A Stressful Game Called Politics

Yorba Linda bills itself as “Land of Gracious Living,” but it’s a bare-knuckles town when it comes to politics. Just ask council member Barbara Kiley.

Kiley has been awarded $6,335 in a workers’ compensation settlement for injuries suffered at a Nov. 19, 1996, council meeting, when she collapsed “while sitting there as heaps of abuse were thrown at me by people who were beating the crap out of me with outrageous accusations,” she said Wednesday.

A doctor found that Kiley, 51, suffered a heart abnormality, anxiety attacks, hyperventilation and numbness in the left arm from stress brought on by her job as a member of the council. A workers’ compensation judge ruled last month that Kiley, who had applied for benefits, was eligible for the payment.

Attorney Stephen Falk, who represented the city, called the case “a rather straightforward matter” that Yorba Linda did not contest. Kiley will probably see only about $2,500 of the award, with the rest going to attorney fees and other expenses, he said.

Kiley said her problems actually began months before the 1996 incident. When she came out in favor of a plan to widen and improve Imperial Highway, which runs through the heart of Yorba Linda, opponents accused her of wanting to put a freeway through town. Early in 1996, they mounted a campaign to defeat her in that year’s November election.

“Our council meetings are televised, and every two weeks I’d be subjected to these bizarre attacks from people telling me I was putting women back 50 years and accusing my husband of being involved in illegal activities,” Kiley recounted. “It was the highway project that started the war. I worked myself up to a tizzy for the council meetings. It was a public flogging of me, and the law says I can’t answer them back.”

Rather than cave in and quit, Kiley counterattacked. She ran for reelection, but the campaign only added to the stress she was under.

“I won by 16 votes,” she said. “But it took three weeks to count all of the votes. The meeting where I collapsed happened in the middle of the uncertainty over whether I had won or lost the election.”

Kiley said doctors and friends told her to take a break from city politics. But if she missed too many council meetings, she could be removed from office.

“I didn’t want to be kicked off the council, especially after my landslide victory,” she said with a smile. “So I just sucked it up and went back to the war. They tried putting me on Prozac. Well, that didn’t work.”

Instead, Kiley said, she began learning to handle the stress better. And she has decided to run for reelection when her term is up.

“I lost the Imperial Highway improvement issue. It was shot down by the voters 2 to 1 when I was reelected by 16 votes. But I’ve still got a school to build and one other project I want to push through before I leave the council,” Kiley said.

She said she will use the settlement money to start a foundation for local cultural projects.