Yesterday, Bluestem posted Waseca confidential part 1: Mike Parry's deleted emails as metaphor:which asked the questions:
Did Mike Parry's treatment of a former Waseca City employee trigger fears of a lawsuit? Did those fears prompt a large severance package-and was the episode yet another reason voters ended Parry's career on the city council after one term?
Did Parry's deletion of emails in which city business was conducted skirt state laws?
Tonight, I'll look more at the circumstances surrounding the $51,000 severance package. News coverage about Leiferman's departure began on August 25, 2008, with the Waseca County news article City in separation talks with community development director:
City Manager Crystal Prentice, however, offered a bit more detailed definition of Leiferman’s employment with the city.
“We’re in the middle of discussions on a severance agreement,” she said, confirming that Leiferman left late last week and will not be returning to his position.
Mayor Roy Srp said he wasn’t pleased with Leiferman’s departure, and indicated that rifts between Leiferman and city council members may have in part led to Leiferman’s decision.
“There was a majority of the council headed toward dissatisfaction,” he said. “It was decided that in [Leiferman’s] opinion, it was best to move on. This does not make the mayor happy.”
Srp declined to offer specifically which city council members may have been dissatisfied with Leiferman or why.
Leiferman may have been the first to get a large severance package, but he was not the first to leave, as the WCN reported on September 3, 2008 in Attrition at city hall has some asking questions:
When Mark Leiferman left his job as Waseca’s community development director in late August, he was the fourth department head to leave city staff in the past 18 months.
One member of the Waseca City Council believes there are extenuating circumstances to why Leiferman separated from the city and that there are some council members that know what happened.
Before a vote Tuesday night authorizing city manager Crystal Prentice to negotiate a separation, waiver and release agreement with Leiferman, council member Al Rose said he is not against a separation package but he thought it unusual to offer one to an employee who resigns. . . .Now gone from Waseca City Hall, Leiferman joins finance director Julie Linnihan who resigned in May 2007 to take a similar job with the city of New Hope; city manager Kris Busse who resigned in November 2007 to become city administrator in Owatonna; and city engineer Fred Salsbury who retired in January 2008.
Salsbury said while his retirement was planned, he didn’t feel the city staff was really appreciated by the council.
“There’s a feeling that they [the council] know better than anyone else.”
He said while he doesn’t know how to put a finger on it, there was not good team work between city staff and the council.
“That’s changed dramatically in the last two or three years,” he said.
Ron Purcell, who served on the Waseca City Council for 10 years, said what he sees from the outside is that good employees have resigned or quit.
“If they had been fired there would be cause to believe they had not done their jobs,” Purcell said. “But here we have three or more experienced employees that have been getting awards from state agencies, like Julie Linnihan who got an award every year, and Kris Busse who turned things around for the city council.” . . .
On September 7, 2008, the Waseca County News reported in City will pay Leiferman $51,000 to leave quietly:
While Waseca residents still do not know the events that led to Mark Leiferman’s resignation, his separation agreement with the city is now public.
Leiferman, Waseca’s former community development director, will receive cash payments totaling $51,494 from the city.
As part of the agreement signed Sept. 3, he has agreed to waive any claims against the city, to acknowledge that his departure was by mutual consent, and to agree there was no wrongdoing on either the city’s part or his part. Both Leiferman and the city also agreed not to speak negatively of the other party.
On Friday, Leiferman said he “really can’t” talk about either the agreement or the circumstances of his resignation.
While the severance package apparently included a confidentiality agreement, the article notes that questions remained:
. . .Questions about the need to pay severance to an at-will employee were raised by councilman Al Rose before the vote was taken giving Prentice that authority.
Rose said later that he got answers to those questions after the meeting, in private because of “legality issues.”
“It was very unfortunate ... Mark did good work for us and it was a hostile environment for him,” he said about Leiferman’s departure.
“When someone hands out a severance package of forty or fifty thousand dollars, something is going on,” Rose said.
Rose said there were things happening at city hall that he wanted to know about, including personality conflicts between Leiferman and some council members. . . .
Mayor Srp attempted to address questions in a September 10, 2008 column, Taxpayers deserve fairness:
Had I, as some wanted me to, let this all go public as a discussion (a personnel matter), I would not have wanted to be responsible for personalities and human beings that could and would say things they should not. Mark could have wound up suing, and rightfully so. The amount spent in litigation because a council acted in a way they should not, could have been much more than a severance package. There were council members and public folks both pro and anti Mark. I thought the negotiations with the CM were the fair way to go, in my opinion, for Mark and his family, and the council and our city. So did Mark, and the majority of the council.
(In a sidenote, one of the commenters on Srp's column is "govtmule," the screen name for Matt Johanson, then a Waseca City Councilmember and now Parry's treasurer. Whether it was proper for a council member to comment on a severance package while using a pseudonym is fodder for another day).
Waseca County News publisher James Anderson opined on the column in Mayor Srp (sort of) responds:
Mayor Srp has to be careful about what he says regarding a personnel issue - especially one involving a severance agreement - but his explanation of the Mark Leiferman situation in a column he wrote for Thursday's paper doesn't do much by way of explaining. Unless you read between the lines.Yesterday's post picks up from here.
