Report on controversial inquiry divides SLT council
The South Lake Tahoe City Council is doing a lot of talking behind closed doors. Photo/LTN
By Kathryn Reed
It’s as though the South Lake Tahoe City Council is unraveling one thread at a time, with the holes of incompetency and distrust exposing themselves a little bit more each time the electeds meet.
Tuesday was the latest episode of “Dysfunction at 6,200 feet.” On the May 1 agenda was the MRG contract. This is the firm led by Mary Egan that was hired last fall to do a cultural assessment of the city. The contract, though, until this week had never been brought before the council in open session.
By the time the agenda item came up for discussion Councilman Jason Collin had left the meeting, citing a work obligation.
It was impossible for the remaining four to have an honest, open conversation because the contract was first OK’d in closed session and those discussions must remain confidential.
In reality what the council was being asked was to approve paying an invoice. Even interim City Attorney Nira Doherty said it wasn’t really a contract, instead she called it an agreement. The first agreement sent by Egan to Doherty stated the work would not exceed $10,000, with another $1,500 for expenses. The Nov. 16 amended agreement asked for another $2,500 based on additional work.
Only the November agreement was in the council packet on Tuesday. Councilmembers Wendy David and Austin appeared flummoxed when Councilmembers Tom Davis and Brooke Laine knew about the October document and had a copy of it.
The first agreement said, “All participations (sic) will be told that their comments will be included in a summary written report that identifies important themes, and not include information attributable to any individual.”
That report has never materialized. That is one argument Laine and Davis cited in not voting to authorize payment of the bill; they said the scope of work was not completed. David and Sass voted to approve payment of the original agreement. That motion failed on a 2-2 vote.
Ultimately it was decided that the mayor (David) and mayor pro tem (Davis) would work as a subcommittee of sorts to decide whether a written report should be provided by the firm as was stated would be done in the original agreement.
Doherty or someone from her law firm will provide the pros and cons of asking for the written report. Then the council as a whole will decide how to proceed.
Doherty told the council Egan’s written report is likely to be a public document.
Depending on what is in the report, it’s possible sections would be redacted based on it being a personnel issue.
Sass raised the specter of a lawsuit by former City Manager Nancy Kerry if information were released. This is based on a threat made by her attorney Jacqueline Mittelstadt regarding Sass potentially breaking the city’s settlement agreement with Kerry with his comments at an April council meeting. Neither side is supposed to disparage the other.
Still, the report would be based on information gathered before Kerry’s separation with the city earlier this year, so it would not likely be protected by the settlement agreement. It could just fall under normal personnel privacy.
One of the glaring things about this agreement is that the council agreed to hire MRG in closed session under an agenda item that had nothing to do with Kerry or the city in general.
The Sept. 5, Sept. 19 and Oct. 3 closed session items each stated: “(b) Public employee appointment and employment pursuant to Government Code Section 54957(b)(1) Title: City Attorney.” At the Sept. 19 meeting it was announced that Doherty had been hired as interim city attorney to replace Tom Watson. On Oct. 3 the contract was approved and Doherty began her job.
It was at her first meeting that she learned of the directive by the council in one of those September closed sessions to hire MRG. The council did this with Watson in the room; Doherty was not there.
Doherty told the council on May 1 she had issues with how all of this went down. After the meeting, though, she would not elaborate other than to tell Lake Tahoe News, “I think it is best practice to have contracts approved in open session.”
She would not say why the topic was not brought out into the open until now.
Sass was mayor at the time and in a battle with Kerry because he wanted more power than what comes with the ceremonial position.
Watson in a farewell salvo was in cahoots with Sass to have MRG evaluate Kerry. However, it was sold to the other council members as a cultural assessment of the whole city and to study a succession plan. That didn’t happen.
Per Kerry’s contract she had the right to know when she was being evaluated or investigated, and there were protocols in place to inform her. That didn’t happen and it’s something she could have sued the city over. In June 2017 she received a glowing review by this very council that voted to oust her.
Ultimately the Egan debacle became a witch hunt that resulted in Kerry being shown the door.
It was on Jan. 23, after Egan’s work was completed, that a closed session item pertaining to Kerry’s evaluation was placed on the agenda.
After weeks of turmoil, the council agreed to pay Kerry the nine month’s severance in her contract based on there being no actual cause for the separation.
Beyond taxpayers’ dollars being used to pay Kerry, the city is now in talks to hire an interim city manager who will make about $100 an hour.
