Step Aside, Councilman


Column originally published 2-8-07

The mayor was right about Kardos
By Kelvin Wade

Kudos to Mayor Harry Price for having the guts to say to Councilman Frank Kardos what I believe the majority of Fairfield residents are thinking: please step aside and deal with these charges against you.

Without that statement, it would've been even more surreal watching the Fairfield City Council meeting Tuesday evening as the participants carried on as though one of their members weren't charged with strangling his ex-girlfriend.

Frank Kardos is a special case because he's a public servant. It is because he's accountable to the public and is supposed to be a role model as an assistant principal that he's going to get more scrutiny than a private citizen. And it's also for that reason that while offering a brief statement and then silence may be a sound legal strategy, it's a failing way to deal with the public.

Even if the latest arrest had never happened, there would still be troubling questions about Kardos' prior arrests and his ex-wife's allegations of abuse spanning 13 years. As a public servant, his constituents deserve something.

Is it too much to ask our council personnel to serve a four-year term without getting arrested? Perhaps we should ask future candidates to take a pledge to step aside if they find themselves in legal hot water.

A columnist for another paper took issue with my call for Kardos to step down. All I did was apply Frank Kardos' own standards of appropriate conduct to his own situation. If Kardos' political nemesis Superintendent A. Woodrow Carter had been the one arrested, does anyone doubt Frank Kardos would've been leading the charge for him to step down?

The same columnist suggested Kardos is being treated unfairly by the media. Give me a break. Look at San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom has been blasted for having an affair with a staffer's wife. Now imagine if Newsom had been arrested for allegedly choking an ex-girlfriend and it surfaced that he had prior arrests and his ex-wife accused him of abuse. Does anyone believe there'd be no calls for him to step down?

The mayor's call for Kardos to take a leave of absence and deal with these charges is reasonable. Given what the community went through with former Councilman John English and the seriousness of these charges, how can anyone say it's an unfair request?

Frank Kardos and colleague John Mraz have received many accolades and ink in this paper for bringing a new energy, fresh perspective and ideas to law enforcement in Fairfield. But how does Frank Kardos speak on crime issues now without the whole thing coming across like a joke?

We had a delegation of law enforcement officials from Thailand visit Fairfield recently to examine our crime rate and police practices. It must've been some education for them seeing one of our city officials so intimately involved with the criminal justice system.

What isn't a joke are the charges of felony assault and misdemeanor domestic battery. What also isn't a joke are the women who've contacted me who have frightening stories to tell about Kardos. The mayor has made his move and the ball is in Frank Kardos' court. It's up to him how this plays out.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well done. A Cirque du Soleil-worthy balancing act! :o)

Thanks for keeping the sanity alive in the printed media -- and with such grace.
10:10 PM
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