South Lake Tahoe won’t come clean on nepotism questions
By Kathryn Reed
Nepotism, according to the dictionary, is “patronage bestowed or favoritism shown on the basis of family relationship, as in business and politics.”
It’s alive and thriving among employees of South Lake Tahoe (full and part time), as well as extending to City Council members and city commissioners.
Since June 30, Lake Tahoe News has been emailing city officials in an attempt to have disclosure of all the relationships – spousal, in-laws, children – whatever the connection, be it blood or through marriage.
Even by invoking the Public Records Request Act more than once, the city has not provided the information requested.
Initially, Human Resource Director Janet Emmett deferred the request to City Attorney Patrick Enright. After multiple emails and phone calls to Enright, a response came from him via City Manager Dave Jinkens.
The July 22 email from Jinkens says, “The city attorney provided me with information relating to your recent request for the names of persons employed by the city who are married.
“The request for information relating to marital status and blood relations is exempt from disclosure under Government Code section 6254(c), which excludes from disclosure ‘personnel, medical or similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’ This includes information like Social Security numbers, home telephone numbers, home addresses, marital status, health issues etc. A 2007 California Supreme Court case in 2007, I am told, affirmed the exemption from disclosure of personnel information. Additionally, police officers have a special section [Penal Code section 832.8] which prohibits the disclosure of personal data, including marital status, family members, educational and employment history, home addresses and similar information.”
But the truth is, providing relationship status really has nothing to do with personnel records. The city’s refusal to disclose relationships based on this code is bogus.
Lake Tahoe News responded to Jinkens the same day by emailing, “Thank you for your email. However, not only did I ask for spouse and blood relations, but also relations through marriage like son-in-laws, as well as parent-child relationships. I would like that for seasonal, part-time workers, as well as full time. Those types of relations don’t seem to be precluded from public disclosure based on the information you sent me.
“In addition to that information, I respectfully ask for the email with the names of the people it was sent to, which is a public document, that was sent by Janet Emmett the day of my initial request [nearly three weeks ago?] to all of the employees affected by my inquiry. If you need a formal Public Records Request Act, I will do so. If this can suffice, thank you.
“At the same time, I am now asking for a list of all city employees and their job titles. I think this would be pretty easy to get to me by 5pm today. If not, then I’d like an explanation.”
To this Jinkens reply was, “I will ask the city attorney to reply. I have given you the best answer I have on the matter.”
Enright did not respond as of this posting. None of the council members weighed-in on the subject either and they were copied on the email.
Connecting the dots
The city’s website lists some of the employees, but not all. It doesn’t list most of the police and fire department employees, though police employees are on a separate website. The fire department doesn’t list its employees on its website. A list of part time and seasonal workers has not been secured.
On the city’s website it has the Palazzos. They met on the job. Ellen is the assistant city clerk; Gene is the director of Housing-Redevelopment.
Lori Marino is the grants administrator and her husband, Jim, is an assistant city engineer.
Maryanne Brand is an accounting manager. Her husband, Phil, is a housing rehabilitation specialist.
Debi Schild is a senior permit technician in the Building Department. Her husband, Walt, is employed by Public Works.
LTN learned Krista Eissinger, airport secretary, is the sister of police Officer Andy Eissinger.
Tony Silva, airport maintenance supervisor, is married to a police officer who has a different last name.
Nick and Heather Carlquist, not a common last name, are police officers. One is active, the other reserve. Their relationship is not known. Brad and Brian Williams are brothers who are police sergeants. There is a J. Broadfoot (dispatcher) and a T. Broadfoot (officer) listed on the SLTPD website.
Three of the council members are related to people affiliated with the city. Mayor Kathay Lovell is the mother of police Officer Ryan Wagoner.
Councilman Bill Crawford is married to planning Commissioner Jonnie Crawford.
Councilman Bruce Grego is married to planning Commissioner Geraldine Grego.
The Planning Commission hears an issue before it is referred to the City Council.
Three couples with city ties are engaged. One is Nancy Kerry, manager of Housing-Redevelopment, and airport Commissioner Howie Nave.
These are just the relationships Lake Tahoe News knows about. It’s been a common practice through the years for the Parks and Recreation Department to hire the children of employees.
