Smart, Brown.
Another simmering City Hall feud has surfaced, with City Clerk Michael Smart placing his deputy on leave and launching an investigation into alleged insubordination.
Smart informed the deputy, Sally Brown, of the move on Friday afternoon. He placed her on indefinite leave with pay.
Brown has worked in the office since 1986, when she won election as city clerk. She has worked as the deputy since mid-1995 — and until Smart won the office and began serving in the position on Jan. 1, 2014. Until then, as full-time deputy, Brown had served as the de facto day-to-day head of the office, dealing with elections and land records. (The elected clerk’s job itself is part-time.) Since Smart’s election, the two have had tensions over the running of the office.
Smart informed Brown that she had violated his directive that only he sign off on financial transactions involving the office.
“As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Brown said in an interview Wednesday.
She said Smart’s directive, in a memo to staff, concerned signing off on “invoices and procurements.” She said in this case she was asked by accounts payable to sign off on a settlement involving a labor relations dispute involving back pay for a former office employee. Brown said she is authorized by the city to sign off; she said Smart’s directive did not cover this area.
“I’m not going to respond,” Smart said in an interview in his office, because “it’s an ongoing investigation. It’s a personnel matter. I’m not going to play this out in the press.”
Smart said he issued the directive about signing off on financial matters involving the clerk’s office as a matter of “general accountability.”
“As city clerk I am ultimately responsible for the office,” Smart said. “The voters elected me into the office.”
He said the “internal investigation” into Brown’s conduct will be conducted within his office, not through the city’s corporation counsel’s office.
The move came as a surprise to the mayor’s office, said Chief of Staff Tomas Reyes.
“The mayor was not aware of this. And neither was I,” Reyes said Wednesday.
Three other high-ranking city officials have been the subject of disciplinary or work-related disputes in recent weeks. (These two stories detail those incidents.) Those cases involve department heads who report to the mayor. As the independently elected clerk, Smart does not report to the mayor and can act on his own.