Great Park board won’t unseal resumes of executive applicants
The Orange County Great Park board voted Thursday to keep the resumes from its search for a chief executive confidential, in the face of a lawsuit from two of its members who are demanding to see them.
Irvine council members Christina Shea and Steven Choi filed suit Wednesday requesting documents, including the 150 resumes the city said it received for the position.
The council members have questioned the fairness and scope of the search, which yielded two top finalists with ties to City Hall. Neither Shea nor Choi was part of the six-member committee that reviewed the resumes.
In a stern, nine-minute speech, Bill Kogerman, a member of the board and search committee, rebuked Shea and Choi, accusing them of making false accusations and “rumor-mongering” by suggesting ethical problems with the search. He called it “a systematic assault on my character and integrity.”
Kogerman also said that Shea and Choi “attempted to make confidential names public” and that job candidates’ names had been leaked to the media.
“You’re making that up,” Shea responded, saying they had never asked to release job candidates’ names to the public, only to look at their resumes.
Kogerman also demanded a public apology for their “intemperate language and accusations” and asked for the board to consider sanctions against both.
In September, the board chose two finalists: a Chicago museum official who described himself as a friend of board Chairman Larry Agran and is the twin of a former Agran aide; and the current operations manager of the Great Park. They both declined the position.
On Thursday, City Manager Sean Joyce described the search as “the most ambitious recruitment in the city’s history, to my knowledge.”
The search committee will convene in the coming weeks to decide how to proceed.
Once selected, the park executive will oversee the city’s $1-billion endeavor to design and build a 1,347-acre park on the site of the old El Toro Marine base.
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