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Candidate makes her case for confident leadership

Pam Brangaccio rebuts charges that she has been divisive in past positions.

By ASJYLYN LODER
Published January 14, 2006

Pam Brangaccio hadn't been out of the room two minutes before members of the search committee for a new county administrator brought up the name of Bonnie Dyga.

Brangaccio, one of four finalists for Hernando County administrator and the only woman, narrowly made the cut for a Round 2 interview.

After her initial interview Dec. 16, committee members voiced concerns that Brangaccio could prove a headstrong and controversial leader, much like Dyga, the first and only woman to hold the administrator's job in Hernando. One committee member called Brangaccio "high strung."

Overcoming Dyga's legacy and turning around the impression that she is a divisive leader remain Brangaccio's biggest hurdles going into Tuesday's interviews with the County Commission. A sharply divided search committee ranked her fourth among the four finalists and forwarded her name to the commission only after a handful of committee members lobbied to include a fourth finalist.

Brangaccio, who left her post as Bay County manager in June, prides herself on being well-prepared. She has already apprised herself of these obstacles and greeted the challenge with the same burnished confidence she brought to her interview.

"The board will make the decisions based on their impressions," Brangaccio said.

She shrugged off the comparison to Dyga, who quit in 1999 after 18 months on the job.

"The only thing Bonnie Dyga and I have in common is that we are women," Brangaccio said.

Leafing through newspaper clips and performance evaluations, the search committee saw in Brangaccio's career a decade of controversial departures, political conflict and mixed reviews. That's hardly unusual. The committee's top-ranked candidate, Billy Beckett of Georgia, was fired from one job, forced to resign from another and left his most recent position after less than a year.

Brangaccio, 49, made it her business to visit Hernando County before her interview. The Tampa native knew the county's budget backward and forward, talked knowledgeably about the growth issues facing the county and how she tackled similar problems in her previous jobs. And she proposed solutions. The interview lasted 45 minutes.

While the committee complained that fellow finalist Gary Kuhl, the former Citrus County administrator, hadn't done enough to prepare for his interview, more than half of the committee found Brangaccio's confidence off-putting; some said she appeared too pushy and opinionated.

"That's confidence and experience and maturity. There's not a lot I haven't done in terms of growth and growth management," Brangaccio said.

She declined to speculate on what role gender might have played in her reception. The 15-member committee included only one woman while Barbara Dupre, Hernando County's director of human resources, led the interviews.

Brangaccio began her career as a budget analyst in Lee County in 1979 after earning a bachelor's degree from the University of South Florida in 1977. Through the 1980s, she worked for Collier County and West Palm Beach, where she rose to become assistant city manager.

In 1991, she took a job as city manager of Safety Harbor, a city of 17,000 on Tampa Bay, where she spent the next five years. Her departure in 1996 prompted news reports that painted a mixed picture of Brangaccio's tenure. While she was viewed as an effective leader, her critics called her rude.

Then-Commissioner Pam Corbino said at the time: "My whole problem is how she gets along with people. I don't think she has established many friendships in Safety Harbor."

Now Safety Harbor's mayor, Corbino said her feelings have softened in the intervening decade.

"I wouldn't call her confrontational. I would call both of us very strong-willed," Corbino said recently.

Brangaccio left Safety Harbor to become assistant administrator of Charlotte County, a county of 144,571 south of Sarasota. Toward the end of her six-year stint there, she faced a divided commission suffering the aftereffects of a fractious battle in which the county administrator was forced out. After that administrator left, Brangaccio assumed the role of interim county administrator and wanted the post permanently. Three of the five commissioners supported her, but two blocked her promotion, leaving her one short of the necessary four votes, according to news reports.

But it was Brangaccio's most recent job, in Bay County, that raised the concerns of Hernando County's search committee. The committee had in hand a few of Brangaccio's past performance reviews that judged her "marginally effective." Bay County Commissioner Bill Dozier wrote in his evaluation, "Mrs. Brangaccio needs to work in the area of raising the morale of the staff." However, other assessments that were not available at the interview rated her "outstanding" or "very effective" in most areas.

Brangaccio said issues facing the fast-growing county proved divisive, not her leadership. The commission also changed hands during her tenure, giving her new bosses. Finally, her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Brangaccio took time off to be with her.

"This whole time up here, (Brangaccio) had a lot of pressure on her," said Bay County Commissioner George Gainer, who worked with her for two years.

Gainer characterized Brangaccio as well-informed and frank, a leader who made decisions based on facts and information, not on prejudice.

"She ain't no pushover, I can tell you that, and I think that's good," Gainer said.

Catherine M. Zehner, community outreach and intergovernmental coordinator for Bay County, said, "At the end of the day, the personality conflicts, she didn't have time for. She was focused on the solution. And people responded to that and stepped up."

Like Corbino, the Safety Harbor mayor who worked with Brangaccio in the 1990s, Zehner and Gainer said Brangaccio got things done.

Ultimately, the Hernando search committee's reservations about Brangaccio may have less to do with her qualifications and more to do with the committee's understanding of Hernando County's five commissioners. Having gone through four administrators in six years, the committee hoped to find a consensus builder who could bring some stability to county leadership.

In addition to Beckett and Kuhl, Gary Shimun, assistant city manager of Pembroke Pines, is also competing for the post. Brangaccio said she trusted Hernando County's commissioners to judge for themselves which of the four finalists will be the best fit.

"This is me. This is what I do," Brangaccio said. "And I've done it well, and I think you'll see that reflected in each of the communities where I've been."

Staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Asjylyn Loder can be reached at 352 754-6127 or aloder@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 14, 2006, 01:38:14]