The Longview "shit show" is just beginning

Council fires, suspends city manager, appoints former police chief as interim

Editor’s note: Councilman Keith Young’s surname was reported incorrectly in an early version of this story.

Despite multiple pleas to “put on the brakes” in its campaign against City Manager Kris Swanson, the new Longview City Council majority Wednesday fired and suspended her immediately and appointed former city police chief Jim Duscha as interim manager.

All three votes were 4-3, with Councilmembers Kalei LaFave, Keith Young, Erik Halvorson and Mayor Spencer Boudreau voting to terminate Swanson, who had held the position for a year.

Former Mayor MaryAlice Wallis, now a regular council member, called the conflict the “worst thing she had voted on” during her years on the council. The topic, perhaps the most consequential to come before the council in years, packed council chambers with a SRO audience, which included current city employees who gave emotional and tearful endorsements of Swanson.

I was almost left speechless by the behavior of this new bloc (I’m being polite). But here are my quick takeaways from the nearly four-hour meeting.

One: This council has put itself and its members in jeopardy of massive lawsuits for breach of contract. Swanson’s contract stipulates that she can only be terminated by a supermajority of five votes. A substitute city attorney strongly advised the council not to breach Swanson’s contract.

Swanson, who said silently on the dais without showing any emotion, has said she will fight to keep the job. It will be interesting to see what happens if she and Duscha both report for work Thursday morning. It’s like having two popes.

Two: This smacks of cronyism big time. LaFave, who made the motion to appoint Duscha, has been a longtime ally of the former chief, who is retired. Duscha now runs a private investigation company. Is he really more qualified to run the city than Assistant Manager Ann Rivers? (Rivers is on the wrong side of state Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, another LaFave supporter.) Duscha, who has not returned my phone calls, is a likable guy, but his background is far short of running an entire city. And will he “double dip” by continuing to collect his public employee pension while being paid to work as city manager?

This should not have even been a close call, especially after City Attorney Dana Gigler told the council state law directs that an interim city manager should come from among existing administrative staff (some ambiguity arose later about this). This council has proven that it does not respect the law or due process. It rejects reason under the mistaken notion that, with only about a third of the Longview electorate casting ballots in the November election to bring three of them to power, that it has a mandate for change. Change? Maybe. But it does not have a mandate to sow chaos, which firing Swanson will do.

Three: This also smacks of collusion. What happened Wednesday is exactly what the new majority was said to be plotting earlier this month but which they declined to disclose. Kendall said they denied wanting to sack Swanson, and Wright told me in an interview that Swanson had done good things for the city.

“No good deed goes unpunished” should not be a management style.

And so much for this threesome’s pledge for “transparency.” Boudreau and Halvorson scheduled the meeting on short, two-day notice knowing that Swanson supporters Angie Wean, Ruth Kendall and Wallis were going to be out of town. Kendall attended by Zoom. Wean, who had planned to visit Washington, D.C., cancelled the trip, while Wallis truncated a family vacation in Utah to arrive back in time for the meeting.

Four: The council terminated Swanson “without cause.” A few members of the public who supported Swanson’s ouster brought up distorted or incomplete references to Swanson’s hiring of then-Mayor Wallis’s husband, David, as the city’s IT manager and a lawsuit tangentially related to it. LaFave brought up what she said were confidential complaints about Swanson from some current and former city workers, but they were unspecific and vague.

The resolution calling for Swanson’s firing states that the move will help advance the council’s strategic priorities. But no one knows what they are because a recent planning meeting was cancelled.

Swanson has had no opportunity to address allegations against her.

Several speakers complained that Swanson, who was given a stellar job performance review last year, was hired without a city search to replace Kurt Sacha. So is that her fault or the previous council’s?

If I ever tried to fire someone with such flimsy evidence and absence of due process, I would have been sued. This action is grossly unfair, even if you think Swanson has provable shortcomings. As Kendall pleaded and many others supported, if there are legitimate concerns about Swanson’s work, the council should create an evaluation process led by an independent third party. This commonsense idea could have been a healing and effective compromise. The majority bloc swept those pleas aside.

The council has the process ass backward.

\Who would want to work for these people? And don’t be surprised if lots of city workers jump ship. The “shit show,” as Kendall and Wean called it, is just beginning.

Five: The city may face immediate financial consequences because a bond company has indicated it may withdraw its favorable rating for city borrowing for street projects because of the upheaval and instability the firing may cause. The city in that case would pay higher interest on its borrowings.

So much for their concerns about frugality.

The public needs to continue politely pressuring the council to change its course.

I’ll share further thoughts later this week.

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