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LA County supervisors look to enforce COVID vaccine mandate in LASD
By City News Service
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LA Mayor Eric Garcetti (left) Sheriff Alex Villanueva. | Photo courtesy of Mayor of LA via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
develop proposed amendments to county Civil Service rules, giving the personnel director "overriding authority to discipline the employees of any county department for noncompliance with the county's policy or directives related
to the policy." Those proposed amendments would be reviewed by the board at its March 15 meeting for final consideration. The authority to discipline -- or terminate -employees who violate the
mandate currently rests with individual department heads, such as the sheriff. The motion states that such an arrangement "has allowed for inconsistent See COVID vaccine mandate Page 5
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Former Garcetti spokeswoman accuses mayor of perjury
By City News Service ith Sheriff Alex Villanueva declining to enforce the county's COVID-19 vaccine mandate among his deputies, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday will consider a proposal that would give the county personnel director overriding authority to discipline any employees who fail to comply with the requirement. Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Holly Mitchell introduced the motion, saying countywide compliance with the employee vaccine mandate "remains a challenge four months after its issuance." They noted that as of Feb. 1, 81.5% of the county's 100,000 employees were fully vaccinated as required by the mandate. But in the sheriff's department, less than 60% of employees were in compliance with the vaccine mandate. "Unsurprisingly, approximately 74% of the more than 5,000 COVID-19related workers' compensation claims filed by county employees as of Jan. 29, 2022, have been filed by employees in the sheriff's department," according to the motion. "This data illustrates vaccinations' vital role in limiting the spread of COVID-19 and thus, the urgent need to increase vaccination rates across the entire county workforce." The motion, if approved, would direct county attorneys to work with the CEO and personnel director to
VOL. 10,
he nonprofit law firm Whistleblower Aid has filed a complaint on behalf of Mayor Eric Garcetti's former communications director accusing the mayor of perjury for claiming he was unaware of alleged sexual harassment and assault by his former senior adviser. The complaint was sent Wednesday to the U.S. Department of Justice, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón, the California State Auditor's Office, the California State Personnel Board and the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. The mayor, who has been nominated to be the ambassador to India by President Joe Biden, was questioned during his nomination hearing in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the sexual harassment allegations against his former adviser Rick Jacobs. Jacobs was accused in a 2020 lawsuit filed by Los Angeles Police Department Officer Matthew Garza, who claims Garcetti witnessed the misconduct but turned a blind eye to it. Garcetti has denied the allegations in the past -- and did so again during his hearing, telling the Senate panel he has a "zero tolerance" policy for sexual harassment. The mayor has previously claimed he didn't know about Garza's accusations at the time or until
the lawsuit became public in July 2020. The complaint filed last week alleges that Garcetti committed felony perjury on Feb. 8, 2021, during his deposition as part of the lawsuit, and on Dec. 14, 2021, when he told the Senate committee under oath that he "never witnessed nor was it brought to my attention the behavior that's being alleged." The committee in January advanced the nomination, which will next have to be confirmed by a majority of the U.S. Senate. Whistleblower Aid filed the complaint on behalf of Naomi Seligman, a former director of communications for Garcetti who says she was forcibly kissed by Jacobs and that Garcetti knew about Jacobs' alleged pattern of harassment. Speaking to reporters after an unrelated news conference on Monday, Garcetti declined to comment on the complaint, but the mayor's office said in a statement: "There is nothing new here -- and these false claims about the Mayor are just as ridiculous now as they were when they were first made. The Mayor stands by his testimony unequivocally, and more than a dozen witnesses have testified under oath that he was never made aware of any improper behavior." See Former Garcetti Page 5
