Five finalists trying to become Tacoma’s next city manager are expected to face a series of interviews, meetings, receptions and a televised public forum next week during a three-day itinerary that the consultant leading the hiring process described with a single word: Grueling.
“I gave a copy of the schedule to one of the finalists today,” Colin Baenziger, the city’s hired executive recruiter, said Tuesday. “His comment was, ‘This is like a gauntlet.’”
The finalists – publicly chosen by the City Council late Tuesday – include chief administrators of municipalities spanning the country, from a Southern city more than 2,800 miles away to a midsized burg in the nation’s Heartland, to a suburb next door.
The council made its final cut for the manager’s job during an open discussion and votes on seven semifinalists. But the decisions didn’t come without some behind-the-scenes scrambling after The News Tribune raised questions about whether a selection process the council initially planned to use would have violated the state’s Open Meetings Act.
The finalists include:
• Rey Arellano, interim city manager of Tacoma.
Arellano, named acting administrator in July to replace ousted City Manager Eric Anderson, has worked as Tacoma’s deputy manager since 2006. A retired Navy officer who was a chief staff officer on a submarine squadron, he was a deputy manager and chief information officer in San Diego.
• T.C. Broadnax, assistant city manager of San Antonio, Texas.
Broadnax, who holds 18 years of city and county management experience, has worked as a top assistant for five years in a city with a 1.3 million people, 11,600 employees and a $1.6 billion operating budget. He previously was a deputy manager in Pompano, Fla., where he coordinated budget planning.
• Craig Malin, city administrator of Davenport, Iowa.
Malin holds 25 years of government experience – including a decade in Davenport, a city of 100,000. He helped it become the first American city with accredited police, fire, public works, parks and library departments.
• Andrew Neiditz, city manager of Lakewood.
Neiditz, Lakewood’s chief administrator since 2005, possesses a broad range of management experience dating back decades. Prior executive experience includes Sumner’s city administrator job and Pierce County’s public safety and deputy executive positions.
• Frederick Russell, city administrator of Augusta, Ga.
Russell, Augusta’s top manager since 2005, is a former police executive who served as a small town police chief and as a deputy chief in Richmond, Va., during a long career in administration and public safety. He supervises a staff of 2,700 employees in a city about the same size of Tacoma.
All five candidates – invited to arrive in Tacoma next Wednesday – are tentatively set to attend a Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce holiday reception that evening. They’re then scheduled to participate in a variety of individual and group interviews with city staff, community groups, council members and the media into the afternoon of Dec. 10. The council could choose the winning candidate at its Dec. 13 meeting.
Selection of the finalists came late Tuesday, some 11 hours after the council met in a closed-door meeting to discuss semifinalists’ qualifications. After the executive session, Mayor Marilyn Strickland announced the council would later assign letters to each candidate – instead of using names – when publicly deliberating whether to advance each as a finalist.
The lettering scheme was meant to “respect the confidentiality” of candidates, Strickland said. The city’s job posting assured any candidates their names wouldn’t be publicly divulged without their permission.
City Attorney Elizabeth Pauli said earlier Tuesday she devised the anonymous selection process to meet confidentiality concerns and comply with open meetings law.
But after The News Tribune later detailed the process to two open government lawyers, each separately questioned whether it complied with the law.
“The whole idea is you let the public understand what is going on,” said Seattle attorney Michele Earl-Hubbard. “If you do things by code and don’t give the citizens the code book, then how do they know? I can’t see how this is in compliance.”
No relevant court opinions exist, but a 2005 state audit found a similar scheme used to keep city manager candidates’ anonymous in Ocean Shores violated the law.
“Although final action was taken in open session, (council members) now understand that assigning a number to each of the candidates was incorrect,” Ocean Shores officials responded to auditors.
The state’s Open Meetings Act states “no governing body of a public agency at any meeting required to be open to the public shall vote by secret ballot.”
Using a scheme to keep candidates anonymous raises “a question as to whether these ballots are secret ballots if you refuse to identify who you’re voting for until after the vote is concluded,” said Tim Ford said, open government ombudsman for Washington’s Attorney General’s Office.
When told of Ford’s concerns before Tuesday’s meeting, Pauli first tried contacting him. When she couldn’t reach him, the city’s recruiting firm called each semifinalist to ask if his or her name could be revealed.
All but Malin agreed. He said he would allow the disclosure only after the council first considered other candidates and decided it still wanted to consider him.
In all, 70 candidates submitted applications for the job, which is likely to pay more than $200,000 per year. Consultants pared the pool to seven semifinalists for the council. The more transparent selection process used didn’t influence decisions, several members said later.
“It didn’t change how I voted,” Councilman Marty Campbell said.
Not conceding the initial plan would be illegal, Pauli said “concerns” about complying with the law ultimately drove the selection process to include names.
“We need to stay focused on the budget and the city manager’s search,” added Strickland, when asked why the process was changed. “We don’t have the resources or time to engage in anything that distracts us from that.”
The News Tribune sued the city in 2010, contending the council violated the open meetings law when selecting finalists for two council appointments. After the paper won a favorable court ruling, the council openly debated its final selections. The city also later paid the TNT’s $7,500 in legal fees.
Lewis Kamb: 253-597-8542 lewis.kamb@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/politics Twitter: @lewiskamb
Staff writer Peter Callaghan contributed to this report.
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