Larry Wilson: Why didn't Pasadena read the room on city manager pick?
When you take some time off the local beat during election season to visit on the phone with an almost endless stream of would-be judges and California politicians seeking endorsements, the beat goes on.
New Whittier Mayor Jamie Becerra upends the old guard. In an obviously political, anti-academic - here comes Elon's SpaceX! - move, NASA pulls the flying carpet out from under Caltech by putting out who runs JPL to apparently the highest bidder after 75 years. The latest Eaton fire report says no one's to blame. Arcadia's mayor cops to, well, spying for China and takes a plea deal and gets federal prison time. Pasadena schools, including some of my alma maters, are possibly slated for closure. Plus, huge goat wars in the Arroyo Seco!
I'm getting to all those and more in coming weeks, after we vote next Tuesday. Who you voting for? No one knows, except it's likely not Riverside Sheriff Chad.
But the wildest story to cross anyone's desk in recent weeks is the craziness that beset ordinarily sedate, well-mannered Pasadena City Hall when the City Council chose a new city manager after another fabled nationwide search, touted his managerial virtues and then saw the whole deal fall apart amid deliciously catty news of his spouse's war of words with the Riverside City Council and city staffers as well in the Inland Empire city he currently serves.
Mike Futrell supposedly informed Pasadena that he would be staying in Riverside instead of accepting the job here … that he had already accepted. But what really happened is that everyone on both sides realized that the deal was not going to go through. Futrell, who had been trumpeted as a genius choice for his 30 years in the public sector, including serving as South San Francisco's city manager, chief administrative officer for the city of Baton Rouge, La., and a state director in the U.S. Senate, was suddenly damaged goods.
The former Navy captain and Republican state senator in Louisiana overnight became too hot to handle when it was revealed that the Riverside City Council had sent a letter of official rebuke to Futrell's wife Susan Freeman saying: "Your pattern of communication has been disruptive at the workplace, caused significant distress to City staff, and serves no legitimate purpose."
It's not an easy position, being the spouse of a city's chief executive, any more than it is being a first partner or second gentleman. Your life and views are no longer your own. The default position is to stay under the radar, like it or not. Freeman does not do that in Riverside.
After Trump's second election, she posted an image of a swastika on Facebook. A councilman objected. Freeman objected to being objected to: "They are wrong," she replied. "This is history. This is America. This is my first amendment right."
We lose a lot of our First Amendment rights when we are married to a public figure, especially one who is in a job that is not political but rather managerial. This may be unfair. As is life. Just because she is not wrong about the dangers presented by an authoritarian in the White House doesn't mean that it's her job to spotlight the obvious. Leave that to others, and there are plenty. Work behind the scenes to protest against the rising tide of tyranny. Because if you work in front of the scenes, as a City Hall spouse, it's guaranteed to backfire. Riverside, a college town, has a lot of progressives. But in Riverside County, Trump got 49% of the vote in 2024. There is no purchase, for a city manager, in ticking off half the people.
Certainly worse than the anti-Trump rhetoric, and bless her for being on the side of the angels on that one, was a perception in City Hall that Freeman considered herself part of what Alex Wigglesworth in the L.A. Times characterizes as "the city's decision-making team." Involved in businesses and nonprofit work in Riverside, "your relationship with the City Manager creates a feeling of pressure for City staff when you solicit City employees to participate in services they have to pay for or ask City staff for donations," the letter of rebuke from the council informed Freeman.
"Because I'm the city manager's wife, these MAGA people thought I should be silent," Freeman told the Times. But that's not really it. Freeman got in the habit of feeling she was a free agent within City Hall. She emailed two subordinates of her husband asking if they had been involved in sending anonymous letters about her that had claimed she was creating a toxic environment in City Hall, and emailed two City Council members asking for help finding out who wrote the "very horrible anonymous letters."
Why on Earth didn't the executive search team in Pasadena, and the council, know about this tomfoolery? Read the room as well as the resume, ladies and gents? That's the real question to ask here in our own little inland empire.
Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com.
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