Gracie Torres was censured by her Western Municipal Water District board colleagues and stripped of her vice president title Wednesday, Dec. 21, for what they said was her disrespectful behavior toward staff members.
The vote to censure Torres was 3-1, with board President Brenda Dennstedt and members Mike Gardner and Laura Roughton voting yes. Torres voted no. Board member Fauzia Rizvi abstained.
Before the vote, Torres called the move “humiliation, retaliation and outright, overt actions” against her by Dennstedt.
Dennstedt proposed the censure following what Western’s lawyer described as a pattern of incidents in which Torres disrespected staff members.
They include a February 2021 board meeting in which Torres is alleged to have told district General Manager Craig Miller: “Thanks for mansplaining to me.” Torres said she didn’t recall saying that, but said “it’s not the first time I’ve asked our general manager not to be condescending.”
Another incident is alleged to have occurred Oct. 5 of this year, when Torres “publicly criticized staff and legal counsel’s job performance during the board meeting (and called) attention to grammar errors, misspellings and scrutinized the work performed by the reviewer of the work repeatedly,” Western General Counsel Jeff Ballinger wrote in a memo.
Western Municipal Water District board President Brenda Dennstedt voted Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022, for the censure of Gracie Torres. Dennstedt has called it “a response to a documented history of disrespectful and demeaning conduct by Director Torres toward district staff.” (Courtesy of Western Municipal Water District)
Western Municipal Water District board member Mike Gardner, a former Riverside city councilmember, on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022, supported the censure of Gracie Torres. (Courtesy of Western Municipal Water District)
“These comments adversely impacted staff,” he wrote.
Torres has said the Oct. 5 meeting was not properly advertised and violated California’s Brown Act, which sets transparency rules for elected officials’ meetings. She said she was being retaliated against for calling out that infraction.
The censure resolution reprimands Torres for violating the district’s ethics policies, which require board members to maintain high standards of personal honesty and fairness and not to harass or discriminate against anyone when performing their official duties.
A censure expresses the board’s disapproval of Torres’ actions. The board can punish a member by taking away committee assignments or revoking official travel privileges, according to a memo from Ballinger.
After the censure vote, Roughton pushed to remove Torres’ vice president title under the board’s censure policy.
Gardner urged a resolution to the situation.
“My hope is that, whatever the board intends to do, we do it today, as opposed to let it hang over everyone’s heads through the holidays and into next year,” he said.
The board voted 3-2 to strip Torres’ title, with Dennstedt, Gardner and Roughton voting yes and Torres and Rizvi voting no.
Torres, who is Latina, has said she felt “racial undertones” were behind the censure. Public speakers defending Torres said they believed the censure was a racist move.
Torres’ critics said race has nothing to do with the censure.
“(It’s) not random and it’s not racist,” Roughton said Dec. 7. “(We’re not) trying to censure Ms. Torres because of any dislike for her or something like that … it’s because of this pattern of behavior.”
Torres also accused Dennstedt of harassing her. Dennstedt has said the censure “has nothing to do with me” and was meant to address Torres’ misconduct.
Based in Riverside, Western provides water to almost 1 million people in a 527-square-mile area from Corona to Temecula. It serves 25,000 customers in Riverside and Perris as well as March Air Reserve Base and the unincorporated communities of El Sobrante, Lake Mathews and Mead Valley.
The district is governed by a five-member board that serves four-year terms. Torres, first elected in 2018, won 58% of the vote in November in beating four opponents to win re-election to the Division 2 seat, which represents March and parts of Riverside as well as Lake Mathews.