Weeks after San Diego City Council members approved a plan allowing lifeguards the option to leave their current union \u2014 the San Diego Municipal Employee Association (MEA) \u2014 to join the 911 Teamsters, MEA officials said in a May 29 memo to union members that an internal investigation resulted in the involuntary resignation of former MEA president and general manager Judie Italiano under a cloud of allegations. “We as MEA\u2019s elected officers placed MEA\u2019s General Manager Judie Italiano on an involuntary leave of absence in order to conduct an unfettered investigation of possible misfeasance in the handling of MEA\u2019s monies,” MEA officials said. “We have concluded that Ms. Italiano breached her duty of trust as MEA\u2019s General Manager by using the MEA credit cards which were entrusted to her\u2026 and, in so doing, she incurred a substantial indebtedness to MEA.” The San Diego MEA union represents about 100 full-time lifeguards and nearly 4,500 white-collar city employees. MEA member and San Diego lifeguard Sgt. Ed Harris said Italiano was not fulfilling her member responsibilities. So Harris sued Italiano on or about May 6, citing a September 2006 report from former San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre that alleged Italiano unlawfully used MEA credit cards for personal use. “This continues to unfold and we continue to learn more things \u2014 that was the purpose of the lawsuit,” said Harris\u2019 attorney, Amy Lepine. Lepine said she asked lifeguards and MEA members to join the class action lawsuit. According to court documents, by January 2006 Italiano allegedly used MEA credit cards to purchase at least $131,000 of merchandise from stores such as Nordstrom and spent more than $1,000 at casinos. Three years later, Lepine said she “estimate[s] the amount has doubled.” MEA officials said May 29 that Italiano allegedly reimbursed the union for $13,000. But Lepine said the former general manager owes much more. “We\u2019re hopeful that having her removed will get some money back into the coffers,” Lepine said. “[Union members] pay a substantial amount in dues.” In the May 29 letter to members, MEA officials said they referred the matter to the District Attorney\u2019s Office for “its determination as to whether any crime was committed\u2026” Harris said he asked San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis\u2019 office to perform a complete audit of the current MEA board. “We\u2019ve received the request to investigate [the MEA] and we\u2019re reviewing it,” said Steve Walker, deputy communications director for Dumanis. Meanwhile, lifeguards continued planning for an election to determine if a majority of San Diego lifeguards want to leave the MEA to join the 911 Teamsters, Harris said. “We\u2019re currently working with labor relations and the MEA to come up with the rules of the vote,” Harris said. “Once we get that set up, we\u2019re hoping to come up with a vote sometime in late July.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Weeks after San Diego City Council members approved a plan allowing lifeguards the option to leave their current union \u2014 the San Diego Municipal Employee Association (MEA) \u2014 to join the 911 Teamsters, MEA officials said in a May 29 memo to union members that an internal investigation resulted in the involuntary resignation of former […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Lifeguard union\u2019s ex-GM, suspected of money mischief, resigns","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551,11593,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news","category-no-images","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}