Still, though, what was uncovered by Egan has never been disclosed to the public. Nor were the allegations alleged ever substantiated by anyone. The council received a verbal report from Egan, that’s it.
There are public records that might shed light on what happened, but the city is withholding those documents as was illustrated in this April 30 Lake Tahoe News column.
On a related note, the council was to discuss Laine’s allegations about Brown Act violations that were first brought to light on Lake Tahoe News. The council agreed to table that item until the District Attorney’s Office completes its investigation.
The ash heep of history is filled by individuals or groups in the pursuit power. We elect people to get things done by working TOGETHER. This has not happened and now the city council is mired in the mess of their own making. Another sad chapter for this community.
Sorry I missed the show — but thanks for the recap of this episode. Call. Netflix — this is definitely soap opera gold!
Kae, have you asked for the police report regarding Mr. Sass’s stolen phone as you reported yesterday.
Keep digging into dysfunction junction. Daylight is the best disinfectant.
One thing I like about this article, Nira Doherty seems to be admitting that she engaged in “worst practices” City Attorney work. Yes Nira, following the Brown Act, or the law in general would have been “Best Practices”. Allowing an “agreement” like with MRG to not be instilled in standard professional services contract language is probably not best practices ( most attorneys will say any agreement, even verbal, will be considered a ‘contract’). It probably wasn’t best practices to accept the final MRG report in a verbal format from a contractor as complete when the contract required a written report. It probably wasn’t best practices to not give a CM a written evaluation summary when their contract specifically requires that.
Is it even a best practice for Doherty to continue to opine on this overall issue when her role in the proceedings seems to not portray… well…. best practices.
The crux of the quandary the Council faces seems to be that the MRG contract was never really about anything that would approximate a real organizational assessment of any kind. So the scope of work was never really followed and had it been it would have been a really half assed, lame organizational report of some kind. Formulating the scope of work on such endeavors, is really a key process in itself.
Asking for an after the fact written report is ludicrous and fundamentally unfair. Would the findings just happen to magically fit what has transpired?
The ‘work product’ of Mary Egan was seemingly always intended to be used as fodder for a distorted evaluation process for City Manager Nancy Kerry. The Council & City Attorney accepted the final work product of Egan/MRG in some closed session and they bid her adieu. That would have been the time to say: Hey where is the written report, especially since any evaluation of the CM would require one.
It does seem that the City is admitting in public that they have violated Kerry’s contract & due process by not providing the written report which would have allowed her to respond to whatever it may have contained.
To now say we want the half assed organizational assessment for which there is no formal avenue of response for Kerry as her contract required shows that the Council or parts of it are delusional as to all that has occurred. THIS WAS NOT AN ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT. Kerry had the right to review any report that was otherwise an evaluation. And now she wouldn’t.
It seems there was a desire to get rid of Kerry, but there was no cause. Some type of cause was perhaps needed for political cover. So an assessment idea was sold when it was intended as a fishing expedition to find cause to fire Kerry. Somebody even leaked to the press that Kerry was being investigated vs an organizational assessment occurring.
If there was never any substantive cause to terminate found, Kerry would have been fired with no pay. I think the Council hung the possibility of a viable cause being applied without ever really presenting one. I think to this day if you ask Kerry what the specific reason the Council had for parting ways , she could not answer.
Some of the council seems to want to keep some spectre alive, that there is some big secret reason to oust Kerry but they just cant discuss it. But again they cant say that any specific cause was ultimately presented to Kerry, and again she had no written evaluation to respond to as her contract required.
Kerry, herself was notified by Egan that no “fatal” flaw existed. Egan gave no findings to Kerry that suggested that she engaged in any type of bullying or harassing behavior. In fact she was advised that she needed coaching to essentially be less caring.
In relation to this point, when the other SLT paper reported that Kerry was a source of harassing or bullying behavior, the City was put on official notice that such behaviors may be occurring. The City would be duty-bound to investigate such claims on even the most basic level. I bet no action was taken because no such findings had been made by Egan and there was otherwise no reason to investigate. I bet you will find no documents to show any action was taken on what was otherwise a provocative story that any other organization would have responded to with some flurry of official inquiry.
May the better forces of SLT rise up to see that the continued public stoning of Kerry is ceased. She gave ten years to that city. May some group of reform minded individuals rise up to reform the mess that is SLT government. Let Doherty’s firm take the hit for the invoice; after all, they managed that contract/agreement & accepted the final work product as it was presented.