County officials have indefinitely shelved District Attorney
John Sarsfield’s proposal to reorganize his office after it was
alleged he had an affair with his office manager
– who would have received a boost in authority under the
plan.
County officials have indefinitely shelved District Attorney John Sarsfield’s proposal to reorganize his office after it was alleged he had an affair with his office manager – who would have received a boost in authority under the plan.
And as the bizarre scandal revolving around the District 5 supervisor’s race and the prosecutor cooled off over the past week, county officials won’t launch a personnel investigation of Sarsfield’s office, according to Human Resources Director Liz Brown. The county does not maintain specific policies on inner-office relations.
“If there’s something going on that we feel is inappropriate, we could intervene,” Brown said. “But we haven’t heard of any issues internally.”
The Board of Supervisors was going to discuss the office’s reorganization at its May 25 meeting. That was one day after Supervisor-elect Jaime De La Cruz’s campaign adviser filed a court motion containing the embarrassing claim.
County Administrative Officer Terrence May said “in light of recent developments,” officials won’t consider the reorganization. Initially he said supervisors asked to postpone the matter because Chairman Bob Cruz had been absent.
Sarsfield has not resubmitted a request for the board to consider the change. And May doesn’t envision the board considering it again “in the foreseeable future,” he said.
“Now is not a particularly auspicious time for the board to be considering any reorganization in the DA’s office, including altering the reporting relationships of staff and their seniority,” May said.
Sarsfield had submitted his reorganization proposal days before the scandal snowballed. Currently, the office manager has equal authority to the victim witness coordinator, the office’s lone investigator and the deputy district attorneys.
But Sarsfield wanted to demote the victim witness coordinator to a lesser authority and lay off the investigator – while hiring an additional, entry-level deputy district attorney, the staff report indicated.
Under former District Attorney Harry Damkar’s reign, the head of the victim witness division always reported directly to the district attorney, May pointed out.
Sarsfield was set to oversee a criminal grand jury scheduled for June 1-3 to consider felony indictments against De La Cruz and campaign adviser Ignacio Velazquez for alleged Elections Code violations.
Their lawyer told Sarsfield if he didn’t cancel the grand jury, they would file a court motion alleging Sarsfield was having an extramarital affair that compromised his objectivity.
The alleged mistress is the niece Mickie Luna, state president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, local members of which instigated the claims against De La Cruz and Velazquez. Sarsfield canceled the proceedings, then changed his mind, and finally recused himself after the motion went public.
Both sides’ lawyers agreed to a court stipulation to cancel the grand jury if Velazquez dropped the motion and sealed the file, which he did.
Contrary to another newspaper’s reports, Judge Harry Tobias did not dismiss the motion but merely signed the lawyers’ stipulation.
news.com.
