One of the big questions looming over the release of the fire report is of what value is it to the public four and a half years after the fact. However, the release of the report, as shown in the recent Davis Enterprise article over the weekend, forces public officials to have to answer for their comments and their conduct.
The story on Sunday by Tom Sakash puts former Chief Rose Conroy and former Councilmembers Don Saylor and Stephen Souza on the record.
Newly-released versions of the report puts the attitude of then-Fire Chief Conroy in the spotlight. She described those who were subjected to realiation or treated with hostility as people who have “gripes” and are “narcissistic.”
“That it’s about them and they don’t like it if it’s not about them and they don’t look good in front of other people. … The problem employees are (those) who don’t get their way,” the former chief told investigator Bob Aaronson in portions of the report recently released.
“It may be something that they got at birth, it may not be something that’s inflicted here. It’s something about their personality. Not necessarily that it’s generated here. … That might be a personality issue, not having anything to do with the workplace,” she added.
“I am absolutely not one of those (people who would retaliate against an employee),” she said. “You are talking about people that have significant personality disorders.”
In her own response she argued, “I was… concerned that the report itself was not accurate because of what I read in the redacted 2012 version, and that is completely unfair to me and the many others who spoke with Mr. Aaronson after being told that our conversations would be kept confidential.”
The former chief argues, “The City of Davis and the City’s investigator, Bob Aaronson, promised confidentiality to all fire department personnel regarding discussions of personnel and personnel matters. The City of Davis has reneged on that promise, in effect lying to all fire department personnel.”
Ms. Conroy then attacked the credibility of the report, as she writes, “I will concur with the City Manager and City Attorney who, when they received the report from Mr. Aaronson, told me it was deeply flawed and poorly done.”
On the record with Mr. Sakash she was forced to address those comments.
“I can tell you generally, that the vast majority of the employees at the time were very hard-working really good people, I felt very proud of their performance. I felt like they were giving the city of Davis the best we possibly could …,” Ms. Conroy told the paper. “(Did employees) not like me? Yes. (Were) there some of them that (were) disgruntled? Yes. And that’s understandable for a variety of reasons. They (didn’t) like me, they (didn’t) like decisions that I made sometimes.”
In 2008 when the council voted not to the read the full report, this went unreported in the local paper. Now for the first time, the paper acknowledged, “At a meeting in Dec. 2008, Saylor, Souza and Asmundson voted to release only selected sections of the report, while Heystek and Greenwald dissented.”
Mr. Sakash reports, “Souza, who admittedly received contributions from members of the fire union during his campaign for a seat on the council, says that it was not the council’s place to overstep the city manager. He also told the Enterprise recently that he and his colleagues believed that the conversations Aaronson held with the various employees, as Conroy has said, were supposed to be confidential and that he didn’t want to break that agreement.”
Moreover, he defended the contributions he received from the firefighters union and union members.
He told the Enterprise, “I was proud to get contributions and I’ve always been proud to get them, from wherever they came from: firefighters, downtown business owners, doctors, across the board. I’m proud to get them, but not once was I ever approached on this matter by any member of the fire department or the union. Not once.”
“No $100 bill can get me to do anything for you,” Mr. Souza added. “I act not on an individual’s behalf, I act on behalf of all the public in our community.”
Of course, left unsaid is the fact that Mr. Souza did not just receive a $100 contribution from the union or a firefighter; rather, the firefighters bundled their efforts so that the $100 contribution limit was combined by nearly all of the firefighters at the time to form a huge block contribution of nearly $4000.
Mr. Souza never addresses this nor the fact that in his last successful election three candidates for the city council, Don Saylor and Sydney Vergis along with Mr. Souza, were the beneficiaries of an $8245.63 independent expenditure campaign in addition to the $4000 that each received in direct bundled contributions.
Mr. Souza makes it seem like he just got $100 when, in fact, he got closer to $12,000 in direct and indirect contributions from the firefighters. And they did not need to tell him how to vote – that’s a strawman easily knocked down by a simple understanding of campaign dynamics.
They didn’t have to tell him how to vote. He knew which way his top benefactor wanted him to vote and he voted accordingly. Is it any surprise that, after the firefighters were unable to support candidates for the last two council election cycles, suddenly the city was willing to release the report they had previously spent tens of thousands to keep secret?
