Two Artesia Employees Fired Under City's 'Cite First, Ask Questions Later' Policy

By Andrew Perry

Artesia, California — Residents, businesses, and City employees are beginning to question the City's increasingly aggressive approach to code enforcement in the wake of the firings of two code officers.

What happens when City Hall begins measuring success by the number of citations issued instead of the number of problems solved? Residents receive more tickets. Businesses face more penalties. And employees who question that approach may find themselves on the outside looking in.

Two longtime employees have now been terminated after opposing what they describe as a two-year shift away from the City's traditional community-based approach to code enforcement and toward a more reactive philosophy that employees have summarized as, "Cite first, ask questions later."

City management maintains the employees were terminated for poor performance. Yet during the appeal hearings, it became clear that both officers had received passing performance evaluations. Both men were also well known in the community they served.

A few months ago, Eye On Pioneer published a column defending one of these officers because he believed residents and businesses should first be given an opportunity to voluntarily correct violations before receiving citations. He was officially terminated several days ago. They are among the latest casualties that this new policy claimed among the City's stakeholders: residents, businesses, and city employees.

Whether you support aggressive code enforcement or not, every resident should expect disciplinary decisions involving public employees to be fair, transparent, and based on facts. Every employee should expect whistleblower complaints to receive meaningful investigation. Every supervisor should be held to the same standards expected of those they supervise.

This is no longer simply a personnel matter. It reflects a broader policy direction that affects residents, businesses, and City employees alike.

"Cite First, Ask Questions Later"

Former Code Enforcement Officer Ho-Sam Choi explained:

"I've worked for the City for over a decade. We always had a proactive policy where we found issues and corrected them through communication with residents and businesses. We called it voluntary compliance. The idea was to work with residents, educate them, and give them an opportunity to fix the problem."

According to Choi, that approach worked successfully for nearly a decade.

"Now they are doing reactive enforcement, and we were citing so many people," he said. According to Choi, the policy shift began roughly two years ago but accelerated significantly last year.

Before his termination, Choi said last year he issued a record (for him) 104 citations in one year. By April of this year, he had already reached 124.

"The pressure to write more citations just kept increasing," he said.

A Change in Direction

Several years ago, the Artesia City Council adopted a policy direction focused on beautifying the City—a noble goal that virtually every resident can support.

The concern raised by these hearings, however, is whether that objective evolved into an enforcement philosophy that increasingly emphasized citations over voluntary compliance.

Conversations with City officials and evidence presented during the hearings led me to conclude that longstanding Code Enforcement Officers were increasingly being characterized as performance problems because they continued practicing the community-oriented approach they had used successfully for years.

One of the terminated officers, who wishes to remain anonymous, maintained positive performance evaluations throughout his career until this policy shift accelerated.

The Union's Perspective

As President of AFSCME Local 1520, I strongly disagree with the City's "Cite first, ask questions later" approach.

From the public's perspective, this philosophy means more citations, more penalties, and fewer opportunities for residents and businesses to voluntarily resolve problems.

From the union's perspective, it has already resulted in the loss of two experienced employees—one who was approaching retirement and another who consistently carried one of the largest workloads in the department.

I have represented City employees long enough to know that not every disciplinary action is unjustified. Sometimes employees deserve discipline. Sometimes termination is warranted.

That is not what concerns me here.

After sitting through these hearings, I no longer believe the City's explanation fully matches what was presented in evidence.

What Changed My Mind

During the hearings, I primarily observed while our union's business representative, Karla Salazar, presented the employees' case before the Hearing Officer.

As the hearings unfolded, several issues emerged that caused me to fundamentally reassess the City's position.

Another issue involved a whistleblower complaint. One of the officers reported concerns regarding timekeeping involving his supervisor and a family member who had been hired to the same department. According to testimony presented during the hearings, those concerns were brought to the City's attention, but the employee was simply advised to report it again if it happened in the future. There was apparently no official investigation. It was not until approximately a year later—after the union raised the issue during the disciplinary appeal—that the City finally conducted a cursory investigation. The union questioned both the scope of that investigation and the absence of a written investigative report.

The disciplinary examples themselves also raised concerns. The City's case to fire these employees was plagued with severe failures to simply put up a good argument. The union easily rebutted, and even debunked, several bogus claims where the City was framing the terminations as being based off poor performance.

In one instance, an officer was disciplined for issuing a citation within three days when the Standard Operating Procedures generally contemplated ten days. The union presented evidence that the reason the officer cited so early was that he was directed by his supervisors. He was following orders. He was written up by his supervisors for following their orders!

In another, an officer anticipated being unavailable the following week and sent his supervisor an after-hours email identifying a case with an approaching deadline. Rather than being viewed as an effort to ensure continuity of service, the email became part of the disciplinary record relied upon during the termination proceedings. In other words, he was written up by his supervisor for trying to be helpful! Most people would simply thank you and go about their day.

Finally, the senior Code Enforcement Officer spent an entire career receiving positive evaluations before receiving his first disciplinary write-up, his first negative evaluation, and ultimately his first termination after the change in management. His first disciplinary action stemmed from not reading several pages of training material following a routine training session involving procedures with which he was already familiar. In the context of an otherwise lengthy and successful career, I found that difficult to reconcile with the City's characterization of his overall performance. But to summarize - he was written up for not reading three pages of a training manual he was already familiar with, and the City said this was wasting City resources.

The Bigger Question

These two terminations are about more than two employees.

Whether you agree with the City's code enforcement philosophy or not, every Artesia resident has an interest in a City government that exercises its authority fairly, transparently, and consistently. Residents deserve a code enforcement program that emphasizes solving problems—not simply issuing citations. Businesses deserve to know they will be treated with professionalism and common sense. And City employees deserve to know that performance evaluations, whistleblower complaints, workplace investigations, and disciplinary decisions will be handled fairly and based on the facts.

Government works best when employees can raise concerns without fear of retaliation, supervisors are held to the same standards as everyone else, and decisions affecting people's livelihoods are based on objective evidence rather than predetermined outcomes. Those principles protect not only City employees—they protect the public's trust in its government.

If the City's goal is a cleaner, more attractive Artesia, I support that goal. Most residents do. But there is a difference between enforcing the law and creating a culture where success is measured primarily by citations rather than compliance, and where experienced employees who question that approach believe they are being pushed aside.

That is why these terminations matter.

Not because they involve two Code Enforcement Officers, but because they raise larger questions about the direction of City Hall, the culture of City management, and the kind of local government Artesia residents should expect in the years ahead.

This article is not asking readers to trust the union. It is asking them to ask whether the process they would expect for themselves is the same process these employees received.