Longview council bloc goes after city manager

Council should cooperate with Kris Swanson and abandon farcical campaign to discipline or oust her

Led by new Council members Keith Young and Kalei LaFave, the conservative four-member majority of the Longview City Council is exploring the possibility of firing City Manager Kris Swanson.

As a nearly three-hour council meeting approached adjournment Thursday night, Young attempted to introduce a resolution that Swanson says was aimed at terminating her. 

Young withdrew it when City Attorney Dana Gigler told him the document needed two council member signatures to be introduced and needed to be posted on the council’s meeting agenda a week ahead of time.

Councilwoman LaFave hastily tried to add the second signature, but she was told that the council, under its own rules of procedure, could not act on it in such a sudden manner without giving public notice.

In response, Young did not distribute the text of the resolution.

This all looks like a wrongheaded and farcical attempt to bring down one of the city’s best employees. 

The situation is disrupting the already fragile relationship between the conservative and progressive factions of the city council and the majority and Swanson. And it is giving rise to suspicions that the conservative bloc is having back-door consultations in violation of the state Open Meetings Act.

Young declined Monday to reveal the contents of the resolution, and he has declined to share it with other council members. However,  he said he and LaFave drafted it during the last month or so and will introduce it unchanged for consideration at the Feb. 22 council meeting. 

He said he didn’t understand procedures for putting the measure before the council, calling the incident a learning experience. He and the other two new council members did, however, attend a December workshop on council procedures and open meetings laws.

Young declined to confirm or deny that the resolution relates to Swanson’s  employment, but he did say it addresses what he called a voter mandate for changing the city’s direction. (I don’t agree the November election gave anyone a mandate, even though three new members were elected in November. More on this below.)

“I have nothing against Kris Swanson. She is very smart and capable and she has done a lot for the city,” Young said. But he added that she took actions recently that “stepped on the council’s toes” — an allegation Swanson disputes.

He said LaFave and he are the only ones who have seen the document. He contends the resolution is not a public record yet because it was not formally accepted for  council consideration.

“I think when when you see it on the agenda you will understand why I tried to do it on last moment’s notice” — Longview Councilman Keith Young

Swanson said she’s learned the content of the resolution from various sources but has not seen it. She said it is an attempt to invoke a state law that allows the council to fire the city manager with a simple four-vote majority.

Swanson’s contract with the city specifies that at least five council members must vote to terminate her. Swanson said she’ll fight any termination attempt.  So a costly legal conflict is bound to arise if the council pursues her ouster.

Councilwoman Angie Wean said Young and his allies intended to appoint former Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha as interim city manager. Duscha, a backer of LaFave’s election campaign last fall,  did not return calls for comment.

Young’s late-night, last-minute attempt to bring the resolution before the council — just as the seven-member body was about the adjourn — conflicts with his campaign promise to improve transparency in city government. 

“I ran on transparency, and I am committed to being open and honest in my service to this community. … Surprise has value and is sometimes necessary when dealing with sensitive matters,” Young said on Facebook.

“I think when when you see it on the agenda you will understand why I tried to do it on last moment’s notice,” he told me by phone.

I don’t believe that there is any justification for secrecy and hastiness on a matter as important as the employment status of the city manager — the city’s top administrator. Remember, three of these four allied council members are new to the job.

Other council members are coming to Swanson’s defense.

"As Longview's city manager, Kris Swanson has demonstrated exceptional financial acumen in the management of the budget. She has hired critical staff members to up-level the city's capabilities and brings thoughtful, strategy problem solving to challenges the City of Longview faces,” Councilwoman Angie Wean said in a statement. 

“Her extensive background as a public servant, coupled with her professional relationships and deep knowledge of the political system, make her an invaluable, high-performing city manager. We are fortunate to have someone of her caliber leading our city,” Wean concluded.

Rumblings that the council foursome has wanted to sack Swanson have have been around since before three of those members — Young, Kalei LaFave and Erik Halvorson — were elected in November.  Her support for Hope Village has been been a point of contention.

The four-member bloc includes Mayor Spencer Boudreau, who is halfway through his first four-year term. Boudreau was the only “no” vote when the council appointed Swanson city manager in November 2022 after she worked a five-month stint as assistant city manager. For the two prior years, she’d been the city’s director of administrative services.

As a dedicated professional with a 33-year career in public service, I am deeply concerned that the unfounded and baseless allegations of misconduct were made public and (have a)  potential impact on my family,  reputation and career — Longview City Manager Kris Swanson

Boudreau did not answer my emailed and texted requests for comment on Monday. On Sunday,  he sent me a text stating he does not work on city business on Sundays.

The hubbub over Young’s resolution arose after the council at its Jan. 25 meeting held a closed-door executive session to evaluate the “performance of a public employee.” It clearly related to Swanson, because she is the only city employee subject to council performance review.

As with Thursday’s resolution,  Councilwoman  LaFave asked for the Jan. 25 executive session as the council was set to adjourn, and it was not on the agenda. The council voted 4-3 to convene the session, with Young,  LaFave and Halvorson and Boudreau supporting the effort  despite concerns about its legality.

