Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Politics

Anderson sent to sidelines

After taking three city officials off paid leave, he winds up there himself.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published January 24, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - The Brooksville City Council voted 3-2 Monday night to put outgoing City Manager Richard Anderson on paid administrative leave, effectively ending his 11-year career as the city's top administrator.

Council members said after the meeting that they were frustrated with his handling of the recent turmoil at City Hall and were eager to get on with the transition to the next city manager.

Two weeks ago, police Chief Ed Tincher, police Lt. Rick Hankins and human resources director Ron Baker were all put on paid administrative leave after a feud between Tincher and Baker threatened to engulf City Hall.

Baker was arrested in August on a drug charge. He said the arrest was engineered by Tincher as retribution for reporting on an alleged affair between Tincher and a City Hall secretary.

On the same evening, Anderson announced he was going to resign because he didn't have the support of the council. But he was planning to work for 30 more days, up until Feb. 9, and do the lion's share of the investigation into the city's feud.

On Monday, Anderson reinstated the trio that had been on leave and that seems to have sealed his fate, convincing council members he was not handling the investigation properly.

"I think that any type of investigation may be compromised," council member Joe Bernardini said. "People say government should be run like a business and when your CEO is in trouble you don't keep him in there."

Mayor David Pugh Jr. said it was a tough decision to make because Anderson was a family friend, but he wasn't happy with Anderson's performance in the past two weeks.

"The feud that has continued on since last summer - it hasn't been resolved to the point of everyone's satisfaction," he said. "One of the other problems is you had a push by a few who wanted to keep Richard (Anderson). It was a distraction. ... We've put that to rest by putting him on administrative leave."

At the council meeting, member Richard Lewis made a motion to rescind Anderson's resignation and to let him retire with "grace and dignity" in March 2008, the end of his contract.

Pugh pointed out that Anderson had already been given a chance to go out with dignity when he entered the DROP retirement program and then decided to keep working past his retirement date.

In August, Anderson retired for one month and then was rehired as a way to circumvent the program's mandatory retirement requirement.

Lewis' motion to ask Anderson to come back failed with Lewis and Vice Mayor Frankie Burnett voting in favor of it.

Then Bernardini proposed firing Anderson, but backed away when he learned Anderson would be entitled to 30 days' severance pay.

Bernardini then put forward a motion to put Anderson on paid leave, effectively terminating him without having to shell out the severance pay.

Council member Lara Bradburn, who talked about firing Anderson two weeks ago for bungling city business, seconded the motion.

Pugh cast the deciding vote to put Anderson on leave.

The move to hasten Anderson's departure thrust finance director Steve Baumgartner into the role of city manager two weeks earlier than expected.

When Anderson initially announced his resignation two weeks ago, Baumgartner said that he would prefer for Anderson to stay on for the rest of his 30 days because Baumgartner didn't feel comfortable handling the complicated personnel issues facing the city.

But now he will be forced to take on that role as the one in charge of the investigation into the feud at City Hall.

Anderson said he was surprised by the decision, but wasn't one to criticize his bosses.

"I think two of them were upset at my investigation so far," he said Tuesday while cleaning out his office. "Maybe they wanted someone else for the next phase."

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6114.

. HELP WANTED

Choosing the next city manager

- Council members will create a job description and salary range to start a search for Anderson's replacement.

- The city will use a panel of local human resources directors - from Brooksville, Hernando County and Swiftmud - to cull the eventual list of applicants down to 10.

- Then a five-member committee of citizens will cut the 10 down to five.

-The council will interview the five finalists to select the new manager.

[Last modified January 24, 2007, 08:14:11]