Sunday, November 08, 2009
Editorial: Name city manager finalists in Roanoke
The public interest in judging the finalists for this vital position outweighs the personal interests of candidates in confidentiality.
From the RoundTable blog
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Roanoke City Council got off to a terrific start in its search for a new city manager with an open, transparent process with plenty of opportunity for public input.
But that process appears to be going off the rails. At a council meeting Monday, Councilman Rupert Cutler said the top finalists for the position would not be revealed "for the obvious reason that all but one of the top candidates are currently employed as city managers in other cities, and they do not want their interest in changing jobs known to their current employers."
That's an understandable concern on the part of candidates. Though most have lucrative severance packages spelled out in their contracts, city managers are usually at-will employees who can be fired by their councils at any time.
However, that purely private interest is overridden by the public interest in vetting candidates for this crucial position as carefully as possible.
The position of city manager isn't just any other job, after all. This is arguably one of council's most important decisions. It could affect the direction of the city -- for good or ill -- for years to come.
There's no need to name every single one of the 108 applicants, or even the 16 candidates currently under consideration.
By the time council narrows the list down to the top several finalists, the public should know who is under consideration.
Council members fear good candidates might drop out of consideration if forced to inform their current employers. That's a legitimate fear, but, again, one overridden by a more compelling public interest.
Only so much of a background check, after all, can be conducted on a candidate who insists on confidentiality.
For example, think how glad officials at the school district in Indian River County, Fla., must have been that Florida law compelled them to disclose the name of all candidates in its superintendent search a couple of years ago, including then-Roanoke City Schools Superintendent Marvin Thompson.
As a result, that district learned a lot about Thompson -- as did the Roanoke district, which let Thompson go shortly after it became clear that the superintendent had been less than honest about how his application had come about.
Unless council wants to rest this vital decision only on information from the candidates and those select few references the candidates are willing to supply, making the names of the top finalists public is crucial.
Let the public take the measure of the finalists before a contract is signed.
That's a decision council would be unlikely to regret.
