In a widening City Hall soap opera that appears headed to court, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. has been accused of stalking and harassing his $342,000-a-year assistant for more than a year after she ended a nearly decade-long tryst with him.

An attorney for Melanie McDade-Dickens alleges she was suspended from her job in retaliation for the breakup and now is likely to be fired.

“She was an exemplary employee who has never once been sanctioned; never once written up; never once disciplined,” attorney Carl Douglas said in a letter to the city. “That is, until she told the mayor, ‘No, I want to live my life without you.’ “

Douglas said he plans to file a lawsuit as soon as the city makes a decision about her employment, which could come as soon as next week.

Through her attorney, McDade-Dickens alleges the mayor entered her home unannounced on “more than a dozen occasions” using a garage opener he had from when they were in a relationship. She also alleges the mayor followed her to a beauty salon and was captured on a surveillance camera placing a device on her vehicle.

Douglas said other City Hall employees have witnessed the mayor screaming at McDade-Dickens during office hours.

Mira Hashmall, an attorney for the city, denied the allegations of stalking, harassment and retaliation, calling them “fabrications.”

Hashmall and city officials still refuse to address whether Butts and McDade-Dickens were in a relationship, despite repeated questioning about it. Rumors of the relationship have circulated among residents for years.

Relationship brought up in court

Butts and McDade-Dickens previously declined to answer questions about their past during depositions in a lawsuit opposing a proposed Los Angeles Clippers arena in Inglewood. The city’s attorneys successfully fought off Madison Square Garden Co.’s effort to force Butts and McDade-Dickens to address the issue through a court order.

After she was escorted out of City Hall and suspended in July, McDade-Dickens corrected 148 answers in her testimony. Many of the changes contradict the city’s claims and her own sworn statements in two prior depositions, including one that occurred shortly after she was suspended.

Because of the sudden changes, a court-appointed referee has ordered McDade-Dickens to sit for another deposition for up to seven hours. The order states there is “sufficient justification” to inquire whether she changed her testimony to gain leverage in her employment dispute.

Allegations against McDade-Dickens

McDade-Dickens was suspended for allegedly violating city policies, but the 15 allegations against her have not been disclosed. The letter from her attorney, however, indicates McDade-Dickens is alleged to have used city employees to help with personal matters, including filling out loan documents for a new home, and to have asked a city employee to change her state and federal tax deductions.

Court filings by the city claim her “malfeasance was connected to personal financial pressures” related to her purchase of a home.

Douglas said it is a common practice in Inglewood’s administration to have junior employees assist with personal errands. The deductions were changed by a 25-year employee.

“They’re trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, which creates a pretext for this entire sham investigation,” Douglas said.

Nearly half of the allegations occurred after McDade-Dickens was suspended, including an allegation that she tried to influence the investigation, according to Douglas. City officials described Douglas’ tally as “inaccurate.”

“There is no suggestion that Ms. McDade personally stole city funds, or personally benefited in any way to the City’s financial detriment. She is not accused of steering any municipal funds to help a friend or family member,” Douglas wrote in his letter. “She has not compromised the city’s integrity for personal gain.”

Hashmall, the city’s attorney, called Douglas’ letter “inaccurate with regard to both the information he leaves out as well as the wildly unsupported assertions he includes.” She criticized Douglas for releasing his letter, which was sent to the city ahead of a hearing about the future of McDade-Dickens’ employment, without releasing the full list of allegations alongside it.

“Instead of harping on what Ms. McDade is not accused of doing, why isn’t he forthcoming with the actual allegations?” Hashmall said. “The city is constrained in this matter, but Mr. Douglas is not.”

Mayor participated in probe

In an interview, Douglas would only speak about the allegations already mentioned in his letter. One alleges McDade-Dickens improperly paid $1,129 to a photographer. Photographer Kerry Newsome, in an interview, said he was interrogated by the city’s attorneys and later by the mayor about his work with the city. Newsome took photos at the mayor’s events from June 2018 to 2019, worked on graphic designs and edited videos, he said.

Newsome, who said he only knew McDade-Dickens professionally, never saw the mayor or McDade-Dickens argue or act intimate toward each other.

Douglas characterized the mayor’s meeting with Newsome as an attempt to get the photographer to “incriminate” McDade-Dickens, but Newsome denied having that impression. However, if the mayor and McDade-Dickens were in a relationship, the mayor’s direct involvement in interviewing a witness is likely to be used against the city if the matter goes to court.

Douglas noted the report outlining the allegations against his client mentions Butts very little, despite the fact the mayor is McDade-Dickens’ direct superior.

“To me, that says it was a retaliatory pretext, because how can you possibly consider terminating an eight-year employee without getting her supervisor on the record,” Douglas said.

Butts signed evaluations, voted on bonuses

Butts signed off on two of her most recent performance evaluations, both of which were positive and occurred after the supposed breakup. He voted with the City Council to give her bonuses during a period when McDade-Dickens alleges she was his “paramour.”

Inglewood paid McDade-Dickens nearly $1.3 million total in salary and benefits from 2013 to 2018, according to Transparent California, a nonprofit database of public employee compensation. Her title during most of the payments was “executive assistant to the mayor and city manager.” Butts and City Manager Artie Fields have justified her high pay by saying she performed duties closer to that of an assistant city manager.

Butts and his employee allegedly started their relationship when she was a staffer on the mayor’s 2010 campaign. She was hired as his assistant once he took office. Her salary and benefits jumped from $135,069 in 2013 to $342,914 in 2018.

Douglas said McDade-Dickens earned the raises and bonuses as evidenced by her glowing performance evaluations, including several that Butts was not involved in.

“She is not just a pretty face; she happens to be a very competent administrator that has saved the city millions of dollars,” he said.

Douglas says McDade-Dickens ended her relationship with the mayor in March 2018. The letter alleges Butts called and sent text messages to her “hundreds of times” after the breakup. Inglewood recently denied a public records request from the Southern California News Group for the mayor’s messages, claiming such records did not exist.

Tensions were high for the next year, but Douglas says the tipping point occurred when Butts learned McDade-Dickens had purchased a home without telling him. He stripped her of her acting “assistant city manager” position and froze her out of executive meetings, Douglas said. She lost approximately 30 percent in bonuses to her salary as result of losing her extra duties.

Hashmall said the city hired full-time employees to fill the positions that McDade-Dickens had previously covered.

“As her own attorney confirms, Ms. McDade held ‘acting’ executive positions,” Hashmall said. “These were always temporary, as the name implies.”

Not a conflict of interest under state law

In his letter, Douglas alleges the mayor has engaged in sexual relationships with other employees and “lavishes those employees with favors and special benefits under the guise of official City business.”

Ethics experts say Butts’ control over a supposed girlfriend’s salary would likely not run afoul of California’s conflict-of-interest laws, which require him to have a financial interest in the arrangement. But if she was being paid an overly generous amount, it could constitute a gift of public funds.

“If they were sleeping together, but she was making $65,000 a year, which is about what you would pay someone for that role, then it’s an issue between him and his wife,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “If she is being paid $300,000 a year for a $65,000-a-year job, then that’s an issue for his constituents, the taxpayers.”

This isn’t the first time that Butts has been accused of using his position improperly. In 2013, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office investigated Butts for asking a trash company to hire his brother during negotiations for a lucrative contract. The company that won did hire his brother, but prosecutors declined to charge Butts because he did not personally benefit.

An investigation by the Southern California News Group, however, found that Butts’ brother was his tenant, according to bankruptcy documents, and the new job allowed him to pay his rent.