The Santa Ana City Council has set standards for contracting city councilmember or mayor aides in the future, including a cap on how much aides can be paid and guidelines on when they can participate in political campaigns.
Each fiscal year, $420,000 is set aside for support staff with each of the six councilmembers and the mayor allocated $60,000 each. The aides are hired as independent contractors responsible for assisting councilmembers or the mayor with researching policies, assisting with community engagement, evaluating programming and more.
Telling the councilmembers that as of early May there were 17 active agreements for aide positions – some councilmembers have more than one – all of which were being paid at different rates between $22 and $59 an hour, city staff asked the council for direction in streamlining the contracting process, as well as setting standard policies and procedures.
“We’re going to need some help with some dialogue from the City Council regarding some parameters, or what we call guardrails on this program,” Assistant City Manager Steven Mendoza told councilmembers at a recent meeting. “We have found over the period of time that we have various agreements with various amounts, various pay structures and it’s offering a lot of confusion and not a lot of clarity or simplicity in managing this program.”
Last week, the city staffers returned to the council with a template that included a pay scale and other position requirements.
In the pay scale approved by the council on Tuesday, June 4, hourly rates will continue to be at the councilmembers’ discretion, however, the maximum is set at $60 per hour, not to exceed $5,000 per month.
The council approved other guidelines, including that aides must go through a background check prior to being contracted, aides cannot file for candidacy for elected office or serve as a city commissioner while working in City Hall. An aide is also prohibited from participating in Santa Ana council campaigns as a treasurer, manager or consultant, and they can’t receive any pay or reimbursement from such a campaign.
Councilmember Johnathan Hernandez said he sees no problem if an aide were to volunteer for a campaign on their own time, but has an issue if they work on a campaign in an official capacity.
“I do take issue with someone who is being paid by a campaign committee also being paid by public dollars,” Hernandez said. “I think that enters the area of conflict of interest, as well as potential misuse of public funds. I also don’t want to infringe on any of these consultants’ abilities to get engaged in their community politically.”
City Attorney Sonia Carvalho clarified that this clause will not prohibit an aide from volunteering in a campaign, however, they cannot do campaign work at the same time they are supposed to be doing city work.
“It’s campaigning for any candidate at the same time that you’re performing work for the city pursuant to the agreement. That’s the prohibition,” Carvalho said. “It’s that while you are performing work, and are going to submit an invoice for that work, you cannot at the same time be doing campaign work.”
“If they want to campaign for a candidate for City Council, they can do that. They’re only prohibited from doing that if they’re going to charge the city for that work,” she added.
As part of the new contract guidelines aides will be paid within 30 days of the city’s receipt of their invoice. The aides’ contracts will coincide with the fiscal year schedule meaning they start July 1 and run through June 30.
Mayor Valerie Amezcua said in previous years one aide made as much as $26,000 over four months.
“If this person would have worked a whole year, it would have been $104,000,” Amezcua said. “So I’m glad that we’re going to put the bumpers on – $60,000 is the max, here’s the rules – it’s about being fair and equitable.”
