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Sacramento City Leaders Speak Out On Employees Accused Of Sex, Drugs On Job

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Sacramento city leaders have broken their silence about two employees who are accused of having sex and doing drugs on the job, with a city councilman blaming it on budget cuts.

City Manager John Shirey says the conduct by two city utility workers is troubling.

"What these people did was wrong and they knew it was wrong," he said. "We took action. We said employees you're wrong, you're out of here."

The allegations first came to light in an anonymous tip to the city auditor's whistleblower hotline. In a complaint obtained by CBS13, the male and female employees are accused of having sex in a city vehicle during work hours as well as using drugs and alcohol on the job.

The complaint also accuses them of time card fraud, sending pornographic material through city email and lying about the affair.

"We found out it was mostly true and we took swift action to confront the employees," he said.

But they weren't fired, instead deciding to resign.

"There isn't much difference," Shirey said of the two options. "It's a time savings for us that's for sure."

Sacramento City Councilman Jay Schenirer sats past budget cuts may have led to a lack of employee oversight.

"We didn't really have enough people to do the job," he said. "We're starting to build back, but I think part of it will be training our managers and holding people accountable. that might have been lacking for some period of time."

City leaders also voted to move forward with plans to hire one additional investigator for the city's whistleblower hotline, which is seeing a growing number of complaints each year. It was created in 2012 and has grown from 20 tips that year to 160 in 2015.

"It's rare actually that one goes this far, but this one did and we dealt with it," Shirey said.

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