Problems with nepotism
Most cities have detailed nepotism policies. Most don’t have anywhere near the number of familial ties South Lake Tahoe has – especially in a city with about 220 full-time employees.
The nepotism issue was brought up in the June El Dorado County Grand Jury Report, saying their investigation could not track down a nepotism policy for the city.
No training has been provided by the Human Resources Department in how to deal with nepotism.
It’s common knowledge by workers that people who are related cannot supervise one another. This is standard in most workplaces.
But problems arise. For instance, Ellen Palazzo is a notary, but ethically she should not be notarizing a document her husband signed. It would not be illegal for her to do so. To keep it all clean, she has never notarized anything for him.
With two married couples having ties to the Finance Department, who is watching what’s spent by the departments their spouses work in?
Case law points to several incidents of third party discrimination. That would be when an employee working for one of the married or otherwise related individuals is not comfortable going to the spouse of their boss for fear of recrimination.
This creates a hostile, as well as dysfunctional work environment.
This story about Oakland’s hiring mess clearly illustrates what happens when nepotism, aka favoritism, runs rampant in a city.
Here is what a law website has to say about nepotism.
A fired spouse in another locale contended their constitutional right to marry was at stake and filed a lawsuit. Read this for more on the topic.
Here is another take on married couples in the workplace.
Issues with nepotism
How all relationships came about is not known. Did they get hired because they are a couple? Did they meet on the job? Was one hired and then got their relative on the inside track at the city?
The South Shore is small. There are a limited number of qualified people for certain positions. There are a limited number of potential significant others. But none of this means the city has to be in the business of hiring relatives.
Good hiring practices mean casting a wide net for potential hires, not asking the person in the neighboring cubicle if they know someone to hire. It means hiring based on performance, not just because someone is local or is related to someone.
The issue of nepotism goes beyond how city employees are affected.
With all the relations in South Lake Tahoe government, how is a member of the public to know when she files a complaint, that the person investigating it isn’t related to the person being accused?
Cities hide behind the shield of personnel records not being privy to public review. So how is the public to know hiring isn’t biased and that the relative is truly the best, most experienced candidate? That question then begs, why is a relative even being considered?
Without transparency in city government, the public – for who they work and who pays their salaries — is left in the dark.
The light of day is just beginning to shine on this small town. Relationships with consultants is a concern of mine. It won’t be long before all is exposed.
That is an impressive investigative report. Thank you for all your hard work. I hope it will influence how people in local government will hire and fire in the future. Nice job.
So it appears that the town is pretty much run by just a few families, and those families not only have some of the best incomes and benefits available in this town, they’ll also be able to retire with nice pensions, which are unavailable to most of us. Nice for them. The question is, is it illegal on any level? If it’s not, it’s not a story. Exposure will simply annoy the public and change nothing.
While this is interesting to follow and certainly we don’t want secrecy and back door working because related people are in goverment and safety services, we need to be careful not to throw the same blanket of “nepotism” over all related people. This is a small town filled with people who do their jobs ethically and with pride inspite of or because their relatives are nearby. Let’s not offend/point fingers without a reported incident and proof. And I think surveys will show that most married people meet at work! So does someone always have to lose their job?
Spousal nepotism was acutally promoted by one major corporation I worked for. Husband and wife could not work in the same department but the could work in the same division. It built loyalty to the company since 2 salaries were now tied to the company as well as reducing health costs since only 1 spouse needed family insurance. It worked great as did the company policy to have former employees including retirees sign up for a company temporary workforce organization. This way when the company needed temporary help they rehired former employees who already knew the business.
Chock up one for Kae. Very good investigative journalism. Helps make up in spades a glaring omission a few weeks ago.
Keep ’em squirming Kae.
Good reporting LTN! Hopefully people see the difference between hiring relatives in the private sector and the conflicts of interest in the public sector? Even if someone is well-qualified for a particular job, there will always be doubts on they’re hiring and any advancements if they have a relative higher-up in the City hierarchy!
The best solution-Be Open & Honest!!! That’s something where our City has a real problem! Hopefully a new City Mgr. & Council will change that!
