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It’s a stretch, a long one perhaps, to compare the banning of a number of commissioners from their volunteer duties on quasi-official bodies to the witch hunts of the 1950s.  

Still, a number of city commissioners say they have been unfairly singled out by the City Attorney’s Office, which has asked them either to step down completely or to recuse themselves from participation in commissions. 

George Wozniak, whose day job’s at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, has been the most recent commissioner placed under the city’s legal microscope. In January, he was told he had a conflict and had to leave the Community Environmental Advisory Commission. 

“On the basis of Dr. Wozniak’s management and scientific duties at LBNL, and the broad range of disputes between CEAC and LBNL, we concluded that the position of Senior Scientist and Deputy Division Head were incompatible with membership on the CEAC,” Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan wrote in a February memo, explaining a January decision. Cowan is taking the place of City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque for a few weeks while she is on vacation. 

Wozniak contends the ruling is wrong. “There’s a process you have to go through to remove a commissioner. You have to hear both sides of the story,” he said, further arguing, “They’re basically saying I’m a second-class citizen.” 

Wozniak has been talking to an outside attorney who has encouraged him not to step down from the commission. City Councilmember Polly Armstrong, who appointed Wozniak to the body, went with him to speak to the city attorney and says she stands behind his decision not to leave his post. “We shouldn’t exclude a whole group of people,” she said, referring to the exclusion of lab workers from the CEAC. “(Wozniak) is a brilliant man. I’m going to leave him on the committee as my appointee,” she said. 

But Cowan says his office is on solid ground. Quoting from state law, he wrote, “a local agency officer or employee shall not engage in any employment, activity or enterprise for compensation which is inconsistent, incompatible, in conflict with or inimical to his or her duties as a local agency officer or employee or with the duties, functions, or responsibilities or his or her appointing power or the agency by which he or she is employed...” 

Wozniak, who’s lived in Berkeley for 34 years and worked at the labs for 30 years, has been on the commission for two years. “Why now?” he asked. “Why didn’t I have a conflict two years ago?” 

Cowan said his office is not culling through the resumes of the hundreds of commissioners to find which ones have a conflict of interest. “We were asked (to look at Wozniak),” he said. “We don’t monitor every commissioner.” 

Wozniak said he’d have no problem recusing himself from votes concerning the lab. That’s what Councilmember Linda Maio, who also works at LBNL, has done at the council level. But Cowan said the law he is citing doesn’t allow for recusal.  

And it “doesn’t apply to elected officials,” he said. 

The other commissioner asked to leave the CEAC was Green Party member John Selawsky. He was told his election to the Berkeley School Board placed him in conflict with his duties as a commissioner. 

There is currently tension between the CEAC and the Berkeley Unified School District. The commission had asked the schools to allow the city’s toxics department to investigate BUSD’s use of pesticide, but the schools have not cooperated in the investigation, the city attorney’s report said.  

“There is a manifest conflict of loyalties in this situation,” says a report to Selawsky from City Attorney Albuquerque. “While it may be that over time this dispute will be resolved, the existence of this dispute indicates that it will not be possible ‘in every instance’ to discharge the duties of each. Accordingly, we conclude that the offices of CEAC commissioner and member of the BUSD governing board are incompatible.”  

Then there’s Carol Thornton, who heads up the Parks and Recreation Commission. She was told by the city attorney, following an address to the Zoning Adjustments Board on the subject of a development proposal, that she had a conflict of interest and needed to recuse herself when the project comes before her commission. 

She spoke before the ZAB as a member of the board of the Urban Creeks Council and called for the daylighting of a creek that traverses the property at 1301 Oxford St., where Temple Beth El wants to build a new synagogue and school. The problem, as the city attorney’s office explained it, is that she had taken a position on the project as a member of the Creeks Council and therefore ought not take a position as part of a commission. 

“...she should not participate as a commissioner since she has been an advocate on behalf of a non-profit on the project,” said an e-mail from the city attorney, forwarded to the Daily Planet.  

Similarly, on Oct. 30 the city’s legal team ruled that those commissioners who were board members or staff of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association could not participate on the commission while it was addressing questions pertaining to the Beth El Project. The president of BAHA had written a letter to the commission on behalf of the board, arguing that the Beth El Environmental Impact Report was inadequate. The four commissioners have refused to recuse themselves and are considering legal action against the city.