[COPY] Duscha demands more vacation, rejects employee protections in Longview contract talks

City Council to vote on contract for 'interim' city manager to replace Kris Swanson, but it looks like more than a stopgap appointment

Ed Note: The three new Longview City Council members elected in November were Erik Halvorson, Kalei LaFave and Keith Young. The initial version of this story incorrectly included Mayor Spencer Boudreau, who was elected in 2021. I’m republishing it to clear up typos.

Former Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha would make an annual salary of nearly $177,000, get 80 hours of paid vacation time yearly but would be prohibited from firing any department heads while serving as Longview’s interim city manager, according to a draft contract posted on the city’s web site on Wednesday.

It seems doubtful, however,  that the employee protection provision will survive a council vote on Thursday night.

And Duscha also is demanding more vacation time, perhaps seven weeks or more.

With no termination date stipulated in the contract, this looks like Duscha and his council supporters are wanting him around two or more years.

This would add to the outrageous conduct this council has brought to the community. 

Under the contract, Duscha’s rate of pay would be just short of the $179,304 that the city paid Kris Swanson, the city manager that the City Council fired without cause a week ago amid accusations that the four-member majority acted rashly, violated state open meetings and open records laws and put the city at legal risk. 

The proposed contract stipulates: “Duscha agrees that the stability of City staff is of critical importance to ongoing City operations. Accordingly, Duscha agrees that he will not terminate any department heads or other employees reporting directly to the Interim City Manager during his term as Interim City Manager.”

City staff inserted that language into the contract at the request of  Councilwoman Angie Wean, who was one of three dissenters in Swanson’s firing and Duscha’s hiring. 

Council members Kalei LaFave and Erik Halvorson — two of the four-member council majority that fired Swanson and hired Duscha —  negotiated the contract, which the entire council is scheduled to vote on at 6 p.m. Thursday at City Hall.

Wean said she learned Wednesday that LaFave, Halvorson and Duscha will not accept her contract addition, which means it likely will be struck from the final, approved contract.

“Logic has been lost on the Council members who have appointed him, and they will continue their coup of city government. That worries me, for our staff, our community and for the future of Longview,” Wean said in a prepared statement.

“He should only be temporary, only serving in this capacity while the work is done to find a qualified candidate with an impeccable record,” Wean wrote. “Thus, his contract should include a clause that brings some sense of stability to our staff.”

In an email to council members Wednesday, Duscha objected, saying the restriction on firing “effectively stops (the) manager  from supervising and managing staff. Without full discipline they can do what they want.”

Heck of a way to talk about your future employees.

Duscha did not return calls for comment Wednesday. Nor has he returned previous requests related to this political melee.

In the email, he also rejected the offer of 80 hours of vacation time,  the amount  given to 15-year city employees. He’s seeking 40-year vacation accrual, which carries about seven weeks paid  vacation.

 “15-year (sic) is slap in the face," he wrote.

Halvorson, LaFave and other members of the council foursome routinely do not return my requests for comment.  

Critics of the council’s actions have portrayed Duscha as the majority’s hit man to fire assistant City Manager Ann Rivers and IT director David Wallis. (Only the city manager can fire city workers; the council can only fire the city manager.) 

Conservative extremists in his community have had it out for Rivers since she crossed Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, by trying to secure state funding for Hope Village in her role as a Clark County state legislator. So there is an element of revenge here. They’ve raised the bogus notion that she’s unable to do her job as a legislator and city official, ignoring the fact that most legislators have jobs outside the Legislature.

They’re after Wallis because he is the husband of Councilwoman MaryAlice Wallis and was appointed when she was mayor.  He had emerged from a rigorous application process as the top candidate, but the critics see favoritism and nepotism.

Thursday’s council vote will be preceded by an executive session to discuss the council’s liability over this chaotic explosion of action. Remember that the 4-3 council majority refused to hold an executive session about legal risk before firing Swanson on March 13. This is a bit like closing the barn doors after the horses have left.

Swanson is expected to sue the council for breaching her contract, which requires a five-vote supermajority to terminate her. City council members can be held personally liable for damages under a breach of contract.

Allegations of cronyism in Duscha’s selection have followed the council’s actions.  Critics question his experience and fitness for the job or highlight his spotty record with Longview PD. 

These include the cover up of a lenient, 3-day, no-pay suspension for a Mark Morris High School resource officer who sent inappropriate texts to a 15-year-old special needs student in 2014.   Duscha was a modest, caretaker type leader at best.

The contract the council will vote on Thursday is an “at will” agreement, meaning the council could terminate it whenever it wishes. It has no termination date.

It  would require Duscha “to facilitate, via the Human Resources department, an open, transparent, and competitive recruitment process for a permanent City Manager. He may apply to be considered for the permanent position of City Manager in a competitive recruitment process.”

The draft, seven-page contract does not specify a timeline for hiring a permanent city manager. It states that the council should evaluate Duscha’s performance by the end of September.

Duscha would get a $500-a-month car allowance and benefits and would have to work full time for the city.

He is allowed under state law to  continue receiving a public employee pension he complied during his 42-year career at Longview PD. I could not immediately confirm the amount of his pension, but his total state payouts likely will approach $300,000.

