Modesto city clerk sues to get city to pay her legal bills
Modesto’s city clerk is suing the city to recover her legal costs from a recent investigation that looked into her allegations against a councilman and other city officials, but it was an investigation the clerk has said she never wanted.
City Clerk Stephanie Lopez filed a small claims court action against Modesto on Nov. 26 in Stanislaus Superior Court seeking $5,026. This comes after the city rejected her claim for reimbursement.
Lopez, who has worked for Modesto since 2001 and has been city clerk since April 2008, declined to comment.
But in her court paperwork, Lopez wrote she is seeking reimbursement for legal advice in an investigation initiated by Councilman Doug Ridenour. She wrote she needed legal advice to protect her against Ridenour, City Attorney Adam Lindgren and City Manager Joe Lopez. (He is not related to the city clerk.)
Ridenour asked for an investigation more than a year ago of Lopez’s allegations against him. Ridenour has said that during an August 2018 meeting with Lopez to discuss her upcoming job review, he said she told him he had behaved inappropriately toward her in the past.
But Lopez has written that she did not want an investigation because she feared retaliation and that she would be fired. But city officials essentially have denied those allegations.
“... I strongly believe this investigation is politically motivated and is retaliation by the City Manager and City Attorney who believe I am a ‘whistle-blower’ because I have raised concerns and shared information with Mayor (Ted) Brandvold over questionable expenditures, overspending/extension of contracts, purchasing practices, costly legal services, etc,” the city clerk wrote in a statement included in the investigation.
The allegations included that disrespectful comments had been made to the city clerk, that she had wrongly been excluded from meetings and that Ridenour had made lewd gestures at her.
The investigation conducted by attorneys not connected to the city substantiated one allegation: Ridenour likely referred to Lopez, former Auditor Monica Houston and Kathy Espinoza, the executive assistant to the mayor and council, as the “mayor’s girls.”
The comment could be perceived as reflecting the political discord among the seven-member City Council, with Ridenour on one side and Brandvold on the other.
The investigation was conducted over the summer, and Modesto recently released its results. City officials have said they expected to spend as much as $70,000 for the two law firms involved in the investigation.
This story was originally published December 15, 2019 at 9:52 AM.
