Tracy Taxpayer Dollars to Fund City Attorney & Council Members' Legal Defense!

The hypocrisy of Eleassia Davis, Mateo Bedolla, and Dan Evans knows no bounds.

The three council members responsible for creating what the Civil Grand Jury calls a “toxic work environment within City Hall” voted to spend taxpayer dollars to cover their personal legal costs in defending their head scratching approval of a retroactive pay raise for City Attorney Bijal Patel.

Local Attorney Steve Nicolaou’s lawsuit alleged illegal actions by the council, claiming a retroactive raise for City Attorney Bijal Patel violated the Brown Act.

Voting 3-2 to hire high-priced legal firms to protect an illegal and unprecedented pay raise to the city attorney will end up costing taxpayers’ tens-of-thousands of dollars and blatantly misuses public funds.

Their plonkish and tawdry decision should infuriate voters on several levels.

First, considering giving the embattled City Attorney Bijal Patel an 8.9% retroactive pay raise should have never been on the table in the first place.

After the State Bar of California suspended Patel’s license for the month of July 2023, she failed to notify the city council (or anyone at the city for that matter) that she was ineligible to practice law, and, in fact, she continued to serve as the city’s attorney which is illegal. Patel only fessed up after private citizens brought her suspension to the council’s attention.

Patel violated several terms of her employment agreement with the city. These terms provide that she was to be terminated “immediately” for being ineligible to practice law.

But rather than follow the terms of the contract and immediately terminate Patel Council members Davis, Bedolla, and Evans stated publicly that they wished to pay Patel more than the retroactive 8.9% raise. We observe in this instance an outside attorney hired by Patel at taxpayer expense was assigned to advise the Council.

Let that sink in again. 

Second, this entire situation could have been avoided if the three council members would have simply rescinded the retroactive pay raise and then rescheduled a public hearing.

Attorney Nicolaou gave the Davis, Evans and Bedolla an opportunity to do the right thing, but they refused.

The refusal of Davis, Bedolla, Evans, and Patel to admit any wrongdoing is reflective of the dysfunction surrounding the city council and city as highlighted in the damning Civil Grand Jury report.

Third, why does Bijal Patel get the high-priced law firm charging $450 per hour versus the law firm representing the council members that charges substantially less per hour?

The answer is simple: Patel controls the hiring of all outside attorneys per her revised duties approved by Davis, Bedolla, and Evans.

Patel evidently feels that she’s just a bit more important than the three who’ve given her so much power and authority.

Fourth, how much is the three council members’ decision to give City Attorney Bijal Patel a retroactive pay raise dating back almost a year costing taxpayers? It cannot yet be calculated.

There might not be another resident in Tracy who has ever gotten an 8.9% retroactive pay raise.

The raise alone made Patel one of the highest paid government workers in the entire state.

If you then start to add all of the city staff time and now outside legal costs spent and that will be spent on defending this decision, the total amount could easily surpass the $1 million mark for taxpayers.

As a reminder, Patel was already making $241,020 per year when the three council members boosted her salary to $279,807 per year making it retroactive to April 2023. (To place this into context, she makes just $693 less than John Roberts, chief justice of the US Supreme Court.)

The pay raise was giving in December 2023. This meant that taxpayers paid Patel the difference in her salary with the raise for that 9-month time period.

She is getting this money; shouldn’t she pay for her own attorney instead of the taxpayers to protect this unprecedented raise? We taxpayers are paying twice. Once when the retroactive raise was given and again when paying for the attorneys to defend the retroactive pay raise.

Finally, the one remaining question is how much more damage can the City Attorney and Councilmembers Eleassia Davis, Mateo Bedolla, and Dan Evans do before the November election? 

Actions speak louder than words and thus is the case with these four individuals running our city.

The city is in far worse shape than it was even two years ago under this failed leadership.

Business is bad. Morale is bad (the turnover of staff at City Hall is at a historic high). Public trust is non-existent. Our taxpayer dollars being wasted.