Update: This story was updated to correct an incorrect subhead.
On Dec. 9, Carson’s city council fired Human Resources and Risk Management Director Faye Moseley and placed on administrative leave City Manager Sharon Landers during a special meeting launched by the new council majority of Mayor Pro Tem Jim Dear, Councilwoman Arlene Rojas and Councilman Jawane Hilton.
These actions were taken two days after-newly elected City Clerk Myla Rahman resigned from office before she was sworn into office. Officially, it’s not clear if the three events are related, but with Carson being Carson, it wouldn’t be surprising if it is.
Rahman has not publicly provided a reason for her resignation, and there’s significant doubt she will.
Moseley’s firing came a week after she and her husband Clifton were successfully sued by the National Sales Network for embezzlement of funds from the nonprofit’s Los Angeles chapter. The National Sales Network is a nonprofit membership organization whose objective is to meet the professional needs of sales professionals.
Random Lengths News emailed City Manager Landers about Rahman and whether the 21-month long lawsuit against Moseley would impact Moseley’s job. Landers replied:
Hi Terelle! There is no press release and Myla offered no reason for her resignation.
I believe your facts on Mrs. Moseley are not correct but that is not for me to speak to. I can say that the resignation by City Clerk Rahman in no way affects Mrs. Moseley’s position.
Her reply was sent at 3:19 p.m., a couple of hours before the City Council’s special meeting.
The Atlanta, Georgia-based organization sued the couple following a financial audit of its Los Angeles chapter. According to the audit, the Moseleys wrote checks to themselves personally or used the company debit card on at least 80 occasions without explanation or supporting documentation.
The Moseleys were allegedly given more than seven months to produce documentation for the expenditures and that to date, had failed to account for them.
According to the court documents, the debits and withdrawals from the NSN LA Chapter’s accounts appeared to have been applied to gas, groceries, hotel stays, limousine rentals and other expenditures.
This isn’t the first time Mrs. Moseley has been called to account over funny accounting practices. Last year, 2 Urban Girls reported on Moseley’s questionable travel reimbursement requests related to recruiting for the post of principal administrative analyst.
On City Manager Sharon Landers
City clerk candidate runner-up Falea’Ana Meni believes neither Landers nor Moseley should have been hired, due to their lack of public sector experience. Meni spoke further about Landers.
“It was apparent from the very beginning that she didn’t have what the city needed,” Meni said. “Nor does she have the skill sets to help our city and you know this mess that we’ve been dealing with over the last several years.”
Meni blames the incumbent members of the city council for the mess. Meni explained that one of the reasons the council didn’t act sooner was because of the optics of firing the city’s first female city manager after making such a big deal over it.
Meni explained that the city council’s approval of Lander’s reorganization plan in which the H.R. Director reports directly to her instead of reporting to the assistant city manager, was a red flag.
“But the H.R. Director had no public sector experience, so that even caused other issues,” Meni explained.
Meni went on to note that same issues exist with Carson’s Director of Public Works, Eliza Whitman.
“You don’t even have to take my word for it. Listen to the last environmental commission meeting I participated in,” Meni said. “It was obvious that the commission needed assistance with the Brown Act and how to conduct the meeting. Not once did the director ever speak up to help guide the Commissioners.”
Meni said she had to call a point of order so many times that she lost track.
City Council candidate runner up- Dr. Sharma Henderson noted that there had been a lot of employee complaints and described Lander’s leadership style as authoritarian.
“There’s been a lot of mismanagement,” Henderson explained. “The employees have been very unhappy and a lot of them have left. Because of that and other issues, people in the business community and employees wanted her gone.”
Henderson said It was her understanding that part of what allowed Dear to secure the support of the employees union and many in the business community was that Arlene Rojas would be the third vote to get rid of Landers. Henderson also noted that Landers and Moseley were aligned with Mayor Lula Davis Holmes.
“Now the hypocrisy is Jim [Dear] could have aligned with Albert and Juwane [When Albert Robles was still mayor] to get rid of Landers,” Henderson explained. “But obviously he didn’t. But he was able to use Landers as leverage to get the employee vote.”
Henderson went on to describe Lander’s performance as city manager as horrible and her leadership as atrocious.
“I feel that city employees’ morale is at the lowest it has ever been in they city’s history,” Henderson said. “Then it got worse during the pandemic.”
City clerk candidate runner-up Falea’Ana Meni explained in an interview with Random Lengths News that typically the city conducts the council meeting alongside the swearing-in ceremony at the community center.
“I didn’t know if they opted not to do it or what. I had no idea,” Meni said.
When asked about Moseley and the National Sales Network lawsuit, Meni wasn’t particularly surprised.
“I have a really big issue [with Moseley] personally,” Meni said. “I know in my dealings with her as a former employee there have been many times I have brought up to upper management about the lack of integrity in her interactions. This all derives from the fact that she has no public sector experience at all.”
Former Mayor Albert Robles weighed in on the current tumult in the city.
“Most cities … to get politics and favoritism out of the hiring and firing process, they go to a civil service commission, which gives the employees protection,” Robles explained. “Employees go through the civil service process where they are evaluated before they’re hired. If there’s any discipline against them, it goes through this independent civil service commission.
Robles noted when he first joined the city council as a council member, he witnessed both Jim Dear and Lula Davis-Holmes insert themselves into employee matters, either after a perceived slight if an employee didn’t do as they asked, or defending employees close to them despite demonstrating incompetence.
“If an employee is being incompetent then they should be disciplined and fired,” Robles said. “But because they’re a friend of the mayor, whether it’s the mayor pro tem or any council member, employees come to the council members and cry and ask them for help and the council members insert themselves. Carson is not going to get to the next level of development, the next level of maturity and sophistication, and kill the petty politics.”
An example that best illustrates Robles’ point was during the failed recall effort against him and subsequent recall effort against Dear in 2015. In late June of that year, several city employees accused Dear of being abusive toward them, which resulted in administrative charges being lodged against him. At the time, Dear was accused of relying on temporary help on the recall election of Robles to the exclusion of available full-time staff members in his office.
Random Lengths News reported at the time that though Dear pushed to make them full-time staff in the clerk’s office, the city manager fired them instead. In a subsequent report at the time, one of the more troubling assertions in the investigation concerned the hiring and firing of Monette Gavino.
An independent investigator appointed to investigate the claims against Dear described Gavino as Dear’s “girlfriend,” and that Dear “manipulated” staff into hiring her, despite questions about her right to work legally, and that he then “mistreated” her “in front of staff.” Random Lengths News reported there were no details of the alleged “mistreatment.”
Observers of city politics have wondered aloud if Rahman saw Landers’ placement on administrative leave was just one step away from firing her from her post. Robles noted that the council can’t let Landers go 90 days before or after an election.
So what’s going to happen next?
No one officially seems to know at the moment. The city council could very well appoint the runner-up from this past election like City Clerk candidate Monette Gavino, who lost by only a couple hundred votes, the same way the city council appointed Donesia Gause-Aldana to the post when Helen Kawagoe left ten years ago.
Gavino didn’t make many public appearances during the past race for city clerk, but support from Mayor Pro Tem Jim Dear and financial support that got her signs out in the streets powered her candidacy forward, despite a well-timed October surprise questioning her methods by which she attained her citizenship.