Suit is filed over search for leader of Great Park

Two Irvine City Council members filed suit Wednesday against the city they serve, demanding to inspect the resumes of 150 applicants that recruiters say they’ve received for chief executive of the Orange County Great Park in a search that yielded two top finalists with ties to City Hall.

Council members Christina Shea and Steven Choi sued the Orange County Great Park Corp., a city agency they help oversee as board members, contending that they had repeatedly been denied access to resumes and other documents related to a national search last year for an executive to oversee the design and construction of the Great Park.

Neither Shea nor Choi was a member of the six-person search committee that winnowed down the applicants to the top five candidates who were interviewed in September.

Both have, in the last two months, raised doubts about the legitimacy of the search, questioning in memos and letters whether it even took place.

“Until we see those resumes, we’ll never know how extensive the search was,” Shea said. “There’s so much going on that is confusing and actually deceptive, we just want to clear things up. It does not look like they did an extensive, timely CEO search for a billion-dollar corporation.”

Mayor Beth Krom, who had not yet seen the suit, disagreed. The search was carried out fairly and transparently, she said, calling the lawsuit a “grenade” more about politics than the public good. “I don’t think this action [is] about trying to move this park forward productively,” she said.

Irvine has faced criticism for its lack of strong leadership in the park project, having gone through four executives in as many years.

Two months ago the Great Park board, comprising the five-member Irvine City Council and four appointed members, abruptly scrapped plans to announce a new chief executive after both of its top choices declined the position.

The first choice -- Kurt Haunfelner, vice president of exhibits and collections at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry -- is a longtime friend of the board’s chairman, Councilman Larry Agran, and brother of the late Mark Steven Haunfelner, a former Agran aide. The second choice, Rod Cooper, a former parks director for Los Angeles County, is the Great Park’s operations manager.

Both withdrew, in Cooper’s case just days after The Times revealed that the last chief executive, Marty Bryant, had pleaded guilty in 1989 to embezzling funds from San Juan Capistrano to buy cocaine. Irvine had promoted Bryant, a public works director with the city, to the top post without conducting a criminal background check.

The delay in hiring the new chief executive, a position vacant since June, has been an obstacle in the city’s effort to transform the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,347-acre municipal park, one of the nation’s costliest public works projects. Assistant City Manager Sharon Landers has held the top park post on an interim basis since Bryant’s departure.

Lisa Mills, a Santa Ana-based recruiter contracted by the city, began looking for a replacement in June, advertising the position on professional websites and in trade publications. But it wasn’t until September -- less than two weeks before the cutoff for accepting applications -- that letters were sent to 150 California parks administrators, according to documents provided by Mills.

“If you want the best candidates,” Shea said, “you probably wouldn’t just send letters and give them a few days to respond; that would be rude.”

tony.barboza@latimes.com

Times staff writer William Heisel contributed to this report.