SLT-Conner settlement agreement released
By Kathryn Reed
The 11 main items in the settlement agreement between South Lake Tahoe and City Councilwoman JoAnn Conner essentially return certain policies to what they were prior to the brouhaha that became public last year and then document long-standing protocols.
Six employees brought harassment and bullying allegations against Conner. But Conner is not their boss, so the typical employee-employer rules didn’t apply. City Manager Nancy Kerry in trying to protect those employees who work for her took action to stop Conner from being able to interact with them and all employees. This happened a year ago.
Kerry, who has levied bullying accusations against Conner, could sue the councilwoman. Conner is Kerry’s boss. But Conner would likely enjoin the city and therefore Kerry would essentially be suing the city, with the taxpayers picking up the bill. At this time Kerry has chosen not to do so, but there is nothing in the agreement that would prevent her from doing so in the future.
After Kerry disabled Conner’s card key to city offices and instituted a policy that Conner must only communicate with her or the city attorney, the remaining four councilmembers censured Conner last fall. This is essentially a slap on the wrist saying they don’t like her behavior.
When it came time for committee assignments Conner’s council colleagues voted to keep her off almost all of them.
Conner soon sued the city and named Kerry in the court filings. Part of what she wanted a judge to rule on was the censure. El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Steve Bailey said no way, the council has a right to make such a decision.
Conner initially said her constitutional rights were jeopardized. This allegation is not addressed in the agreement. (The agreement came out of a mediation session in June.)
Eventually all of the councilmembers turned in their card keys, so there has been equality for months even though this item is in the settlement.
Also in the agreement is how the mayor runs the meeting. That’s been the case for 51 years.
The agreement says Conner can go to pre-agenda meetings. That has always been the case, but for the last year she has chosen not to.
How committee assignments are handled is spelled out in the agreement. Again, this has been the policy for years and is nothing new.
Also not new is how agenda packets are distributed.
The big thing Conner got is to be treated like all the other councilmembers.
In the agreement she is now able to email staff directly. For the last year her emails from her personal and city accounts were routed through the city manager. As with all councilmembers, she now must copy the city manager on the emails.
The major win for the city is Conner agreed to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice. This means Conner cannot sue the city again on the same grounds.
While Conner signed the eight-page document on Aug. 18, and Mayor Wendy David and Kerry did so Aug. 16, it was not released until Aug. 24.
Part of the agreement is that none of the parties in the suit may talk about it to anyone, nor may they comment about it on social media or blogs. The exclusion did not include commenting on news sites, just that they can’t talk directly to a reporter.
Here is a copy of the settlement.
All of this cost Conner about $30,000. It took nearly $100,000 out of the General Fund for the city to defend itself. Conner usually bills herself a defender of the “little people” – that’s her phrase, and she has been fiscally conservative until this case.
$100,000 of South Lake Tahoe’s taxpayer money wasted due to JoAnn Conner’s inability to treat people who don’t agree with her or whom she doesn’t like in a respectful manner. Juvenile.
JoAnn Conner: Often wrong, but never uncertain.
So now that I have paid, I trust my letter can be posted…
This article is riddled with inacuracies and innuendo.
1. “Six employees brought harrassment and bullying allegations against Conner.” No, they didn’t. And from wherer did you pull that number? You cite no sources. To date there has been no written complaint, no credible witness, no testimony independent of the accuser, no proof of any kind of these allegations. None, nada, zip.
The city’s own attorney admits that there is nothing written down, no dates, no times, no names. How does that work?
If you have proof, please present it, as quite a number of people are eagerly awaiting some kind of evidence that any of these allegation are true. It appears to be fabricated out of thin air.
As a journalist, I am surprised that you didn’t insist on some sort of proof of these allegations. Ot at least have the journalistic integrity to throw in a couple of “allegedlys” Otherwise, you are opening yourself up to all sorts of unpleasant and costly litigation.
No, Kerry cannot sue Conner. Please, read the settlement again. However, as a private citizen and not as a council member, whose business has been attacked and negatively impacted by actions of the City Council and their Exalted Leader, The City Manager, I cannot say the reverse is true. The judge was quite concerned about the city not being able to differentiate between Conner, the City Councilmember and Conner the private citizen. Funny how none of that ever makes it into your articles.
If you want to quote the judge in the case, El Dorado Superior Court Judge Steve Bailey also said, “…I have serious concerns about disenfranchising a substantial part of the electorate…” or this tidbit “…that is really, really, really, really troubling that we have a political entity, a city, that’s now determining which citizens they’re going to talk to and which citizens they are not going to talk to.”
These quotes came from the Reporter’s Transcript of Proceedings, April 12, 2016. This is a public document, available to the public. Anyone can request a copy and read it for yourself. It is quite enlightening, as are all the official documents related to this case. The offical documents have nuch better information than the biased reporting that has been rampant in this case.
