SEQUIM — A majority of City Council members said Friday they expect to sign newly selected City Manager Vern Stoner’s employment contract on Sept. 14 despite learning Friday he was fired June 15 from his job as state deputy chief insurance commissioner.
“If he was the only city manager or high-ranking state official ever fired in his career, maybe that would be a factor,” council member Paul McHugh said after learning of the termination from a Peninsula Daily News report.
“But virtually all of them have this in their history.”
Recollections
McHugh, Walt Schubert, Susan Lorenzen and Bill Huizinga said in separate interviews they had vague recollections of Stoner’s account of his departure from the state agency from their two interviews with Stoner in closed-door executive sessions, which are not recorded.
None recalled him saying outright he had been fired.
In addition, they and Mayor Laura DuBois, interviewed Thursday, said they had not been informed of those circumstances by executive-search firm Waldron & Co. of Seattle, which the city paid $20,000 to find qualified applicants for a position vacated in May 2008 by Bill Elliott, whom the City Council fired.
But they said Friday it doesn’t matter that state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kriedler fired Stoner, 61, from the agency’s No. 2 position 14 months after hiring him, nor did it matter that Stoner did not make it clear in his interviews.
Asked to resign
Stoner said Thursday in an interview from his Olympia home that Kriedler asked him to resign, he refused and was fired.
“You work at the pleasure of the commissioner,” Stoner said.
“When they ask you to leave, you leave, and I got fired. The thing is, I was asked to resign, and I chose not to.”
Stoner said that he told the City Council that he and Kriedler had “a falling out,” but he did not know why Kriedler let him go.
Stoner explained Friday that he was fired without cause, meaning he was not let go for malfeasance or other questionable actions, and it was the only job he was ever fired from.
“I’m drawing unemployment,” he said.
The insurance commissioner’s office refused to comment on the dismissal.
McHugh, a two-term council member who is not running for re-election in November, said it made a difference that Stoner was fired without cause and that the other finalist, Steven Burkett, also had been asked to leave his job as city manager of Shoreline.
Burkett was forced to resign after an election changed the composition of the Shoreline City Council in 2005.
McHugh said city managers are often fired when city councils change complexion with several new members, as was the case in Sequim regarding Elliott.
“If you are hiring a city manager who’s never been fired, you’re hiring a city manager who’s never managed a city, who’s just never been out there and doesn’t have the experience,” McHugh said.
He said the City Council discussed Stoner’s departure from the agency during the interview process but didn’t recall precisely what was said.
“My sense is that he did share with us that it was not his decision to leave,” McHugh said.
‘Non-issue’
Stoner’s termination is “a non-issue,” council member Lorenzen said, adding she also got “the impression” from Stoner’s interviews that he was fired.
“I think he made a comment in passing,” she said.
“I knew he wasn’t working there, and I didn’t think he quit.”
Huizinga knew by reading a letter of recommendation for Stoner that said Stoner “had a personality conflict within the department and did not have a job there anymore,” Huizinga said.
During the interviews, “we never asked him specifically about that,” Huizinga said.
He said he did not know why council members were silent on the issue but added that getting fired from “political jobs like that” is not unusual.
“That’s the nature of the beast,” he said.
Schubert said in an interview Thursday that Stoner said he was hired by Kriedler “because they had had financial problems, and he was brought in to fix it.”
Stoner left, Schubert had said Thursday, because “he was done with the assignment.”
In an interview on Friday, Schubert said his recollection of what Stoner said was clearer after talking with Waldron consultant Lane Youngblood later Thursday.
“[Stoner] didn’t use the word fired. He used the words ‘let go,'” Schubert said he recalled.
His recollection changed, he said, because he was “hit cold” with questions about Stoner’s departure in his interview Thursday with Peninsula Daily News.
“In thinking about it, in talking to Waldron, I was reminded of the conversation.”
Schubert also said Mike McAleer, a member of a citizens’ committee that took part in selecting Stoner, had told him Friday that a Waldron representative had informed the committee that Stoner had been terminated.
McAleer said in an interview Friday that the representative said Stoner had been terminated.
“I wasn’t concerned,” McAleer said.
Tom Waldron, owner of Waldron & Co., did not return calls for comment on Thursday because he was traveling, he said Friday.
He said Friday that City Council members knew Stoner did not voluntarily leave his job at the insurance commissioner’s office.
“They may not remember that,” Waldron said.
“Nobody was hiding the fact that he left the state under circumstances that weren’t great.”
But council member Ken Hays said the fact that Stoner was fired was less important to him than the fact that the council was unaware of the circumstances surrounding his departure.
“I still have confidence” in Stoner, Hays said.
“If we had known all that, the council would have wanted to drill down more detail. I certainly would have. Maybe for me, it’s mostly an issue of not knowing it.”
Dubois did not return calls for comment on Friday.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com