(Kelso City Manager Andrew Hamilton also collects a city salary and a state pension from his days with the Kelso Police Department. Such “double dipping” among “retired” public officials  is not uncommon.

The council tapped Duscha immediately after firing Swanson on March 13.  His name had come up informally as possible auditor of Rivers’ job performance — a politically motivated effort— and as a possible interim replacement for Swanson.  But the first official council recognition that he’d been under consideration came when Councilwoman LaFave moved to appoint him on March 13.

Before LaFave’s motion passed on a 4-3 vote, Councilwoman Wean asked LaFave if she would recuse herself from voting because of her longtime association with Duscha. LaFave, saying she did not feel she had a conflict, cast one of the majority votes.

It’s uncertain when LaFave decided to champion Duscha.  On Jan. 8 — before she attended her first council meeting — LaFave asked former City Manager Bob Gregory if he would be interested in serving as interim manager. 

Gregory told me he was taken aback by the question, which he interpreted to mean that LaFave wanted the council to sack Swanson.  He and former Mayor Mark McCrady had met with LaFave at Red Leaf coffee to teach her about city budgets. McCrady corroborated Gregory’s account.

The three new council members elected in November — Halvorson, LaFave and Keith Young — did not publicly discuss their intent to overturn City Hall, and they’ve denied planning to do so during the campaign. However, the secretive and sudden actions taken this month make those denials questionable.

Duscha and LaFave are neighbors. He backed LaFave’s successful campaign against incumbent Mike Wallin last fall. He recorded a Facebook message of support for her.

As a member of the United Way board of directors, Duscha supported LaFave when a majority of the directors terminated her as CEO in January 2015 for her mismanagement of the agency’s finances, which crippled the agency for a year or two. (She still denies any wrongdoing.)

Perhaps this isn’t the stuff of Tammany Hall, 19th-Century New York’s notorious patronage system that dished out public jobs to political supporters. But it still looks questionable, especially when it is combined with the sudden and secretive way that Duscha’s name came up, without any study or official review.  The council’s critics suspect collusion, which would violate the state open public meetings act.

At the very least, LaFave should have declined to bargain a contract with Duscha. (There’s some question whether Mayor Spencer Boudreau, who assigned LaFave and Halvorson to the negotiating committee, acted in violation of the state open meeting act by failing to hold a formal vote to create a council negotiating subcommittee.) 

Boudreau seemed unconcerned, telling me by email that the rest of the council will get to review the contract before voting on it. Given the majority’s united voting so far, though,  there is  little doubt that the foursome will rubber-stamp whatever LaFave and Halvorson bring to it. 

Boudreau did not answer my other questions about the ethics of the situation.

I don’t think that LaFave herself will benefit financially from Duscha’s appointment — one of the classic standards for identifying conflicts of interest.

But she fails another test: Their ties create an appearance of bias and clouded judgment. She should drive the best bargain for the city, not for Duscha, and their long ties put that in doubt.

There’s also some question whether Duscha is the best — and legal — person for the job. 

The city attorney, Dana Gigler, told the council that state law states a clear preference for an interim manager to come from the existing administrative ranks.  That would have meant passing the baton to Assistant Manager Ann Rivers. 

By firing Swanson and bypassing Rivers, has the council opened itself up to a possible sex discrimination suit?

Duscha ran the police department, the city’s largest, for nine years.  But he’s never run any organization remotely as large or complex as the city of Longview, which has a $200 million annual budget and employs about 400 full, part-time and seasonal workers.  

I doubt he did much budgeting with the police, for that task usually falls to subordinates. The difference in scale here is like accounting/management 101 and accounting/management 401.

Within the last 18 months of so, his application to become Cowlitz Emergency Communications  (911) director failed. The 911 operation is a fragment the size of city’s. 

Duscha joined Longview PD in 1978 and retired in 2020. He was promoted to captain in 2007 and then to chief in 2011, when he replaced Alex Perez. He graduated from R.A. Long High School, Lower Columbia College and Western Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in criminology.

Swanson received “outstanding” performance marks in her only evaluation as city manager, a title she held for a year.

When he council voted to fire her, it ignored the pleas of city workers and a bipartisan series of speakers who lauded her at the March 13 meeting.

Hal Palmer, a Republican former City Council member; former City Councilman Mike Wallin, a Republican; conservative businessman Don Lemmons;  former City Manager Bob Gregory; and retired businessman Brian Magnuson cautioned the council against taking hasty and rash action.

Former Mayor MaryAlice Wallis,  now a regular council member,  also pleaded for restraint and came to Swanson’s defense.

“Manager Swanson has been an incredible manager. She is hyper dedicated to the City of Longview and spends weekends and evenings pouring over the budget and strategic and operational planning to keep the ship going. She has put into motion what she refers to as The A-Team. The leadership and the city is the best I've seen it in years.”

But the new members of the council,  which includes two twenty-somethings in Boudreau and Halvorson, think they know better. This new council majority needs to put aside its hubris and  wake up to the legal and financial mess it is creating for the city and its unsuspecting taxpayers.