Oakland – Setting Record Of City Managers / City Adminstrators Straight

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I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but the City of Oakland’s starting to exhibit a memory problem. To cut to the chase, then work backward, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is reporting that P. Lamont Ewell was the Oakland City Manager when Deanna Santana came to Oakland as an intern in 1995.

Nothing against Lamont, who’s a good person that I’ve always had a good relationship with, but facts are facts.

Craig Kocian was Oakland’s City Manager when Deanna Santana joined the public corporation. Lamont, as I recall, was, at first, over at the Oakland Fire Department, then moved over to be an Oakland Assistant City Manager.

If you want concrete proof beyond little old me, just go over to the page that talks about Craig Kocian in his job as City Manager of The City of Arvada. A city with a council-manager form of government, where it reads:

Arvada’s city manager is Craig Kocian, who started with the city on March 3, 1997. Mr. Kocian received his Masters of Public Administration in 1972 from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. He was the city manager of Arvada from 1976 to 1983, and the city manager of Oakland, California from 1993 through February of 1997.

See?

Anyone want to tell Craig he wasn’t here then?

Look, I know Craig left Oakland on bad terms, but that’s no reason for anyone to try and toss his record under the bus. I may have disagreed with Craig about Redevelopment finance issues and methods, but I liked him as a person.

Facts are facts. And the fact is that the Mayor’s Office has put out a number of communications that read like this:

“Ms. Santana is currently the Deputy Mayor of San Jose and started her career in Oakland as an intern when our current interim City Administrator Lamont Ewell was City Manager in Oakland. We will be introducing her to the community tomorrow at a City Hall press conference. Mr. Ewell described her as “one of the “smartest and energetic public administrators I have worked with in my career.”

“When our current interim City Administrator Lamont Ewell was City Manager in Oakland” Is what it reads.

Not true. Sorry Lamont. I don’t blame him for the error, or maybe I just don’t want to but should, because Mayor Quan doesn’t have anyone around her who actually would know the truth of what happened back then, and she’s not in the habit of calling me to check these things. That kind of cancels out her staff and leaves Lamont standing as the “in house” oracle of Oakland’s past. Next thing you know, the Oakland mainstream media eats up the information that Mayor Quan puts out, and it comes to your local website or paper without correction.

I can’t get around how it came to be that Lamont was painted as Oakland’s City Manager in 1995.

That’s wilder than Cal Baseball’s World Series ride. (GO BEARS!)

Stay tuned.

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