ALAMEDA — Councilman Jim Oddie violated the city charter by urging City Manager Jill Keimach to hire a specific candidate for fire chief, according to an investigator’s report released Wednesday.

In a 100-page report, attorney Michael Jenkins determined Oddie crossed a line by recommending an applicant in a letter on city letterhead, a violation of the charter that prohibits council members from interfering with the city manager’s duties.

The Jenkins independent investigation came after Keimach alleged in a letter last year that certain council members lobbied her to hire an internal candidate supported by the firefighters union, fire Capt. Domenick Weaver. Vella was cleared of any wrongdoing, Jenkins wrote.

Many of Keimach’s allegations, such as council delaying her performance evaluation, were not supported by evidence, said Jenkins, who reviewed documents and interviewed 22 people during his investigation.

“The one piece of evidence that does cross the line and falls squarely on the side of improper influence is Councilmember Oddie’s letter of recommendation of Weaver that was addressed to Keimach and dated July 31, 2017,” he wrote.

In a statement, Oddie said the city manager “has caused harm to Alameda and its citizens” and “made unsupportable accusations” against him and Vella.

“If I violated the Charter by writing a letter of recommendation on behalf of a man I know well and believed would be a great fire chief, then, as the investigator’s report recognizes, the Charter needs to be changed,” Oddie said. “There was nothing improper about writing a recommendation letter for a highly qualified candidate, and although I regret the wasted time and money occasioned by Ms. Keimach’s allegations, I cannot apologize where the record reveals that I did nothing wrong.”

Jenkins has recommended revising the city charter, calling it “problematic because it is very broad.”

“The point of the City Charter is to eliminate corrupt influences such as political patronage or conflicts of interest and to preserve the professional administration central to a manager-council form of government,” Jenkins wrote. “It is unlikely that the City Charter was intended to prohibit a councilmember’s sincere and constructive criticism about the manner in which a City Manager is making an appointment.”

He also wrote that he had to weigh whether council members were protected by the First Amendment.

Keimach has been placed on leave and last month admitted that she secretly recorded Oddie and Vella during a meeting. In a statement, her attorney, Therese Cannata, called for the city to release the tape and said it “will show that Ms. Keimach acted reasonably and legally in tape-recording a meeting with Mr. Oddie and Ms. Vella, given their attempts to illegally influence the hiring of the fire chief.”

Cannata wrote that the investigative report confirmed Keimach “did the right thing by rejecting the ‘chorus of pressure aimed directly at Keimach’s appointment decision,’ selecting the most qualified candidate for the position of Fire Chief, and by risking her job to do that.”

In her own statement, Vella said she looks forward to moving past what she called a distraction.