And speaking of which, you, LTN, reported that the reason Kathay is not running again is to spend more time with family. If true, rational decision. Yet in the column she wrote in the Tribune, Councilwoman Lovell alluded to some secret reason she won’t seek reelection? If she really does want more family time, don’t know why she wouldn’t just say that in her Tribune column?
This is a SMALL town, and yes SLT employees get great benefits and it must be nice when a married couple both will retire with them. If this was a larger populated town I might be suspicious.
If you were to look at how many family members work at the same Casino you would see quite a few, and probaly Barton.
There are only so many reliable employment opportunities that pay well with benefits on the South Shore.
You must have a very pessimistic view of human nature if you automatically assume that there are wrong-doings merely because two people have some sort of relationship. This is a small town, move someplace bigger if this is a problem for you. Many of the residents of SLT have resided there for some time, and many families have been there for generations. So there will be cases of multiple people per family working in some sort of City job, be it police, fire, city council, finance, etc.
Your list of relationships is pointless seeing as there is no immediate proof of any wrong-doing or preferential treatment of said individuals. Try being a real reporter and actually finding out if there IS nepotism. That would be an article actually worth reading.
Some of the people mentioned hold degrees and certifications that their positions require. Most of the local residents do not possess these; so technically they are not taking away any jobs from others. Why criticize them for securing a good job that they both worked hard for. Not one of them supervises the other.
I see all these complaints; but attendance at council meetings is terrible. If the “public”
was really concerned they would attend and voice their opinions. Since this is Tahoe, most people do have mid-week off and can attend these meetings. There is public transportation available to the airport. You will only see change when everyone participates. That’s why this town is dying; everyone likes to points fingers and never “do” anything. That’s why my family is trying to get out of this god forsaken place and state. I try to help for 20 years and nothing has changed. Good luck Tahoe.
How do we know everything with the hiring is on the up & up? First off, the City’s jobs pay way more than the private sector jobs available in our town! So there’s a definite need to be fair and open on the hiring as there’s a definite incentive to give relatives the inside track!
Secondly, our City Government’s MO is to delay and deny access of information to the public! They have a bunch of staff and attorneys that they use to wear the public out when they attempt to get information. LTN has proven that in this story alone! The burden of proof should now be on the City to be responsive to the TAXPAYER, you know the people paying their bills!!
It’s certainly possible that any relatives are worthy of a particular job. But shouldn’t our government answer the media’s questions in regards to hiring standards? And when and where have they made these openings public?
The reporter has clearly done some research on this piece, but if I was the editor I’m not sure what has already been discovered is really newsworthy.
As others have noted, it’s a small town and there should be no surprise that some city employees are related. This alone is not a problem, bad behavior is.
Again as others have noted, public participation in city government is poor and probably a larger problem.
Dissolve the city now.
We are not that small of a town that it should be used as an excuse to hire friends and family. People from all over the basin would apply for these good jobs. There’s carson valley, douglas, minden and gardnerville, and the entire south shore. The population of that area must be about 100,000 or more, plenty to choose from.
Not supervising the other is not an excuse as the article points out. I read some of the links on the cases, it’s common sense that all the relationships would effect how they work, how they interact, whether we’re getting the best from those who WE PAY their salaries.
The mere question of who is related to who, is not an assumption of something wrong. The reaction by the city and the employees who seems to be posting on here, that tells me something’s not right. Since these names are only the obvious, how many more are there? Some questions need to be answered. To Prove nepotism and unfair hiring and working, the City will have to answer for this extraordinary amount of familial ties all in one place.
No wonder the grand jury mentioned it as a problem. If the grand jury said look into it they must have found something and the City must answer the about it, that’s how we’ll know.
Its not just the City. STPUD is the same, they are LOADED with families. They get away with barely advertising , then putting their other families and friends on the board to control their high salaries.
So, city, and all the other government agencies here, answer. Tell us, did someone not get a job there because the deck was stacked to favor one of these people and the likely many others who are related? City tell us, what is the percentage of people who applied from out of the area over the past 5 years and not hired? What is the percentage of people not related to someone who applied and weren’t hired?