When you claim that Conner has not chosen to go to pre-agenda meetings that is not entirely accurate either. She has refused to be alone in a room with any of the people that have dedicated their Council tenure to bullying, flogging and ganging up on Conner in an obviously coordinated attempt to destroy her, despite their disingenuous attempts to deny such. And it would be foolish of her to be in any gathering of people who have consistantly lied and brought false, unproven allegations against her and used those same unproven allegations to hold a kangaroo court and sentence her to Censure, against their own rules and protocols. She has however had information provided to her through email and Conner is nothing if not diligent in collecting information and doing her research.
“The big thing Conner got is to be treated like all the other councilmembers.” Geez, couldn’t you have come up with an even more juvenile sentence. I don’t think I need to deconstruct it for reveryone to get the point.
What Conner has done through this entire debacle is to hold her head up and proceed with incredible poise and dignity in the face of unwarranted hostility and the attempted shaming of her. She has continued to do her job, meeting with groups of citizens, attending community and agency meetings, public gatherings and fundraisers, especially for local nonprofits. She is still an effective councilmember in spite of the City doing everything it can to interfere with her duties as a duly elected offical.
Conner is running for reelection this year and already has a sizable following among citizens and businesses who are tired of being treated like cash cows and/or complaining children.
Imagine what she will get done without the rest of the council and the City Manager standing on her back and holding her down.
Just to clarify the record as misstated by Ms. Oney. Six employees did complain about Ms. Conner’s behavior. The City has an obligation to maintain the confidentiality of employee complaints.
As stated in the minutes of the October 19, 2015 censure hearing, the following exchange took place:
[Mayor] “David stated that she did have information to that effect but she declined to divulge such. She said that she’d heard there were at least six (6) employees who believed they had cause to file a harassment suit, that quite frankly those individuals were afraid, and that she believed as an employer that she needed to protect them.”
~Thomas Watson, City Attorney
Unfortunately, Mr. Watson’s comments are incorrect and legally inaccurate regarding confidentiality. The Mayor’s having ‘heard’ that there were six employees making allegations does not make what she heard to be ‘true.’ In fact, later Mr. Watson commented that he knew of only two such allegations which he thought were so insignificant he did not take any notes of the discussions. Nor could the City produce any documentation to substantiate any alleged allegations. A review of the full censure hearing reveals what ‘evidence’ supported the censure.
As the Court stated in the hearings on this matter, the City obviously thought there was insufficient evidence to support restraining Ms. Conner, or the City would have sought a restraining order in Court, which it did not.
A government cannot legally ‘blackball’ a citizen or a Council Member to prohibit them from acting in the same way as any other citizen or Council Member under the federal and state constitutions. Should the City or other government agency feel that restrictions on a person, citizen or Council Member are warranted, they can go to Court, like any other citizen or agency must, before prohibiting someone’s conduct. Unfortunately, the City did not learn this lesson when they banned Leigh Ellen Yarbrough from the Ice Arena previously and paid damages as a result. Hopefully they will finally learn this lesson now to avoid damages, or incurring extensive attorneys fees, such as in this case, in the future.
Ms. Mittelstadt, I have watched this case with some curiosity and interest from the sidelines and find your response to Mr. Watson either astonishing or simply a legal strategy. Surely, you must know employment law as compared to plainly civil law.
You suggest the employee’s complaints are “not true,” and yet simultaneously you admit you have no facts upon which to base that assertion.
You suggest the City has no duty of confidentiality to it’s employees, yet you must know common law. Employee complaints are so fraught with retaliatory opportunities there is ample case law demonstrative of the DUTY of employers to protect employees.
You suggest the City’s only recourse would have been to file a restraining order … Against itself! You attempt to remove Ms. Conner’s status a current sitting Councilmember in order to make this ridiculous suggestion that the city should have gone to court to obtain a restraining order against one of it’s own Councilmembers, which would have served to put the city in the position to be immediately sued for admitting harassment by one of it’s elected officials. An utterly foolish, even preposterous suggestion. An employer DEFENDS itself from claims of harassment, it obviously doesn’t bring claims of harassment against itself.
As you surely know, harassment is not a “true” or “not true” test. It is common knowledge that the TEST for harassment RESTS completely within the EMPLOYEE’s perception. If a single employee felt harassed, their only recourse is to sue the City OR conversely, the City could eliminate the risk of those lawsuits by putting a barrier between JoAnn Conner and employees.
At this point, if Conner gets out of office without a lawsuit against her personally, let alone a lawsuit she is responsible for against the city, she should count herself mighty lucky. And any of these employees now have more than enough evidence in the public domain to sue and win handily.
In her wake and yours, it’s time to put people in office who can work together, move the city forward and put this story in the archives of “how not to be a Councilmember.”