ALAMEDA — City Manager Jill Keimach has been placed on paid administrative leave after the City Council received and reviewed an independent report over her allegations that the vice mayor and a councilman wrongfully interfered in her selection of the fire chief.
The action came Friday after the council held a closed session that began in the afternoon and stretched into the early evening. The council’s decision to place Keimach on leave with full salary and benefits was unanimous.
The report from the investigator, Michael Jenkins of the California law firm Jenkins & Hogan, contains confidential advice regarding potential litigation that the city may face in light of Keimach’s allegations, according to a summary prepared by the city clerk’s office about Friday’s closed session.
“The city will release factual findings of the investigative report as soon as possible after the requisite legal analysis has been completed and delivered to the City Council,” the summary said.
City Attorney Janet Kern called in the outside investigator after Keimach reportedly said she was wrongly put under political pressure by Vice Mayor Malia Vella and City Councilman Jim Oddie as she selected a new fire chief.
Vella and Oddie allegedly wanted Keimach to pick Domenick Weaver, an Alameda fire captain and union leader, as the next chief of the city’s department.
Instead, Keimach went with Edmond Rodriguez, who took over the department’s top slot in November last year after serving with the Salinas Fire Department.
The City Charter puts all hiring decisions for key personnel in the hands of the city manager. Council interference is prohibited and can be grounds for removal from office.
After Keimach made the allegations in last October, Alameda police Chief Paul Rolleri visited a council meeting and read a public statement signed by himself and 11 other city officials, saying they backed the city manager and have “respect and faith in her ethics and integrity.”
In a letter to the council the day before she announced that Rodriguez was her pick as fire chief, Keimach said she was subjected to “unseemly” and “intense and unrelenting” pressure to go with the candidate favored by the firefighters union. Keimach’s letter did not name Vella or Oddie.
Keimach also noted her job evaluation was continually postponed, a delay that she said made it appear as if a positive evaluation hinged on the person she selected as chief.