City tell us, what is the percentage of full time employees that are related? That’s an easy answer, and not covered by your laws of privacy. Don’t lower the percentage by counting all the part time. City, why didn’t you give the public some kind of answer? Council why haven’t you asked these questions since the grand jury came out?
Only when government is transparent, open and honest will we know whether there is or isn’t nepotism and favoritism. Don’t hide behind the excuses, prove it, then we’ll know. The new City Manager has his work cut out for him. Wouldn’t be surprised if these families will circle the wagons and make sure even he doesn’t find out who is related to who.
These are fundamental questions to answer.
The music stops, the lights come on, and look what’s left. A highly paid bureaucracy that now appears to be a generously-perked and compensated family jobs benefactor. Additional levels and layers of government that are unnecessary and redundant. Higher taxes. Poor performance and actual harm to its residents through unsophisticated and naive planning (and lack of common sense safeguards) on projects such as the convention center hole.
Dissolve the city, return it to county control, in this tight economy it’s time to consolidate and eliminate unnecessary and unproductive duplication. If Tahoe City and Incline Village can operate so efficiently without separate city governance, there is no reason the same cannot be done in South Lake Tahoe.
Legal….illegal is not the issue. The issue is one of ethics and transparency.
Good job Kae! The fact that related persons work for the city should be disclosed and policies ensuring that one does not have influence over, supervise or otherwise handle issues related to another need to be put in place and published.
I would like to think I get my job because of my abilities and experience. Isn’t that how it is supposed to work? If I got a job because of someone I was related to I don’t think I would hold that job for long if I didn’t know what I was doing. I also don’t think it is fair to any employee, in any organization, to be scrutinized because of possible wrong doing at a higher level (Mayor). Stay with the facts and stop spreading the blame on to anyone who has nothing to do with it. None of us are blameless here, haven’t you tried to get your son or daughter a job somewhere because you know the owner or someone who works there? Get real.
D, you be right, if you were talking about someone else’s business, not the government. The facts are what’s wrong here. Fact is, when its my tax dollars paying for the jobs, they best be going to someone who got the highest score on some test. Its no one’s business but my own that my sister does my books and I can call her and she’d probably give my kid a job for the summer, she owns an ice cream store over in Reno. Go into any store owed by a local family and they got their whole family working there and their best friend’s kid too. Even when my sister messes up my books what am I gonna do anyway, she’s my family. Tell you what when I had some guy doing it if he made a mistake I fired the guy. My sister is something different. That’s just how it is, you overlook mistakes naturally, when its family, I feel different about my kid sister than a stranger.
I expect my government to be run different than the family business. When people are related to each other they treat each other different and sometimes that isn’t so good. Most businesses up here are family businesses run by locals, we all pretty much know each other. I been in business so long I know why some businesses went under when family started fighting about how it should be run. Trouble is, the facts are beginning to shed some light on maybe why these governments are so messed up, there’s too many family members working together. Everyone’s talking about favortism about getting the job but it worse than just getting the job, you overlook mistakes when its your family , you just do. You’re wrong that you wouldn’t keep your job either, if you can’t do it, exactly the opposite happens. People related to each other keep their job more than if they’re not related, that’s why it’s a problem. You even sound so defensive about it, bet you work there are related or know someone who is, people get emotional talking about their relatives and friends, which is the whole entire point.
People won’t make things better if it would eliminate their family member’s job or something, you just can’t be objective about your family. Don’t even tell me my sister isn’t doing her best , she is but I wouldn’t recommend her to the governemtn. No offense sis.
This town’s been running our government like its their own business. When they’re deciding who to give the jobs too, why did so many just happen to go to people related to each other. It gets harder to prove the best person for the job was hired when just so happens too many times went to best friends and relatives. A few times, yeah, this much, coincidence doesn’t happen that often. I tried talking about this to a friend of mine who works there and the dude went awol on me same as you’re doing, of course he’s got a relative there, proves why that’s a problem. They don’t work in the same group but they can’t stop saying how its not a problem. I been friends with this guy a long time never did like that he has family there. Now I see too many families are in one government. You can’t be objective about your family and that’s bad when you’re supposed to be fixin my roads and taking care of my city. People are blinded by emotion when talking about their family. Shouldn’t be blinded when working for our city and when I’m paying for the jobs.