Dateline Hawthorne – Ambitious Mayor Chris Brown was going to fly to Washington last week to further urge President Obama to make body cams a national priority for all law enforcement agencies, as Hawthorne’s Police Dept. sets the pace.
“I had a little crisis,” he said.
The latest patch of ongoing messiness at City Hall (http://www.dailybreeze.com/government-and-politics/20150529/hawthorne-fires-city-manager-mike-goodson-at-special-friday-night-meeting), however, made staying home the prudent choice.
Mr. Brown, 18 months in office and running for re-election, has been under fire all spring from an unfriendly City Council over disputed travel and improvement expenses.
These directly involved City Manager Mike Goodson, who mysteriously was fired at a special City Council meeting last Friday night by a 3-2 vote – minus, of course, an official explanation.
Meantime, in a second devastating blow, the Council killed city support for the massive $200 million Civic Center renovation project Mr. Brown has been envisioning.
The plan had been to roll out details of the public/private partnership at the June 23 Council meeting.
“The Council’s decision was kind of disheartening,” Mr. Brown said. “A lot of hard work was put into that project.”
Soldiering on, Mr. Brown said “this is a project that probably is going to go through. It just will take a little more time.”
This was a muscular move since Mr. Goodson has logged almost 20 years with the city.
Public Works Director Arnold Shadbehr was named interim city manager.
Sources left scant doubt the firing was intimately related to what the Daily Breeze unqualifiedly labeled “a controversy over improper expense spending and city-funded travels.” These roaring disputes have been linked to the city manager as much or more than Mayor Brown.
The mayor’s 30 trips and Mr. Goodson’s twin roles of approving party and traveling partner led to a crackdown, a severe narrowing of expenditure rules by the City Council.
Members Nilo Michelin, Olivia Valentine and Alex Vargas declined comment after the Goodson ouster.