmare may have just begun,” Councilman Paul Little said. “Now we have to figure out what to do.”