Andy Hall leaves City Hall and a raft of unanswered questions behind him

Summary: After just seven months of a three-year city manager contract, Andy Hall is leaving Cathedral City for Imperial Beach.  His sudden departure has engendered much speculation.  Did embattled mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa engineer his departure?  Did he antagonize a non-DeRosa Council majority?  Does he know of some great disaster about to befall the city?  Or did he just decide to take himself out of the knife fight that is our municipal politics during this 10th bitter winter of the reign of Kathleen Joan DeRosa?  Given City Hall’s penchant for secrecy, and given DeRosa’s well-known status as an information-management control freak, residents may never know the whys and wherefores behind Andy Hall’s departure, at least not until DeRosa decides it is in her best political interest to disclose the truth, or some spun version of it that advances her interests.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant in politics, and the mayor’s office needs a healthy dose of it; it is infected. 

By: Paul S Marchand

The sudden departure of Cathedral City city manager Andy Hall, just seven months into a three-year contract, certainly has the city abuzz with speculation.  For perhaps the first —--and hopefully the only--- time in my public life, I find myself agreeing with embattled Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa, that Mr. Hall’s departure, while shocking, may not be entirely surprising.

While Mr. Hall may be playing his cards very close to the vest, there is nonetheless much speculation in the community about the whys and wherefores of his sudden exit.  Given Cathedral City’s penchant for cultivating a culture of secrecy and stonewalling, the public may never know what motivated Andy Hall to take the city manager’s job in Imperial Beach.

Was there a falling out between the city manager and the incumbent mayor?  It’s an open secret that Kathleen Joan DeRosa does not like to take “no” for an answer, and prefers to surround herself with compliant yes-people.  Did Andy Hall prove less tractable than Donald Bradley, his more compliant predecessor as city manager, ?  Did he say “no” once too often to a mayor with a strongly monarchical conceit of herself?  Was he advised by DeRosa or her loyalists in City Hall or on the Council that he should start putting out resumes?

Or did Mr. Hall have a falling out with other members of the Council?  Did he do, say, or fail to do or say something expected of him by majority of the council members?  Is it possible that there might have been three votes to hand him his walking papers?

Did Mr. Hall had advance knowledge of some significant shit-storm about to befall Cathedral City, and choose to flee while the getting was good, taking flight lest he be consumed?  “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  Is it possible that Desert Sun dirt-digger and shit-stirrer Tamara Sone had targeted him for the same kind of hatchet work she has been obsessively eager to perform against Greg Pettis?

Or is it simply possible that Andy Hall got fed up with a municipal politics that at least one local resident has likened to a knife fight?  Did Mr. Hall, at the last, simply have too much integrity --- unlike Desert Hot Springs city manager Rick Daniels, who is also leaving his job--- to allow himself to be drawn into the vortex of the political infighting and nastiness that has characterized Cathedral City’s municipal government during the nine bitter winters of Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s reign?

At this stage, there are certainly more questions than answers, and it is unlikely that Cathedral City residents will get any answers anytime soon.  I noted earlier that Cathedral City has tended for years to cultivate a municipal culture of secrecy, stonewalling, evasion, and nondisclosure.  No doubt the mayor, the Administrative Services Director, and the city Clerk will seek to deploy over Andy Hall’s departure the same cloak of secrecy they have so often deployed in the past, employing threats and intimidation to prevent the truth from getting out.

As much as it’s been an open secret that Kathleen Joan DeRosa doesn’t like to take “no” for an answer, it’s also been an open secret that she is a compulsive information-management control freak.  She has a reputation for assiduously cultivating the print and broadcast media in our Valley, losing no opportunity to try to get favorable ink or airtime for herself.  Indeed, her obsessive need for publicity expressed itself in her tacky, but successful effort to obtrude herself into the Desert Sun’s coverage of the unfortunate death of photographer Ken Rambo earlier this week.  DeRosa’s penchant for publicity-seeking runs exactly contrary to her equally strong desire to control in the minutest degree any information about Cathedral City and about what is actually going on in City Hall.  What happened with Andy Hall in City Hall will remain concealed from a curious public unless and until it is in Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s political interest for her to allow the truth, or some politically useful spin on it, to be disseminated.

US Supreme Court Justice Louis D Brandeis once observed, in sum and substance, that sunlight is the best disinfectant.  It’s time for some sunlight to pierce the dark veils of secrecy in City Hall, so that the people of Cathedral City can have a clearer understanding of what their hired help have been doing behind that veil.  For there is an infection in the mayor’s office that demands a healthy, prophylactic dose of sunlight.

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Paul S Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices and Cathedral City, California.  He served two terms on the city Council there, and is not unfamiliar with the antics and actions of the incumbent mayor.  The views set forth herein are his own, and not those of any entity or organization, and are not intended as legal advice.