Kalispell’s city council fired city manager Jim Patrick on Monday, 13 October 2008, in what may have been an illegally closed meeting. At this point, the city has not provided a public accounting of the reasons Patrick was given the heave-ho, but Mayor Pam Kennedy did provide Kalispell’s Daily InterLake with a near world class banality for publication:
“It’s typical for city managers to change their employment every three to five years,” Kennedy said. “It was determined by the City Council it was time to search for a new manager and time to discontinue our professional relationship with him.”
That’s the kind of mush that mayors ladle out when they expect the employee they just axed to sue the city for wrongful termination: leveling with the public might not be the best legal strategy. It’s also a way to discourage the ex-employee from filing a lawsuit, as it says, in effect, “If you sue, we’ll disclose your sins.”
It’s also doublespeak, CYA-speak, and a display of contempt for the public’s right to know. Instead of ladling out mush, Kennedy should have said “no comment,” or “the city attorney has advised us not to comment on this issue, and we are taking his advice.” Kennedy should know better — and if she doesn’t, the voters should replace her with someone who does.
There are indications that Patrick might have sinned against the city. And common sense suggests that in most cases like this, there’s fire below the smoke. According to Dan Testa’s story in the Flathead Beacon:
While Patrick has presided over enormous economic growth and development in his four years as city manager, over the last year and a half he has also had to deal with a number of tough issues, including: moving the city government into a new facility after a renovation project that ran significantly over budget; bitter aggravation in the city fire department between the firefighters’ union and former chief Randy Brodehl prior to Brodehl’s eventual departure; a city budget shortfall for the current fiscal year that resulted in the elimination of several city positions; acrimonious negotiations with the city employees union over an employment contract that led to picketing outside city hall last year by union members; and difficulty implementing transportation impact fees amid the strenuous objections of Kalispell’s business community.
[Kalispell city councilman Duane] Larson said there was no single issue that led to Patrick being let go, but “just an accumulation of things.”
And according to the InterLake:
There also has been disagreement between the city and local advocacy group Citizens for a Better Flathead. Mayre Flowers, the nonprofit organization’s executive director, said she hopes the new city manager will be a proponent of transparent government.
Patrick has been present at closed meetings on transportation impact fees — meetings that, because they are of public significance, should have been open to the public, Flowers said.
In my book, public officials and employees who close meetings illegally ought to be fired. Sunshine is what keeps government from decaying. So if Patrick was guilty of closing meetings illegally, or conducting secret meetings, he got what he had coming.
But if that was his offense, what irony that he was sacked in a meeting that itself might have been illegal.
That a fetish for secrecy always comes back to bite the southern exposures of small town politicians and administrators is a lesson that those people never seem to learn.