Council clears city attorney Council clears city attorney (August 20, 2004)

No conflict found following affair with head of city's garbage company

By Jon Wiener

A city council ethics committee determined that City Attorney Michael Martello had no involvement in the city's decision to increase payments to its garbage company by $740,000.

Michael Jenkins, an independent attorney hired by the council in June to advise the committee, submitted a report last week concluding that "Mr. Martello has not violated any conflict of interest laws or professional ethical requirements, or committed any other job-related impropriety by virtue of his relationship with Pamela Read," the general manager of Foothill Disposal.

Martello told the council in April he is in a relationship with Read, who is also the president of the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce's board of directors. The council then formed the ethics committee in May when Pamela Read's husband, Michael Read, sent a letter to the city concerned about conflicts of interest.

The council voted unanimously to accept his report at the recommendation of the ethics committee. With the vote, the council decided to take no further action on the matter.

Jenkins told the council Tuesday night that he held three conference calls with the committee and interviewed 16 city employees, including Martello. All of the employees reported that Martello had no involvement with the increased garbage fees or any other matters involving Foothill or the Chamber of Commerce.

The report also cleared Martello of using city credit cards and cell phones for personal use.

"We take such allegations seriously," said Mayor Matt Pear, who served on the ad hoc ethics committee along with Council member Nick Galiotto and Vice Mayor Matt Neely. The purpose of the committee was to inspire public confidence, he added.

This was the first time the city had formed an ad hoc ethics committee, as prescribed by the code of ethics Martello helped write after former Mayor Mario Ambra's removal from office in 2002.

A partner in a Southern California law firm and a city attorney for several communities there, Jenkins has been involved with local politics before. In 2002, the city of Palo Alto hired him to help them determine whether council members had violated the Brown Act, the state's open meetings law. He concluded that they had not.

Michael Read and the council gadflies driving the investigation complained that Jenkins was not thorough enough. Donald Letcher, who had a dispute with Foothill Disposal and the city over trash hauling that was mentioned in the report, drew laughs from the audience when he told the council, "You could have saved $10,000 and bought two buckets of whitewash."

But council members and ethics experts praised the thoroughness of the report and the committee. Judy Nadler, senior fellow in government ethics with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, was satisfied with the city's treatment of the matter.

"The council has shown the public that they take ethics issues seriously, that they were willing to invest in an impartial and outside investigation," said Nadler. "It should serve as very reassuring to the public that the city council wanted to ensure that there were no conflicts."

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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