Fairmont officials look forward after naming new city manager

Mar. 2—FAIRMONT — Del. Mike DeVault recalls a time during the West Virginia legislative session when his colleagues offered up what he perceived initially to be bad legislation.

At a caucus meeting, he brought up his concerns. A fellow delegate informed him the legislation was really about bringing a new company to the state, and if this legislation didn't change a crucial word, the state was going to miss out on the investment. Putting the company's name out there might hurt the business's competitive advantage, and make the company think twice about bringing its money to the state. However, discussing the matter in caucus, which takes place behind closed doors, made it possible to speak candidly and reach a consensus on a course of action to take.

DeVault's experience parallels that of Fairmont City Council as it performed the work of selecting Fairmont's next city manager.

Here, Mayor Anne Bolyard laid out a case for withholding the names of the candidates in order to protect them from blowback at their current place of employment. However, toward the later stages of the process, the decision incurred backlash from members of the public. Shawna Santee became the face of that dissent, after she accused the council of breaking the open meetings act after the nomination of the next city manager was placed on the agenda of the Feb. 26 council meeting.

Ultimately, what this episode showed last week was the difficulty of navigating legitimate government concerns around the hiring of government employees, balanced against the public's right to know. It also showed the consequences of falling off that tightrope, showcased by the alienation members of the public feel when their needs aren't met.

"It could have been handled better," DeVault said. "Was it illegal? No. Could it have been better? Of course."

Santee's complaint emanated from the executive session meeting held Feb. 13, during which Santee alleged council voted to nominate Travis Blosser as city manager. Guy Ward, former mayor of White Hall, also found it credible that council may have broken the law. However, Fairmont City Attorney Kevin Sansalone rebutted the claim, arguing council is within its rights to arrive at a consensus in executive session, so long as the consensus is approved by a vote held in a public meeting. Which is the process that took place, he said. Santee disagreed, arguing it was splitting hairs.

Kimberly Weber, executive director of the West Virginia Ethics Commission, shared a tangentially related advisory opinion which dealt with a different matter the Jefferson County Ambulance Authority faced when it made decisions in executive session that weren't on the agenda. To be clear, the circumstances around this opinion and Fairmont City Council are different. However, there is one sentence in the opinion that is relevant to both cases.

"The act does not bar the members from reaching a consensus in executive session, but any vote to approve an official action should take place in an open meeting," the opinion reads on page 4 of O.M.A.O 2008-17. Barring any new revelations, that is what appears to have happened.

Adding weight to that opinion is DeVault himself, as well as former Fairmont Mayor Tom Mainella. Mainella himself had first hand experience losing an extremely qualified candidate for city manager because of the open forum requirement. As a result of that experience, he staunchly advocated for council's private approach.

"They're well within their legal rights to discuss who they want to hire in executive session," Mainella said. "That's the way it's always been."

Sansalone, who's been city attorney for 20 years, is also a bulwark against misconduct, putting up with no attempts to bypass code, Mainella said.

Mainella used confidential real estate discussions as another example of executive session.

"You go in there and somebody says, 'I don't think it's a good building for us to buy,'" he said. "Somebody else says, 'I think it's a great building.' And then somebody says, 'Well, I don't think it is' and then pretty soon you come to a consensus that it is or it isn't. So that's really the only way you can do it. And they're well within the Sunshine laws to do that."

Therefore, it appears council acted in good faith throughout the process. However, managing perception is also a part of governance, and a failure to do so can lead to the kind of rumor mill that damages reputation. Mainella said a rumor mill can have a terrible impact on the work government does, and with social media the effect is amplified, leading to misinformation and hurt feelings.

Santee, for one, felt disenfranchised by the process.

"I mean, my goodness, everyone knew anyway, everyone knew who the finalists were," she said. "I don't know the reason it continued to be a secret."

Her preference was for council to hold an open forum with the final three candidates so residents could feel informed. She believes it would have been beneficial to let the community weigh in with its council members after the forum. Her opinions are framed by how she conceives the role a government plays in the life of its residents, which is as a service provider.

"Council are the ones that are supposed to represent the people that live here," she said. "Do what's in their best interests. Once again, the city is a service provider and Fairmont residents pay through the nose for lots of those city services."

Civic engagement is important to Santee, which is why she found Sansalone's remarks about the lack of legal education among the council's critics so dismaying. She felt Sansalone implied that the only way to legitimately challenge council was to have 30 years of legal experience and a law degree. She was also critical of his defense of the city's record on transparency.

"You don't have to scream you're the most transparent into a microphone if you truly are transparent," she said. "If everybody knows what's going on and there aren't any questions. You don't have to say it out loud because everyone would witness it within your everyday life."

Council member Gia Deasy criticized attempts to divulge the candidate's identities, and expressed her embarrassment about the negativity that eventually surrounded the nomination. She said herself and other council members worked diligently to ensure every 'T' was crossed and every 'I' dotted. Witnessing the negativity emerge despite their hard work was disheartening.

"To have this kind of ugliness in the newspaper and Facebook and all of that, that's where I feel uncomfortable," Deasy said. "I don't feel uncomfortable at all about the decision of who to hire. I feel uncomfortable about what has happened publicly about the hiring process. That's my big issue right now."

Deasy defended the level of transparency council and the city offered. Furthermore, she pointed out that the interview process, while closed off to the public, was much more extensive than simply council interviewing the candidates in a room. City employees were part of the interview process as well, council afforded them the opportunity to influence who they would be working for at the end of the day.

"I think if you called the police chief, if you called the fire chief, if you called Priscilla in finance, if you called any and all of those folks and ask them, 'how do you feel about the process,' I think you'll hear a lot of folks saying, 'We appreciate being at the table,'" she said.

One person who initially advocated for a public forum was Council member Rebecca Moran. However, after discussing the reasons for maintaining a closed search, she also came to agree with the prevailing consensus. However, people are creatures of habit, she said, and people might not understand why one thing that was done before is not being done again. She agreed that the decision to withhold the names, despite being done in good faith for the good of the applicant pool, nonetheless created unintentional resentment that finally came to a head on Feb. 26.

Although Moran still supports withholding the names in the future, she's open to tweaking aspects of the process to be more inclusive should she find herself in this position again.

"I don't think there's anything on the planet that can't be made better," she said. "This time, we looked at what was done last time, what worked, what didn't work. And you know, when Fairmont has to do it again, we'll look at what we did this time, what worked, what didn't work. Let's always improve the process going forward."

For his part, although Council member Josh Rice voted no to Blosser's nomination, he still supported the process by which council settled on Blosser.

With the dust settling, Blosser is set to take his seat in the next few weeks. Despite the fracas, he is very excited to get to work. Fairmont is his hometown. Blosser has expressed a willingness to make his office open to the press.

But most of all, he understands the importance of winning back residents who have been alienated by their city government. He said he intends to do whatever he can to rebuild that trust, even if it means letting residents beat up on him.

Blosser recalled one instance as city manager where he was warned by his colleagues against a resident who was known for bringing up frequent complaints. Blosser instead chose to engage with the complainant. He said while praise is nice, it's not a resident's job to praise him, it's a resident's role to bring problems to his attention. Ignoring complaints, even from the loudest critics, is not conducive to being a good city manager.

"I think that becomes problematic," Blosser said. "Because, if I would have taken that path, I would have ignored an issue. Ultimately when we fixed it, we heard from like six different residents in the neighborhood that called us and said, 'Hey, thank you guys for fixing that issue. It's been that way for years. We just never thought to call it in because we never thought it was that big of an issue that we thought to call City Hall."

Reach Esteban at efernandez@timeswv.com