Mr. Sakash reports, “Saylor, like Souza, recalls relying on the advice of Emlen and City Attorney Harriet Steiner when voting to withhold sections of the report.”
“It is my recollection that (Steiner) and (Emlen) recommended that the written report of the consultant be redacted to exclude personnel information such as the names of individuals,” Saylor said in an email. “This is not an unusual practice in personnel matters and is often followed in order to protect the public agency from litigation and to ensure that the employment rights of individuals are not violated. I voted to support the city attorney’s advice.”
On the night of December 9, 2008, both councilmembers Sue Greenwald and Lamar Heystek were adamant about seeing the full version.
“I’d like to get a council consensus that we have access to all the information. The way our form of government works is that we’re responsible when we’re elected,” Councilmember Greenwald said. “Ultimately, the buck stops with us. We’re responsible through you, but we can’t evaluate how well you’re doing your job with personnel if we don’t have access to all the information.”
She added, “I just think we should as a matter of principle, as a matter of procedure. It’s a matter of accountability in government.”
Councilmember Heystek requested of City Attorney Harriet Steiner that she explain any legal grounds for withholding of information from the council in writing.
“I do agree with Councilmember Greenwald, it is important for us to see the work product of the Ombudsman, this is the first major test of our Ombudsman and we’ve paid over $35,000 I believe for this work product, and I believe I deserve to see, as a councilmember, the contents,” he said.
He added, “But if there is some legal grounds by which we cannot view this information or not be privy to the report that was prepared at our behest, I would like to see a justification of that in writing. I really believe that as a councilmember I need to know why it is that information is being withheld from me and in writing.”
However, both Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor and Councilmember Stephen Souza disagreed.
Mayor Pro Tem Saylor said, “We actually employ those two [pointing at Harriet Steiner and Bill Emlen]. Those are the two we employ.”
“In terms of policy issues, in terms of behavioral issues that are addressed in a grand jury report, we should hear from the city manager and hear his report. How he has gathered information to arrive at the conclusions and findings that he is going to be presenting to us is his responsibility,” he continued.
He added, “Just so that’s clear, I’m interested in hearing from the city manager what his conclusions are based on whatever he has done to arrive at them. I don’t need to know what exactly was stated by any person, at every point in time.”
The words spoken by Councilmember Stephen Souza stick with me today, for some reason, however.
He said, “I don’t need all fifty pages, I just don’t.”
“I don’t need to have the ‘he said, she said’ full story. I don’t. I am not in charge of personnel, except for as Councilman Saylor said, we are in charge of two personnel, that’s who we’re in charge of, we hire and fire them,” he added. “That is our main task from a personnel standpoint. When it comes to this matter, I want to know from our ombudsman, through our city manager, how he arrived at his conclusions, and give me the pertinent information so I can come to my conclusions about it.”
What were they defending?
In May 2012, the public could read for the first time that Mr. Aaronson wrote, “There may or may not be provable instances of retaliation by Chief Conroy. I was told many stories, primarily related to promotions, assignment of projects and general treatment.”
He added, “As I stated to Chief Conroy, an investigation of a single event, to determine whether or not retaliation played a role, would typically require at least half a dozen interviews, not including subsequent follow up re-interviews and the review of other materials.”
Then, in a portion that was just released, “I did not keep strict count, but I would estimate that I heard at least a couple of dozen distinct allegations of retaliation and/or harassment. Based on my experience, I would estimate that investigating even just five of them might consume as much as 100 or more investigative hours.”
Did the city act to protect those firefighters who were subjected to retaliation and a hostile work environment? We may never know for sure, and Harriet Steiner declined to answer Vanguard questions seeking to clarify a number of concerns raised by the public.
At some point maybe the council, when they are done with their break, will push for resolution here.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Where is the recommendation that City Attorney Harriet Steiner was to have prepared for January 2009 consideration?
Former Chief Rose Conroy mischaracterizes the contents of the report and minimizes her insulting criticism of her own employees and the legitimate criticism her employees had about her management and her unfair/improper (possibly illegal) actions.
Our two on-the-record council members also are engaged in revisionist history.
