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GUEST COMMENTARY - Previously, I exposed the alarming due process issues tainting the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California's investigation of its general manager, Adel Hagekhalil, following allegations of harassment and discrimination.
This ongoing investigation was triggered by a 14-page complaint filed by Assistant General Manager and CFO, Katano Kasaine, on May 27. She delivered it to 11 selected members of Metropolitan’s Board of Directors, including Chair Adán Ortega.
In my earlier articles, I laid out the procedures—according to Metropolitan’s Administrative Code—for processing alleged Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) violations by department heads. These code sections are designed to protect confidentiality and due process.
Photo by SoCal Water Wars
Unjustified breaches of confidentiality trample due process rights, leading to retaliation against witnesses and creating a biased court of public opinion. In this scenario, preconceived biases and political pressures, rather than carefully vetted facts, determine the ultimate verdict.
In this case, there were three glaring breaches of confidentiality before June 13, when the full Board of Directors, in a closed session, voted to place GM Hagekhalil on administrative leave.
- By Kasaine when she delivered her complaint, dated May 27, to Chair Ortega and 10 other selected board members.
- By Board Chair Adán Ortega, who likely shared the complaint with the full board on or around June 11.
- By Politico on June 12, one of the most widely read news journals in the United States, an event that probably would not have occurred if AGM Kasaine and Chair Ortega had not violated confidentiality in the first place.
On June 13, following these breaches of confidentiality, the Board of Directors placed GM Hagekhalil on administrative leave, pending the investigation's completion. He remains on leave as of this report, but the matter is expected to conclude at the January 21 meeting of the full Metropolitan board, although the agenda has yet to be posted.
Katano Kasaine Photo Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
On November 6, Chair Adán Ortega, through his press officer Rebecca Kimitch, responded to my questions regarding the aforementioned breaches of confidentiality and due process. The entire response is provided below:
Mr. Earl, below is Metropolitan’s response to your inquiry regarding the distribution of a letter from Assistant General Manager and Chief Financial Officer Katano Kasaine to Metropolitan’s Board of Directors:
Assistant General Manager and Chief Financial Officer Katano Kasaine directly sent her letter to Metropolitan Board Chair Adán Ortega, Jr. and copied 10 other board directors. As is standard practice with correspondence sent to directors of our board, and in concurrence with the advice of the outside legal counsel hired by Metropolitan’s board to manage the investigation of personnel matters regarding department heads, the letter was then shared with the rest of Metropolitan’s 38-member Board of Directors.
Metropolitan’s full board is collectively responsible for managing the agency’s department heads, including the general manager. As such, it is standard practice – and Chair Ortega’s practice – to confidentially share with every director all information deemed necessary for the full Board to assess job performance and make required management decisions.
The votes to place General Manager Hagekhalil on administrative leave, and then extend that leave, were taken by the full board, and were supported by a vast majority of directors (89% of the board voted to place General Manager Hagekhalil on leave, 85% of the board voted to extend his leave until Oct. 23, and 95% of the board voted to extend his leave until completion of the investigation).
Metropolitan’s board has been similarly unified in most board votes since General Manager Hagekhalil’s election more than three years ago.
Metropolitan has repeatedly committed to ensuring a fair and independent investigation, and we stand firmly by this commitment. While the investigation is ongoing, we are unable to comment on specific details and respectfully request that everyone refrain from speculation or premature conclusions. Allowing the investigative process to proceed without external influence is the best way to uphold the principles of due process that are rightly of concern to all parties involved.
Despite Chair Ortega’s claim, there is no “standard practice” of distributing details of an EEO or Ethics complaint to other board members as indicated in Metropolitan’s Administrative Code. The only allowance is under state law for the legitimate need to know for the purposes of conducting a fair and impartial investigation.
In comments made to the Board of Directors on July 13, Chair Ortega himself eliminated any suggestion of a “need to know” by angrily denouncing the leak of the complaint in full to Politico, who had no more or less need to know than the 38 directors Ortega showed it to.
Attaching a condition of confidentiality to justify distributing sensitive information about an investigation of alleged workplace abuse to board members was futile, given the agency’s notorious history of politically motivated leaks. Both Chair Ortega and AGM Kasaine, along with virtually every other member of Metropolitan’s Board of Directors and upper-level staff, were well aware of this history.
Adel Hagekhalil Photo by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
By law, including Metropolitan’s Administrative Code, AGM Kasaine’s complaint should have been kept confidential to the reasonable extent possible. There was no need to distribute it to 11 personally selected board members, much less all 38 members of the board.
The complaint should have been delivered directly to Metropolitan’s independent, state-mandated Ethics Officer, Abel Salinas, to conduct a fair and thorough investigation.
But that’s not what happened. In fact, the one person who was supposed to be in charge of investigating the complaint, the Ethics Officer, apparently never read it—at least not until after it was leaked.
The procedures used by Chair Adán Ortega and various other board members in the investigation of General Manager Adel Hagekhalil seem to indicate a combination of premeditation and subsequent justification. I will explain the detailed evidence for that conclusion in Part 2.
(John Earl is an investigative journalist. Reported on SoCal water-management issues for 20 years, including climate change, drought, government/corporate transparency, & environmental justice through a Southern California lens. http//socalwaterwars.substack.com)