Council rules bar council members from discussing the substance of an executive session. However,  a scathing letter Swanson wrote to all seven council members on Jan. 26  reveals that it was due to a conflict over a legislative request for operating money for city homeless programs. These included operation of extreme weather shelters and costs for running Hope Village, the 50-unit pallet home that the prior City Council established in December 2022 to replace the fetid Alabama Street homeless camp.

In the latter, which is a public record, Swanson wrote “to address and refute the false and slanderous allegations of misconduct made directly by Mayor Boudreau and Mayor Pro Tem LaFave last night.”

 “As a dedicated professional with a 33-year career in public service, I am deeply concerned that the unfounded and baseless allegations of misconduct were made public and (have a)  potential impact on my family,  reputation and career.  These allegations did nothing more than fabricate a poor and unsubstantiated claim with woefully inadequate evidence of misconduct.” 

The council had unanimously voted previously to seek $1.5 million in each of the next two fiscal years — $3 million total for 2024-26. Somehow, when it reached Olympia, Swanson’s  request got changed to $3 million for the first year and failed to list the other purposes for the money, listing only Hope Village.   The city’s lobbyist,  Josh Weiss, took the blame for the clerical error.

Swanson acknowledged that she changed the annual requests to $1.6 million, judging that the city needed additional funding because the Kelso Longview Ministerial Association will no longer operate its extreme weather shelter after this winter. She said she did so at Weiss’s recommendation and after the council discussed the need for the extreme weather shelters after the January cold snap.

Young, LaFave, Boudreau and Halvorson met in two groups with Weiss during a legislative event last week — before Thursday’s council meeting — to discuss the issue, Young said. (LaFave drove up separately to avoid forming a four-member quorum, Young said).  Young grudgingly accepted the lobbyist’s explanation, but he criticized Swanson for increasing the request without council authorization, saying she “stepped on the council’s toes.”

Well, maybe, but this is a niggling issue that comes up far short of justifying an executive session. It certainly appears to be a weak pretext to fire or call Swanson on the carpet.  Why would the city object to getting extra money? If granted, the extra funds would need council approval before expenditure.

This would be a sorry pretext for disciplining Swanson. If it succeeds, who would want to work for this city after witnessing such a charade?

State Sen. Jeff Wilson, a Longview Republican and an opponent of Hope Village, brought the  issue to council’s attention before Swanson had to a chance to explain the error. 

In an email, Swanson chastised Wilson: “In the future, it would be great if you would reach out directly to Josh or me when you have questions concerning information submitted on the (funding ) request forms. When you go directly to council members, it causes confusion, as was evidence at the City Council meeting last night.”

This council has no ‘mandate’ to fire Swanson

In connection with Swanson, Young continues to insist that the new council majority has a mandate to change the direction of city government. Changes may be able to be made without terminating people, but maybe not, he said.

What changes? I asked.  

He mentioned the backlog of parks maintenance and street and sidewalk repairs and citizen opposition to  new taxes, Young replied.   He said better planning could make more money available. 

Well, maybe, but the parks have $16 million in deferred maintenance, and voters just rejected creating a taxing district to pay for them. Better planning is not going to fill that void or substantially reduce a 10-year backlog of street and sidewalk repairs.

And putting Swanson in the hot seat is not fair because of the brevity of her tenure and the reality that the city’s problems — such as drug abuse, environmental opposition to industrial development, inflation, competition for employees, skyrocketing insurance costs — are in part or completely beyond the city’s control. Firing her or disciplining her would merely sow chaos and ill will in public and among city workers.

And I disagree that there is a “mandate” to clean house. Only 38% of the Longview electorate voted in the November election; incumbent Ruth Kendall handily won re-election; and LaFave and Young won by small to modest margins.

I’ve known Kris Swanson for more than decades and always considered her among the most  hard-working and competent public officials I’ve encountered. The council would be better off working with her than undermining her.

This battle is problematic on other grounds. The way that LaFave and Young have raised it is gving rise to  suspicions that members of the council are violating the state Open Meetings Act.

Council members can discuss topics one-on-one in private,  as LaFave and Young reportedly  did in drafting Thursday’s resolution. However, the state Open Records Act does not allow chains or  “serial” private  meetings to decide on courses of action. Young denied violating that restriction.

Still, the city is receiving a rash of public records requests for council emails and other exchanges. A citizen named Tom Samuels wrote the council late last week about concerns that they are meeting secretly despite campaign promises to improve transparency.

“ Mayor Boudreau, this ‘constituent’ believes you and Council members LaFave, Young and Halvorson have been having meetings and discussions beforehand. At the very end of the past two meetings (January 25th, and February 8th), and with your obvious knowledge and consent, Council members Young and LaFave … each introduced surprise motions that were … likely borne from “side-bar conversations” that occurred out of view of the entire council as evidenced by the shock Council members (Mary Alice) Wallis, Kendall and Wean plainly showed and vehemently verbalized. What’s worse, the public has been kept in the dark with zero notice provided on both meeting’s agendas, and now only a cursory mention appears in the January 25th meeting minutes. It’s as if all the talk about openness and transparency was nothing more than a smoke and mirrors con-job.”

The council needs to come clean on this.