Fresh off its censure of Councilmember Michele Padilla for misusing city funds, Stockton’s City Council voted recently to streamline the process for reprimanding its members — a process newly elected councilmembers will inherit in January.
The council voted unanimously Nov. 19 to rewrite its handbook on the censure process, giving the mayor more leeway to decide which members investigate alleged misconduct, among other changes. Much of the policy’s original wording also has been updated.
“I think we should be leading the charge and being an example of good government,” Councilmember Kimberly Warmsley, who represents south Stockton, told Stocktonia by phone last week.
Amendments to the council’s policy sailed through with no discussion as part of the meeting’s consent agenda, where multiple items are typically approved on a single vote unless a member requests to “pull” an item out for separate consideration.
Changes to the council’s censure policy came one week after councilmembers unanimously censured north Stockton representative Padilla for using more than $10,000 in City Council discretionary money on a cookout that took on political overtones when five candidates running in the 2024 election season spoke onstage. City rules state that discretionary money can’t be used for politics.
Mayor Kevin Lincoln was absent from the vote, and Padilla was barred from voting per censure rules.
Padilla has insisted the event was never meant to be political.
“I had no intention, no motivation,” she said at the earlier hearing, calling the censure “a desperate attempt to undermine myself for political gain.”
Her colleagues said the censure wasn’t personal but about following rules for protecting public money.
Padilla is the only member of the City Council to be censured since the policy was created in December 2013, a keyword search through archived Stockton City Council agendas shows. However, former Stockton Mayor Anthony Silva was slapped with a “resolution of admonishment” by the council that same month as a public condemnation for “releasing confidential information from closed session discussions concerning the appointment of a city manager.”
Two weeks later, the council approved a new censure policy and process. The policy has been updated only one other time since its inception.
Padilla supported the recent amendments to the council’s censure policy.
“I didn’t have any problems with it. You know, I agreed with it,” she told Stocktonia by phone Monday.
The District 1 councilor’s censure will likely be the last before four new members take their places on the dais at the beginning of the new year. Mayor-elect Christina Fugazi and soon-to-be representatives Mariela Ponce, Mario Enríquez and Jason Lee of Districts 2, 4 and 6, respectively, will be sworn in Jan. 7, a city spokesperson said.
Councilmembers Michael Blower and Brando Villapudua of Districts 3 and 5, as well as Padilla, are not up for reelection until 2026.
The censure rules the new council will inherit differ from those that shaped Padilla’s case in several key ways.
First, the old rules were “convoluted” when it came to deciding which councilmembers will investigate alleged wrongdoing that could bring about a censure, Blower told Stocktonia.
In even-numbered years, the mayor had to pick councilmembers from even-numbered districts — excluding the accusers and accused — to sit on a three-person investigating committee, the policy shows. Odd years would get odd-district picks.
The rule was “weird,” Blower said, and “couldn’t be enacted if you had the wrong mix of people” in a given year.
Under the new policy, the mayor can pick any three councilmembers except the accusers and accused. If the mayor is among them, the vice-mayor decides.
When asked, two councilmembers said it’s possible this flexibility could let a future mayor pick the committee in hopes of swaying the outcome of a censure vote.
But “there could be cloudy judgment in every decision that you make, depending who the person is,” Warmsley said. Blower explained that he didn’t see a way around the mayor’s-choice approach.
The new rules also set rough deadlines to move the censure process forward, where the old rules had few. And the new approach includes a broader vision of what conduct the council thinks deserves rebuke.
Censure may follow if a councilmember “negligently, intentionally, or willfully (violates) a law, regulation, City policy, or the City Code of Ethics,” the new rules say. The old definition mentioned neither regulations nor ethics.
“In the political climate that we’re in — especially when we’re looking at money from the school district that’s still missing and unaccounted for — there has to be transparency and accountability within our city level,” Warmsley said.
Some parts of the censure rules will remain the same. For example, the process still must start with two councilmembers making their case for censuring a colleague in a letter to the city clerk. In August, Villapudua and Blower initiated the censure process against Padilla following this format.
The council also still has the option to dismiss the matter before investigation. And censure can still only happen after a public hearing and a majority vote of councilmembers who are not the subject of the complaint nor those making the complaint.
Under the city’s discretionary fund policy, Padilla could face consequences beyond the censure process, such as losing city reimbursement, civil penalties or criminal investigation.
The council has not sent Padilla’s case to the San Joaquin County district attorney’s office for possible investigation, a city spokesperson said. Nor has it pursued other consequences.