Stockton’s recruitment and hiring practices came under scrutiny at a recent Council Audit Committee meeting, where councilmembers questioned why employees in a newly created city division were hired without competitive review and given unusually high salaries.
The division, known as the Office of Public Transparency, Information and Communication (OPTIC), houses the city’s public information officer, social media manager, social media analyst and marketing and social media analyst. OPTIC positions were created under the direction of former Interim City Manager Steve Colangelo while the Office of Performance and Data Analytics was dissolved and its employees were released.
“The purpose of this item was to inform the public of our hiring practices and understand if we are in compliance with the law, and also with best practices,” Vice Mayor Jason Lee said at the Monday, Sept. 15 meeting. “There was the department OPTIC that we did not see in the budget. That later came before Audit Committee and presented their department structure. And what we learned was that the positions that were filled in that department did not go through what we understand to be a competitive review process.”…