It’s a shame that there are no official city accountings and minimal media reporting of what really happened at those council meetings. So, we’re left with “Saylor, like Souza, recalls….” to mislead us more than four years later.
That three members of our city council would allow this terrible mistreatment of city employees to continue a moment longer than it took Aaronson to document it is a clear dereliction of duty. And, it wasn’t as if they were left ignorant by refusing to rear the report– the knew the basics from reading the county grand jury report that led to the city-ordered investigation.
Claiming that they shouldn’t care about a hostile work environment in the Davis Fire Department because they didn’t “directly supervise” firefighters (but only the city manager and the city attorney) is just plain shameful.
When Ombudsman Aaronson told the council that Aaronson’s accounting of his report wasn’t accurate, only willful ignorance could keep the council protecting Conway and Emlen. And, the obvious reasons were the three councilors’ cowardice in the face of the firefighter union’s money and massive hours of “donated” precinct campaigning that undoubtedly turned campaigns.
Rich Rifken pretty much had it right. This might not have been the lowest day in council history since the support for imprisoning Japanese citizens, but it’s hard to come up with a worse one.
The public now knows what these three council members purposly covered up, thanks to the Vanguard’s relentless public records quest.
Two of them now scramble to justify their unjustifiable failure to act (by willfully closing their eyes). They are joined in their weak protests by a city supervisor who either should have been helped to change her ways or should have been fired years before she left for the good of the fire department and the city.
This is not a close call.
“…refusing to read the report– they knew the basics….”
Comments from Ruth? Did the council hold the CM accountable for handling the issues they refused to read?
I just re-read Emlen’s summary of the report, wow. I hadn’t read that for four years or so.
“Where is the recommendation that City Attorney Harriet Steiner was to have prepared for January 2009 consideration? “
I have not seen it and she declined to provide me with her legal advice citing attorney-client privilege.
[quote]”Where is the recommendation that City Attorney Harriet Steiner was to have prepared for January 2009 consideration?”
“I have not seen it and she declined to provide me with her legal advice citing attorney-client privilege.”[/quote]How convenient! Both for her and for her “clients” (apparently not the ones who pay her).
Now, she leaves it to Souza’s and Saylor’s “recollections” of what she wrote. Apparently, they’re privileged to say anything they want to at this late date.
I’m curious to know whether Steiner’s feelings about Conroy’s very specific recollections of Steiner’s characterization of the Aaronson investigation (as “deeply flawed and poorly done”) also is privileged:[quote]”I will concur with the City Manager and City Attorney who, when they received the report from Mr. Aaronson, told me it was deeply flawed and poorly done.”[/quote]So, apparently the council held an executive session in January 2009 at which the city attorney provided them her report. Did it include any suggestions that there was something wrong with the investigation?
Was the executive session on the agenda? Was any council action taken following Steiner’s executive session recommendations?
Good luck on getting any action by the current council on this one. The coverup began to protect Conroy and Weist; it continues to protect Saylor, Souza and Asmundson.
STAFF REPORT
DATE: January 13, 2009
TO: City Council
FROM: Bill Emlen, City Manager
SUBJECT: Fire Report
[url]http://city-council.cityofdavis.org/media/default/documents/pdf/citycouncil/councilmeetings/agendas/20090113/packet/05-fire-dept-investigation.pdf[/url]
Thanks, Stephen Souza, for this link. A quick reading doesn’t suggest that there was any reason for council members themselves to avoid reading the Aaonson report itself. Did you also have a written report from the city attorney as was promised in the December council meeting?
Did you ever get observations from the city attorney and city manager that Aaromson’s investigation/report was anything less than the positive factor we read in Emlen’s memo, let alone that was “deeply flawed and poorly done,” as Chief Conroy claim they said?
Did it concern you that Aaronson didn’t think Emlen’s report was fully true to his own? I guess a careful comparison would reveal more shortcomings than the obvious links between the chief’s selection of the least-qualified candidate (Weist), the complaining firefighters, the lack of an appropriate employee grievance process and the Chief’s patronizing views of her underlings and how they felt reprisals.
The big question: Now that you’ve had a chance to see what really was being by Aaronson, do you wish you would have voted to read it when you first had the chance?