Yesterday, on October 22, Milpitas City Councilmember Hon Lien submitted a letter to the City Clerk’s office, initiating a process to censure Councilmember Evelyn Chua for allegedly violating proper City procedures in scheduling a closed session meeting. 

A censure is an official public statement of disapproval issued by a governing body — such as a city council — toward one of its own members. It’s a formal way for the governing body to express that they do not condone a given member’s behavior. Although a censure doesn’t mean that a councilmember will be removed from their role, it essentially exists as a public reprimand holding the person accountable for their actions. 

Lien’s action toward a censure of Chua followed Tuesday night’s Council meeting, where, for two and a half hours, Council discussed what to do regarding Chua’s alleged violations of the City’s Code of Conduct, the Council Handbook, Ordinances, and Municipal Code. 

The conversation was long and tense and often went in circles. 

Vice Mayor Garry Barbadillo dominated the discussion, repeatedly stating that the City report on the matter lacked a full picture of what had happened, and did not contain all communication related to the alleged violations. He said the agenda report was “piecemeal” and there was not enough information to move forward. He also felt that it was incorrect to state that Councilmember Chua had committed “violations” since as of yet there has been no “determination of fault.”

“Who decided there were violations?” asked Vice Mayor Barbadillo at the meeting. “I thought it was the council as a group based on the censure policy to determine a council member to be in violation of something.”

At one point, Barbadillo even suggested that the council conduct performance evaluations of the Interim City Manager and City Attorney. 

Mayor Carmen Montano said that she would not want to censure Councilmember Chua for her conduct in scheduling the meeting. She said she felt that “there was no malice” present in Councilmember Chua’s actions… 

“I think it was an honest mistake. She has done so much for the city. She cares about the city,” said Mayor Montano. “I just feel it was an honest mistake. I feel a censure is not needed, an admonishment is not needed.  I just feel that…just a verbal statement…” 

But Councilmember Hon Lien felt otherwise. 

“If I’m voting on doing nothing, I would be condoning the wrongdoing. How would the public see us? We destroy the trust of the public,” said Lien.  

The background: This past August, Councilmember Chua went to a City office specialist to get help with scheduling a closed session meeting, instead of first approaching the City Attorney or Interim City Manager. Had the meeting occurred without being properly noticed, there would have been a Brown Act Violation. The subsequent City report on the matter claimed that Chua violated the City’s Code of Conduct as she didn’t follow the appropriate process for planning a closed session meeting. 

On August 29, Interim City Manager Deanna Santana put in her resignation, stating that she felt she could no longer fulfill her role and claiming in an email to Council that her recent exchanges with Councilmember Chua had grown “tense.”  

At Tuesday’s Council meeting, Chua actually tried to initiate a censure of herself, but was told by the City Attorney that she wasn’t allowed to do so. 

“I tried to initiate the censure on myself, because I wanted to see the entire process,” said Councilmember Chua in an interview with The Beat. “What policies can we put into place so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again? I’m not hiding anything. I want this process to be reviewed so this doesn’t happen again.” 

With the censure process having been initiated by Lien, the next steps are to gather more evidence and investigate the matter more fully. Together, Council will determine whether or not any misconduct occurred and then may or may not vote to ultimately censure Evelyn Chua. 

Council will meet tomorrow in a Special Meeting at 11:30am to look at more evidence and discuss the matter more thoroughly. 

“To destroy is easy,” Councilmember Lien told The Beat in an interview. “To build or rebuild is much more difficult, especially when it comes to our integrity and the public trust.” 

The Beat will stay on the story.