Metropolitan Water leakers revealed
MWD's Assistant GM and Board Chair breached the agency's Admin Code and due process to handle harassment complaint against GM Adel Hagekhalil.
On October 28, I began exploring the due process—or lack thereof—concerning the investigation of Adel Hagekhalil, General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, for alleged workplace harassment and discrimination.
I emphasized that safeguarding the confidentiality of all parties involved is essential for ensuring a fair and impartial investigation. This protection is not only a matter of due process but also mandated by state law and Metropolitan’s Administrative Code.
The accusations that led to the investigation were made in a dramatic 14-page complaint by Metropolitan’s Assistant General Manager and CFO, Katano Kasaine, dated May 27. Her complaint is against her boss, GM Hagekhalil.
In response to AGM Kasaine’s complaint, Metropolitan’s Board of Directors, in a surprise vote on June 13, while GM Hagekhalil was out of the country, decided to place him on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation by an outside law firm.
On June 12, just one day before the vote, AGM Kasaine’s complaint was published online by Politico, one of America's most popular political journals. It’s clear that someone, likely from within Metropolitan, illegally leaked the complaint to Politico. The publication's reporters and editors seemed more focused on attracting readers than on respecting due process rights.
Opposing biases
Conducting a fair investigation that leads to just solutions requires controlling for biases that could influence the investigation from the outset.
However, long before June 12, AGM Kasaine’s entire complaint had already been knowingly leaked to 38 members of Metropolitan’s Board of Directors. This leak occurred before any investigation had been completed as prescribed by law.
The board members who received the unredacted document were already deeply divided over future water-supply plans for the agency’s 19 million Southern California customers, especially during this era of extreme climate change.
GM Hagekhalil and AGM Kasaine represent opposing sides in a long-standing ideological struggle between the new guard and old guard. The main point of contention revolves around whether to support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Delta Conveyance Project and a greater reliance on imported water, or to emphasize more conservation and the development of local and regional supplies.
GM Hagekhalil downplays the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), instead advocating for the creation of a “fourth aqueduct” through conservation, wastewater recycling, groundwater storage, and stormwater capture.
GM Hagekhalil’s immediate predecessor, Jeffrey Kightlinger, was a strong advocate for the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP). AGM Kasaine, who worked under Kightlinger for two years, currently serves as the treasurer of the Delta Conveyance Design and Construction Authority, a joint powers authority representing sixteen water agencies committed to building the DCP.
GM Hagekhalil was hired in June 2021 by a razor-thin vote of the Board of Directors to lead the new guard, focusing not only on water-management reform but also on changing a culture of discrimination and harassment that had persisted during Kightlinger’s 15-year tenure.
Hagekhalil swiftly tackled Kightlinger’s shortcomings by implementing a series of reforms for handling worker complaints and improving workplace culture, as recommended in a recent State Audit—an achievement that might be perceived as a rebuke to his predecessor.
AGM Kasaine’s complaint alleges that, in her last year and a half at Metropolitan, she endured the most “hostile and dysfunctional” workplace she had ever experienced. She attributes this to GM Hagekhalil’s management style, which she claims included cronyism and incompetence. Kasaine blames her trauma on constant scrutiny, discrimination, and retaliation by Hagekhalil for “standing up against issues that are not in MWD’s [Metropolitan’s] best interest.”
This leak, by all accounts, weakened due process rights of both the accused, GM Hagekhalil, and the accuser, AGM Katano Kasaine. My article posed the question, "Who leaked the 'confidential' complaint against Metropolitan’s GM to Politico?"
The question was both rhetorical and substantive. I do not know the name of the last link in the chain of leakers who handed the confidential and explosive complaint to Politico.
However, I do know the names of those who “set in motion a narrative that is potentially harmful to the general manager, the chief financial officer, this board, and this agency,” as described by Board Chair Adán Ortega. He characterized this illegal and unethical act but incorrectly attributed it to a single perpetrator.
I promised to reveal those names.
