By Jim Cline
A
recent decision by the Washington State Supreme Court appears to be fair warning to elected city officials who mismanage personnel matters and violate employee rights. In a recent decision, the Washington State Supreme Court approved recall charges against the City of Pacific Mayor on multiple grounds, including poor personnel management practices, employment retaliation, and violating union contracts.
The recall of elected officials is tightly regulated by State law. Under RCW 29A .56.110, recall petitions can only be presented to the voters were there are provable charges of malfeasance and violation of the oath of office. Petitions for recall must be approved by a Superior Court before they can proceed to the ballot. The courts very closely scrutinize such petitions to ensure that elected officials are not subject to recall election over garden-variety policy and management disputes. As a result of that scrutiny, the vast majority of recall petitions are actually rejected by the court and never see the ballot.
The recent conduct of the City of Pacific Mayor, as alleged in the petition, and as documented in a local media accounts, has included some extraordinary conduct including firing several police officers, threatening to kill a police lieutenant, and being arrested by its own police force for trespass. The City nearly looked at corporate dissolution after it lost its insurance policy.
In the case before the Supreme Court, but court had to closely scrutinize whether the specific allegations alleged against the Mayor that were documented in the recall petition met that the strict recall test. The court found that the Mayor’s alleged mismanagement which involved the loss of insurance and violation of employee rights was sufficient grounds for a recall election:
Where a recall petition seeks to recall an elected official for a discretionary act, the official must have exercised his or her discretion in a manifestly unreasonable manner. [Petitioner]Thomson adequately alleges that [Mayor] Sun unilaterally mistreated employees, refused to follow required procedures, and violated union contracts. If the voters believe these allegations to be true, the allegations show that Sun exercised his discretion in a manifestly unreasonable manner.
The City of Pacific situation is one of the most extreme on record, but there have been frequent reports among small towns, especially where the day-to-day management is by an elected mayor rather than a professional city manager, of poor personnel practices. Often, these missteps can be expensive for the taxpayers and create a horrible working conditions for the employees subject to arbitrary management.
Although having professional City managers is intended to prevent such conditions, that is no guarantee of success if the elected city council fails to engage in oversight over the city manager. Although the circumstances are not as extreme as City of Pacific, it would appear the next city to be subject to a close review on its insurance policy would be the City of Mountlake Terrace. The City has been under intensive scrutiny by courts and PERC for repeated employment and labor law violations. Given the magnitude of the City’s problems, it would be reasonable to anticipate that questions might arise concerning the City’s insurance coverage. Because of these questions the Mountlake Terrace Police Guild is actively seeking public records on the City’s insurance status, and the City has so far resisted the Guild’s public records inquiry, something that might result in yet another legal claim against the city.
The City of Pacific recall effort and the associated loss of insurance coverage should be a warning to bad managers. Retaliating against employees and violating labor contracts can have personal consequences for those managers. Unfortunately, if the citizens and the other elected officials do not step in to check such misconduct, they are the ones ultimately left carrying the burden financially. In this day of litigation, cities cannot afford to carry poor managers.