Here are a few key quotes that, I think, help us understand the situation just a bit.
"There was even talk of eliminating the[Leiferman's] department and going a different direction."
"The council could never fire Mark and wouldn’t. The only person we can fire is the City Manager (we really like her). Mark works for her. She works for city council."Take that for what it is, but the rest of Srp's column is about as clear. He makes it known that he likes Mark Leiferman and that he's trying to be as fair to taxpayers as possible.
On October 1, 2008, the Waseca County News reported in E-mails reveal council action on Leiferman,
At 8:24 a.m. Monday, Aug. 25, the person who answers the phone at Waseca City Hall was asking what she should tell people who called for Community Development Director Mark Leiferman and where she should direct his calls.
The Friday before, Leiferman had returned from vacation for a two-hour meeting with City Manager Crystal Prentice. He did not come back to his job again.
While officials are still not saying exactly why he resigned after 10 years with the city or why he was awarded a $51,000 severance package, e-mails and other material obtained by the Waseca County News through the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act shed some light on his departure.
Council members John Clemons and Mike Parry both said they had deleted any e-mails they may have had on the subject, but e-mails to and from Mayor Roy Srp*, councilman Matt Johanson and Prentice were submitted in response to the request by the County News.
Should elected officials delete emails in which public business is conducted?
In trainings and advisories, the League of Minnesota Cities recommends against doing so. First, electronic communications between council members such as that described in the Waseca County News article are likely to fall under the state's open meeting law as "serial meetings." A LMC memo [pdf here] outlines the issue:
Although not an obvious meeting, serial meetings also create an open meeting concern if city business was discussed by a quorum. To understand how a serial meeting occurs, imagine that council member A talks to council member B about a city issue, B talks to council member C about that issue, and C talks to A. Serial meetings also can occur through written correspondence, or telephone conference calls. Any of these scenarios could give rise to an open meeting law violation. . . .
Electronic communication makes a serial meeting easier by allowing council or committee members to forward messages from one person to the next, to respond to one another via blog comments, or to chat via social media vehicles such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. Imagine one council member e-mailing another to suggest the pros and cons of a particular city decision. The recipient forwards the e-mail to another council member, along with his or her own comments and interpretations.
Even if the last council member to receive the e-mail doesn’t reply to the originator or the council member who forwarded the message, the three members have still discussed city business outside a public forum.
The memo also recommends a model policy for retaining emails on page five:
Classification and Retention of electronic communications
• Regardless of whether electronic communication by a council member is taking place on a city-provided computer, home computer or other computer system, classification of information as public, private or other is governed by the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (Minn. Stat. Chapt. 13) and should be treated accordingly.
• Council members should retain electronic communications in keeping with city policies and procedures, whether such communication takes place on a city-provided computer, home computer or other computer system.
Parry wasn't happy with Leiferman's performance according to the Waseca County News story:
Parry said the city’s community development department is specifically designed to set goals for the Economic Development Authority, the growth of the city and for the growth of economic development.
“I have not seen any of that in my three and one-half years on the council,” he said.
“However Crystal decides to continue the department, I would hope that would be part of what she asks for,” he added.
As to why Leiferman was given a severance package, Parry said there are two ways to offer severance; either the employee has done a “darn good job or if you don’t want the employee to come back.”
“Crystal made up her mind she was going to offer severance,” he said.
Prentice said Leiferman’s resignation was the culmination of 10 years of history, most of which she was not privy to because she was hired in 2008.
Leiferman was offered a severance package, she said, because it was a mutual parting of the ways and he resigned contingent on a severance package.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Prentice said.
While the paper never comes straight out to say so directly, those who read between the lines might discern Parry's role in creating was described above as a "hostile environment."
As his comments to the paper in the Oct. 1. story indicate, Parry was not happy to Leiferman's performance. In August 2008, the newspaper's editorial board offered a different assessment of the ten-year employee's efforts:
The city of Waseca will miss Mark Leiferman. Many readers may not recognize his name, but all will recognize his accomplishments.
As Waseca’s Community Development Director over the past 10 years, Leiferman was instrumental in a number of projects. His work made it possible for Wal-Mart to develop its Supercenter on the north side of town. Leiferman had a hand in developing an eight-lot industrial park subdivision in Waseca. Leiferman’s contributions initiated a Tax Increment Financing Redevelopment district in Waseca, a project that resulted in a bond issue that was used to assist in renovation of buildings in downtown Waseca.
These are just a few of the numerous accomplishments that Leiferman has to show for his 10 years as a Waseca city employee.
Parry stated that his proposed 15 percent across-the-board spending cuts would be achieved by talking to Pawlenty administration department heads upon the Republican endorsee's election to the state Senate. Given the attrition rate among department heads that the City of Waseca enjoyed, could the Pawlenty administration survive the chance that Parry finds his way to St. Paul?
Photo: Mike Parry, the man with more ambition than ride.
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