Ousted Because He Bit the Hand That Picked Him

I consider myself a loyal guy. For example, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my country or the Los Angeles Times. All they have to do is ask.

The Westminster City Council, though, has me wondering if I even know what loyalty means. It has me thinking I might be some kind of lowlife who’d sell out his friends in a second.

Either that, or council members need one of those retreats to clear their heads.

Last week, the council voted 5-0 to oust Planning Commissioner Stephen Nevarez after the councilman who appointed him felt he was disloyal.

Sounds serious. Did Nevarez leak city secrets to Garden Grove? Move to Anaheim?

No. He decided to run for City Council in November. In Westminster, this can land you alongside Benedict Arnold in the annals of treachery.

Nevarez’s sin is that he’s running in the same election as Councilman Russell Paris, who appointed Nevarez to the commission in December 2000.

Never mind that Nevarez isn’t running against Paris, as such. Two council seats are open and four candidates are on the ballot. Nevarez and Paris both could win seats. Of course, it’s also possible that Nevarez could knock Paris off the council.

There’s the rub. Paris says he couldn’t abide Nevarez’s running against him and exercised his prerogative as Nevarez’s appointer to end his 19-month service on the commission. The other four council members, also exercising an unwritten rule to endorse any colleagues’ authority to un-appoint their appointees, fell meekly in step.

Keep in mind Paris isn’t saying Nevarez did a poor job.

“I have a quirk,” Paris says. “I thought he was being disloyal to me, and I gave him the out of resigning [from the commission]. If he’d resigned, I wouldn’t have cared at all about him running. I personally like Steve, we belong to the same Kiwanis Club. It’s hard to do what I did, but I felt it was something I had to do.”

Nevarez first broached the idea to Paris several months ago. Paris asked him not to, considering it a betrayal in that Paris gave Nevarez his entry into local politics.

A World War II and Korean War vet who rose to full colonel, Paris, 76, says loyalty matters. “I guess I’m from an older generation that thinks of certain things in different ways,” he says. “In this day and age, that doesn’t mean a darn thing. Maybe I’m a different brand.”

Colonel, loyalty does matter. This just isn’t the Audie Murphy moment you make it out to be.

Nevarez and Paris agree they never discussed Nevarez’s not running this year, when Paris--who was appointed to the council in 2000--would run for election. More to the point, are Westminster planning commissioners such inconsequential figures that a councilman can pull the plug in a fit of pique?

I guess so, because Paris openly acknowledges that, “To me, this is personal.”

Nevarez, 41, says he’s not mad at the other council members for backing Paris, because he thinks it’s important that a member’s wishes regarding his or her appointees be honored.

Nor is Nevarez especially upset with Paris, although he says he wouldn’t dump an appointee under these circumstances. To Paris’ credit, Nevarez says, he never told him how to vote during his time on the commission, which would have ended in December anyway, unless he were reappointed.

“I can understand how he sees it,” Nevarez says. “What it boils down to is we have a difference in beliefs [about loyalty]. I’m not being disloyal to Russ.”

My vote goes to Nevarez. Not to be naive about it, but you’d like to think competence is the issue when it comes to removing public servants.

Not to Paris, a former planning commissioner himself who’s been around way too long to start acting like a jilted boyfriend.

When I take a look at this situation, I wonder who’s being disloyal to whom?

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. 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.