According to former Councilman Tim Risch, the leave may be the first step in the realization of a two-year-old plan to get rid of LaSala. And Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone, who served four terms as a Sunnyvale city council member, also said he believes there are political motivations behind the leave.

LaSala may have been preparing for this possibility, because his name surfaced in a Dec. 24 article in The Modesto Bee newspaper as a candidate in Stanislaus County's search for a new chief executive officer.

By press time, the Sun was unable to reach LaSala for comment on his leave or the Modesto Bee article.

Stone, who said that a council removing a city manager from office is not an unusual thing—because the manager essentially works at the will of the council members—is still concerned about the circumstances surrounding the leave.

He is concerned that it seems as if the council is trying to find a way around a provision in LaSala's contract that says he cannot be removed within 90 days of a vote that brings new members to the city council.

Traditionally—Stone said—the 90 days gives the council and city manager a period to work with each other and for any preconceived notions either side has to be either proven or dismissed.

"By putting someone on administrative leave, they're circumventing what I think is a reasonable provision in the contract," Stone said. "As a taxpayer and a citizen, I'm not really pleased with that."

Risch, who has been out of office for less than two months, also questioned the timing. "To my knowledge, Bob has done what the council has directed him to do. I don't know where the council is coming from in all of this," Risch said. "But it's questionable to me."

But even though he said it wasn't unusual for a city manager to leave with a new council in place, Stone has his concerns about the timing and history behind this move.

"It's very clear that this action has significant political overtones to it," Stone said, pointing out that he thought those political overtones came primarily from Public Safety Officers Association influence on the city council. "These folks now seem to be very partial to the association."

Former Vice Mayor Tim Risch, who served on the city council for a single term, said that in his time on the dais, he observed a number of instances in which Councilman Fred Fowler and former Mayor Julia Miller were publicly disrespectful to LaSala.

"It's obvious over the last two years that Miller, Fowler and Howe have been obsessed with getting rid of Bob, and they're doing that with the encouragement of the Public Safety Officers Association," Risch said.

Both Risch and Stone said LaSala got on the PSOA's bad side by suggesting cuts to public safety during last year's budget crunch. Stone added that Risch's support of LaSala might have been the catalyst behind Risch losing both his PSOA endorsement and council seat.

"The PSOA thinks they're immune from budget cuts, and they never liked LaSala because he made them bear their fair share of those cuts," Stone said.

Former PSOA President Steve Fisk said that any notion of the association "strong-arming" the city council is impossible, given the relationship the two groups have.

"Just given the fact that the city council listens to us and talks to us, if we were to take that for granted, we'd lose our credibility and our ability to communicate with them," Fisk said.

Fisk also said that he didn't see how the PSOA could have the sort of resources it would take to strong-arm the city council and drastically change decisions or policy.

And while he acknowledges the political influence of the group, he didn't think it was absolute.

"I think we've established that we're an important player (in Sunnyvale)," Fisk said. "But we're not the only players."

Stone said that he thought the influence the PSOA seems to have on the council comes from the fact that if a candidate opposes PSOA actions—or cuts their positions—it can appear to be a sign that that candidate does not support public safety in general.

That influence was most apparent during the recent elections, where—Stone said—PSOA efforts decided the outcome of at least one crucial race.

"They were effective in this year's election. It bordered on sleaze, but it was effective," he said. "Melinda (Hamilton) owes her election to the PSOA, clearly. You don't have to be a political junky to know that."

Stone said that in his own time with the council, he started off with PSOA endorsement, but after his second term, was actively opposed by the association. In spite of their efforts, however, Stone went on to a third and a fourth stint on the council.

Mayor John Howe said that the influence of the PSOA on the city council is minimal, and that it is more of a two-way process, with both groups influencing each other, but neither group has control over the other.

Despite his criticism of the PSOA, Stone continually praised the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, a distinction he felt needs to be made clearer.

"I'm not suggesting that Sunnyvale public safety officers are any less than first rate. Sunnyvale is still the best, most cost-effective place to live and work in Northern California," Stone said. "This city's not going to get less safe based on what Bob LaSala did [by proposing cuts in public safety]."