Angry residents force city to wait on attorney hire

PALMDALE — The City Council declined to take the scheduled action to hire an interim city attorney, after hearing from a number of angry residents about the candidate, who in the past was involved in suing the city over California Voting Rights Act violations.

The closed session agenda for Wednesday’s meeting included the item to discuss and possibly hire John Jones as interim city attorney. As a closed session item, no supporting documentation was provided in the agenda.

It appears, however, that the candidate is John L. Jones II, one of the lawyers, while with the firm Shenkman and Hughes, involved in suing the city in a case that began, in 2013, and stretched out over years. He is no longer with the firm.

Eventually, the city lost the case and was forced to move to districts for electing Council members, and it paid out millions of dollars.

Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris also represented the plaintiffs in that case.

More than a half-dozen residents spoke out against hiring Jones during the comment period before the Council entered closed session, citing his participation in the lawsuit and ties to Lancaster through it.

When the Council returned from closed session, more than three hours later, they said no action was taken on the items related to hiring Jones, which Mayor Steve Hofbauer said was a result of the comments heard prior to closed session.

A representative of the Palmdale Freedom Coalition voiced their “strong opposition” to Jones’ hiring, as his ties to Lancaster and the earlier lawsuit “make him an entirely unsuitable candidate for the position.”

“We are instructing you, this evening, to find a more suitable candidate for the position of city attorney, preferably one that doesn’t have a history of doing financial harm to the city of Palmdale and doesn’t represent yet another city of Lancaster tentacle reaching into the governance of our city,” he said.

Resident Mario Presents questioned the Council’s methods and due diligence in seeking an interim city attorney.

“Obviously you’re looking in the wrong places because you’re picking from people who have sued your city,” he said.

Attorney Kevin Shenkman, of Shenkman and Hughes, also called in to the public comment portion. He angrily responded to the comments against hiring Jones and the implication that Jones was working with Lancaster.

“John Jones hasn’t worked for us for six years,” he said.

“He has no ties to Lancaster,” Shenkman said, and that his only connection with Parris is “that they both happened to work on a lawsuit nine years ago.”

After blaming the lawsuit on Hofbauer — who was a Council member at the time — Shenkman said the city did then and continues to receive bad legal advice.

“The question becomes, do you continue to hire losers who give you bad legal advice, or maybe, just maybe, you hire a winner and you’ll get good legal advice?” he said. “The one thing you know about John Jones, because he won with me, is he’s a winner.”

Shenkman also claimed that Hofbauer had recruited residents to speak out against Jones. Hofbauer briefly asked the audience members if any of them had come at his behest and they answered no.