Apple Valley Mayor Mary Hamann-Roland has made some serious errors in judgement while sitting on the Apple Valley City Council, including the famous waterpark incident and using taxpayer funded city resources for her 2010 campaign. While Mayor Mary seems to have learned a few things in the last two years, she still hasn’t figured out how to keep herself from making easily avoided mistakes. Most recently, she voted in favor of awarding a city contract to her former employer proposed just days after she left the company.
Mayor Mary previously worked for executive search company, Brimeyer Fursman, as VP of Public Relation from December 1, 2010 through November 30, 2011. On February 23, 2012 the Apple Valley City Council, including Mayor Mary, voted to utilize Brimeyer Fursman to conduct the search for Apple Valley’s next Chief of Police.
PRESENT: Mayor Hamann-Roland; Councilmembers Goodwin, Grendahl, and Hooppaw.
ABSENT: Councilmember Bergman.
[...]
MOTION: of Hooppaw, seconded by Goodwin, approving the proposal from Brimeyer Fursman for recruitment of Police Chief, for Phase I and II of the proposal dated December 8, 2011, at a cost not to exceed $12,000.00 plus expenses. Ayes – 4 – Nays – 0.
Now, while there was nothing legally wrong with what Mary Hamann-Roland did, it was a clear violation of standard ethical procedure for elected officials. She should have recused herself from the vote to eliminate her obvious conflict of interest given she resigned from Brimeyer-Fursman less than 10 days before the firm’s proposal was submitted to the City of Apple Valley. There’s little doubt that her firm was in the process of drafting a proposal while she was still in its employment. Additionally, the City Clerk noted, in an e-mail to Lazy Lightning on July 27, 2012, no other companies were considered for the task of recruiting a new Police Chief and the final decision was “based on prior favorable experience with the firm.”
37 of 50 states, including Minnesota, have legislation prohibiting state legislators from registering as lobbyists within a certain length of time from retiring from office (usually one to two years). While elected officials at the city level often hold full-time jobs in the private sector, they are expected to recuse themselves from votes in which an obvious conflict of interest exists. Even Burnsville Councilmember Dan Gustafson recently recused himself from a vote that had a direct impact on his business.
Do you think Mayor Mary should have recused herself from the vote even though she resigned prior to the official submission of the proposal by her former employer? Should laws which exist to avoid this sort of potential impropriety at the state level be extended to the local level? Whatever you have to say about this one, go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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September 18th, 2012 at 8:49 am
Her vote really seems to have had no impact on the outcome. While she should have disclosed the relationship recused herself, I don’t see that it has made a bit of a difference in this case, unless quorum would have somehow been affected.
September 18th, 2012 at 8:59 am
Dan Gustafson recused himself from a Burnsville vote that still passed unanimously, as this likely would have without Mayor Mary’s vote. The point really isn’t whether Mayor Mary recusing herself would have made a difference. It’s whether it’s ethical.
We seem to expect insider shenanigans from our elected officials. We shouldn’t. Anytime an elected official isn’t above board regarding their relationship with special interests for any vote, there’s a serious problem.
This contract was proposed just days after Mayor Mary left the company to whom the contract was awarded. She voted to award them the contract less than 3 months after her departure. The conflict of interest presented here is so stunningly obvious it’s shocking to me that there wasn’t as much as a mention of it in the council’s meeting minutes.
September 18th, 2012 at 9:02 am
I agree she should have recused herself. That does not look good. What I find more interesting is the “no bid” contract for Brimeyer-Fursman. I would like to hear the whole story on this. Maybe there were no other local firms that do this sort of thing? I remember lots of people condemned Halliburton a few years ago for receiving “no bid” contracts from the government, but it later came out that there were no other companies that did the type of work that they did.
September 18th, 2012 at 9:10 am
Finalists:
Sean,
I have no idea if other companies in the area specifically target public sector employees. While the document showing 15 total candidates sent to the city is redacted showing only the current position, education, and rating of each based on the education, none of the 5 finalists were from out of state and 10 of 15 candidates in the larger pool sent to the City (including the 5 finalists) appear to be in-state based on where they went to school.
Why would the City of Apple Valley vote to pay a company $12,000 to conduct a national search when all of the applicants could have been easily found through networking, LinkedIn, etc? Being a hiring manager myself and a part of recruiting for my own team, I know the difficulties in conducting a search but charging $12,000 for it seems to be a huge taxpayer waste, never mind the fact that there was so little potential for these people to actually be from the rest of the US.
September 18th, 2012 at 9:31 am
Sui and Joey,
Your point that the motion would have passed without Mary’s vote is irrelevant. I agree with Bill, her voting raises huge ethical concerns. Especially since it is so blatantly obvious due to the short passage of time between her resignation and the firm’s bid submittal.
Referring back to one of Bill’s earlier posts about the value of the local papers, I think this is exactly the type of stories that Bill will uncover/cover that the local Sun/Current/ThisWeek don’t even understand.
Good work Bill, and thanks for keeping politicians’ actions public.
September 18th, 2012 at 9:49 am
NW – irrelevant to you maybe, but very relevant to whether or not I believe there should be a public investigation into the matter, or whether or not I believe the contract should be rescinded, etc. As far as what is blatantly obvious…You must know more than what was stated. What were the terms surrounding her employment separation? Perhaps they were not good, perhaps she hates the company for getting rid of her, but she fels it is in the city’s best interest (correctly or incorrectly) to hire them. Then again, certainly she may just be repaying favors to old friends. It is this appearance of potential impropriety that leads me to believe, as I said, that she should have probably disclosed and recused. Judging by your comments, you did not carefully read Joey’s comment either, as he also points out that whether or not the outcome would be different is not the point.
End result? AGAIN, I say she should have recused herself, but because there is no impact on the final decision, I do not think taxpayer resources should be wasted to try to rescind the contract or investigate the matter further.
September 20th, 2012 at 1:44 am
I was begining to think Apple Valley should annex Burnsville because Burnsville has such a problem finding honest and ethical people to run for office. Don’t take me wrong, we do have some great public servants but they are in the minority. Looks like I’ll have to rethink that idea!
September 20th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Eagan is using the same search firm to find their new City Administrator. Looks like they are getting a lot of business around here.
October 18th, 2012 at 7:12 am
[...] determined to believe this would make money while others were not? Apple Valley’s shady mayor Mary Hamman-Roland said the city has to come up with revenue sources that will be less burdensome on the taxpayers [...]