By Keene Winters

Accountability. What does it mean? It means to be responsible for outcomes. We expect senior leadership in any organization to take responsibility for what happens. There are no “corrective action plans” or on-the-job learning for top-level managers. Either you can do the job or you can’t.

Unfortunately, the civil service protections we have elected to codify in Wausau make it difficult to hold department heads accountable. For example, when the City Attorney, the Finance Director and the Director of Public Works are hired, they receive indefinite (i.e., lifetime) appointments. They can only be removed from their positions for cause, and there are only three possible causes: neglect of duty, misconduct in office, or inefficiency. Then, if there is a finding of cause, it takes a three-quarters vote of the council (9 of 11) to fire an city department head.

Admittedly, that may seem like a big lift. But, that is not an excuse.The Mayor and the Council still must be diligent in their duties. And, frankly, it is hard to see why the current City Attorney still has her job.

The case for neglect of duties:

According to the City Attorney, speaking in a Finance Committee meeting on July 23rd, the city’s procurement policy has not been followed for years. The policy reads as follows:

Contracts shall be signed by the Mayor and counter-signed by the City Clerk, City Finance Director and City Attorney. The City Finance Director shall certify that funds have been provided by the Council to pay the liability that may be incurred under the contract. The City Attorney shall approve the contract as to form and the City Clerk shall attest to the Mayor’s signature.

The City Attorney then went on to say that she probably only sees “about 10%” of the city’s contracts. That is clear evidence that the City Attorney has not been doing her job.

Even more telling is the City Attorney’s proposed solution. Instead of demanding that contracts be routed to her office, she recommended that the procurement policy to remove the requirement that the the City Attorney review and sign all contracts! Not only is she not doing her job, but she is also giving self-serving advice that clearly increases the city’s risk of liability.

The case for inefficiency:

In an exit interview letter, the outgoing Assistant City Attorney wrote a two-page letter citing numerous inefficiencies and bad habits that have plagued the City Attorney’s tenure. They include such things as: (1) procrastination in competing work and giving out assignments, (2) failure to adopt new technologies, (3) frequent absences, and (4) using outside attorneys for work that could be done in house.

The outgoing Assistant City Attorney is no mere passing employee. She retired after 12 years of service to the City of Wausau. Prior to that, she was a attorney for the federal government, working in various posts with the Government Services Administration out of Chicago. If the city is not going to follow-up on the exit interviews of respected, long-term employees, then why even go through the pretense of having them?

Why doesn’t anyone get fired? Because it is the Common Council’s job to hold department heads accountable, and they are not doing it.

The Chair of the Human Resources Committee and the Council President should have placed these performance deficits on the agenda long ago. It is not acceptable for department heads to neglect their duties or mismanage their departments in costly ways. The Mayor and the Human Resources Director have key roles in documenting these problems and educating the council on what is required of them. However, in the end, the chronic failure of council leadership to even look into glaring red flags—flags that appear almost weekly in the press—is the root cause of the persistent dysfunction at city hall today.

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Column: Why is there no accountability at City Hall?