From: Phillip Molina, Oxnard City Treasurer
First thank you for your trust and your determination to be heard through your vote. You have repudiated the repugnant smear campaign against me and I am thankful to you for that.
I hope that the new Mayor and Council will realize that the only purpose of the smear campaign was to centralize all city functions under one person, the city manager.
There are enough stories about how good companies who followed the same concept of centralizing into one CEO of all the organization’s functions, including operations, finance and auditing of the results leads inevitably to corruption. As the saying goes absolute power corrupts.
So the writers of the California State laws weren’t ignorant of this fact. And the California Codes intentionally segregated the duties of the city treasurer from the city manager just for that reason. The Codes places the duties of tax collection, business licensing, cash receipting, cash management, and financial reporting on the elected city treasurer. The reason is that the elected treasurer is separate from and reports to the public who elected her/him.
Much has been made of the question about an 18 year old being voted into office. Let’s look at this for a moment, for that’s all this rabbit hole whole is worth. If the electorate wants an 18 year old to take the office of Mayor, Councilmember, City Clerk or City Treasurer it is up to them to acknowledge the risk. But it is not up to appointed staff take over the government by a coup. Now back to reason, look at the last 40 years of Oxnard Treasurer. You, the electorate, consistently voted for people who had the qualifications needed based on their work experience to handle the job. Why should you question your abilities to vote for a qualified candidate in the future just because the executive city manager suggests?
I have shown that the city’s authorized Whistleblower professional management company, who manages receives and reports out findings, wrote that from the first day I was elected through today, they have received ZERO complaints from any member of the public, or any member of city staff, against me. The City’s own ‘report’ states that I did my job well especially when I reviewed payroll and operating expenditures of all departments. So why did the city manager pay and order the author to write a false narrative, which the author refused to authenticate for the court?
I am calling on calm minds in the Mayor, and Councilmembers to also repudiate the city manager’s use of the smear campaign to ignore State law and instead to reverse the prior city Mayor and Council’s actions and return to your elected city treasurer all the duties set in State Codes (GTC 41001-41007).
Respectfully,
Phillip Molina
Oxnard City Treasurer
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