City Staff Aims to Control City Council’s Field Representatives

City human resources staff recommended that field representatives be hired by the City of Pasadena rather than by the city councilmember they represent at the Legislative Policy Committee meeting on July 24.

As policy currently stands, city council members recruit, hire, supervise, and terminate their field representatives as they see fit without any supervised criteria by the city.

If the new policy were passed, field representatives would be required to withstand the intensive background check mandatory for all potential city employees. However, the recommendation would require only future field representatives for a background check and those already in existence would forgo that process.

The recommendation wants to mirror the existing relationship between the council member and field representative to retain the flexibility and the discretion of the city councilmember.

City council members raised this issue at the budget session to address whether field representatives could receive better compensation and benefit administration from the city rather than the outside organization, Oasis Outsourcing, which currently manages their employment.

“In the discussions with my field representative, it seems like the majority of the issue lies with the cost of their benefits,” City of Pasadena Vice Mayor Jacque Robinson said.

In her analysis, Director of Human Resources Kristi Recchia found that if the city made the changes needed to give the field representatives what they perceive as a better benefit plan, the costs would only rise from $630,695 to $634,811.

“The staff is indicating the same kind of flexibility can be achieved with the new employment relationship. If that turns out to be correct and there are no additional costs involved, then maybe the transition that has been asked about, that is making them become city employees instead of council member employees, is ok,” City of Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard said.

Bogaard did not send submit his recommendation for the proposed change and Councilmember Steve Madison was absent, thus the proposal will get passed onto City Council in September without recommendation by the Legislative Policy Committee.

“I’m anxious to have the councilmembers acquaint themselves with this alternative proposal and get comfortable with it before we’re asked to make a final decision,” Bogaard said, “Until we get a little further along in identifying support among councilmembers for this change, I prefer to remain neutral.”