City Council hires outside firm to investigate adviser searc

an independent investigator will look into the city’s controversial search for a new financial adviser. and another person who’ll be investigated: the former city manager! here’s our i-team reporter maria garcia with new information. remember – the city manager has defended the search for a new financial advisor. saying he thought it was a directive from the entire council. and that the city appropriately published the search in the newspaper. he says this is a process followed with hundreds of other contracts. but some city reps say they’re losing trust in him. 00:47 they acted on a few city reps giving them direction city rep. emma acosta says she’s concerned both the former and current city manager took cues from one or two city reps on big decisions. and she wants both instances investigated. 18:48 i did not give direction to hire anybody other than to start the process. i was not involved with the process. the council learned today the city staff evaluating financial advisors deviated from their regular procedure by scoring companies together instead of separately. 07:20 that was my main question is how many times have we done a group average and the answer was we’ve never done it before and because the city chief financial officer led the committee – and possibly influenced it by saying he had concerns about the current financial advisor before the evaluation evan began. most the of committee members report directly to him. 07:56 we don’t want to influence their thought and we want a very fair process for who ever is submitting to do business with the city now to former city manager joyce wilson. city rep emma acosta wants the investigator to review if wilson acted appropriately when she purposely delayed the issuance of ballpark bonds for the 2013 mayoral election. 01:56 a few city council members supposedly gave that direction to the city manager and she acted on that direction a report detailing wilson’s actions ties everything together. because gonzalez says he stopped the process to look for a new financial advisor when learning the city lost out on 22 million dollars not because of bad advice from the financial advisor but because of the delay for the election. something city reps say they didn’t really know until we asked for the report. 04:16 but that information was not provided to him until recently, and only because the media, you the media, said we need these reports we need that email because i had never seen that email. the investigator will also review the city’s open records processes to ensure it’s being fully transparent. also under scrutiny… the