Public Works director resigns

Published 4:00 am Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Bend Public Works Director Ken Fuller announced his resignation Tuesday as head of a department that faced criticism over buying six ultimately junked transit buses, underwent an investigation into his management practices and lost several key employees during his tenure.

Fuller’s resignation adds to a string of high-level departures at the city since October.

Interim City Manager Eric King said Tuesday Fuller’s last day will be Friday.

Word of Fuller’s resignation was a relief to some current and former employees who have worked under Fuller, many of whom had complaints about his leadership, said Diane Canaday, the president of the City of Bend Employees Association.

She said morale had been low for a long time in the department. COBEA represents about 200 city workers, including many in Public Works.

The Public Works Department is the city’s single largest division in terms of the amount of money spent, with an annual budget that tops $110 million, nearly half of the city’s $240 million annual budget. With more than 100 employees, it is responsible for everything from keeping water and sewer mains flowing to repaving streets and plowing snow. Its garage maintains more than 500 pieces of city equipment, including ambulances, police cars, street sweepers, chain saws and generators.

Fuller’s departure comes amid a wave of management changes at City Hall. In October, the City Council voted unanimously to fire City Manager Andy Anderson after three years on the job. In mid-December, Deputy Police Chief John Maniscalco stepped down following an investigation into his use of a police vehicle while off duty. A week later, Fire Chief Larry Langston announced his retirement. Earlier this month, Police Chief Andy Jordan said he would retire at the end of March.

King said he and Fuller had talked for “a couple of weeks” about his resignation.

“There has obviously been a change in management and a different focus,” King said in reference to Anderson’s departure. He added that he hoped Fuller’s departure would help improve morale within public works.

King declined to say whether Fuller would receive a compensation package. Anderson received a full year’s salary, about $130,000, after he was fired.

Human Resources Director Janice Grady said at a minimum, Fuller would get his unused vacation time paid out along with health insurance through February. She said the city is still working through the details of his separation, so she couldn’t comment on whether or not he would receive additional compensation. Fuller’s annual salary is about $112,000, according to city budget documents.

The buses

Fuller was the one who ultimately OK’d buying six buses from Transit Sales International, even after a city mechanic inspected them and raised serious concerns about their mechanical condition, according to legal depositions. The buses racked up more than $100,000 in maintenance bills for the city and all have been sidelined.

Fuller said Tuesday that the bad press surrounding the launch of Bend Area Transit had little to do with his decision to resign, though he acknowledged that he was not as good at dealing with the politics surrounding the job. When he took the position in 2003, he told his family he would stay for five years, he said, and now that time is up.

“Politics and public-sector business takes a very delicate nature of diplomacy and a very delicate nature of reading the public sentiment, and I’m not very tactful at that,” he said.

Becky Loyd, who was Fuller’s executive assistant until last January, and who worked in public works for 17 years before retiring, said Fuller’s departure was a long time coming.

“I do feel it’s in the best interest of public works,” Loyd said.

Loyd and Canaday said the department lost several valuable employees, including Brandon Raz, who oversaw the city’s streets, and Mike Miller, who was an assistant director, during Fuller’s management of the department.

Miller said Tuesday that were it not for Fuller, he would not have moved to Florence, where he is currently that city’s public works director.

Raz, who now works in Jackson, Wyo., did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday.

The investigation

Last March, the city paid Hood River attorney Jennifer Bisset more than $21,000 to investigate Fuller. Bisset is the same attorney the city used last summer to investigate Maniscalco’s actions. That investigation found no wrongdoing.

The Fuller investigation came after about 40 public works employees sent letters to the former city manager complaining of low morale, mismanagement, misconduct and a hostile work environment, according to deposition transcripts.

The city has repeatedly refused to release even a redacted copy of the investigative report, which The Bulletin requested under Oregon’s public records law. The newspaper appealed to Deschutes County District Attorney Mike Dugan in November. Dugan also denied the paper’s request, saying in a letter that the investigation was “used by the City of Bend in taking disciplinary action” and that it “resulted in the imposition of a sanction.”

King said Tuesday he did not want to go into specifics of why Fuller resigned. He declined to say what role the investigation played.

“It’s not one issue; it’s looking at several things and ultimately making the decision that’s sort of best for the city and the individual,” King said.

In November, a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit stemming from the city’s purchase of the six used buses sealed the investigation at the request of city attorney Jim Forbes.

Forbes said Tuesday that the city still would not release the report and that Fuller’s right to privacy continued to outweigh the public’s right to know about the investigation or its findings.

“I wouldn’t view this as one where the balance has tipped,” Forbes said.

Details about the investigation of Fuller came from transcripts in the depositions of 12 city employees, officials and councilors, interviews with former public works employees, records of city attorney fees, which provide line-item details of charges and from city purchasing records. To date, The Bulletin has not obtained any portion of the investigation itself.

Fuller’s ‘style’

In his deposition in the Transit Sales International lawsuit, former city manager Anderson said he received anonymous complaints from public works employees “having to do with Ken Fuller’s style.” Later in the deposition, Anderson said the investigation included interviews with “a very, very large number of employees in the Public Works Department.”

Miller, the former assistant director who left Bend in April, said in a recent interview that Bissett talked with him for about two hours as part of her investigation.

She asked him about a host of issues, including the purchase of the used buses and claims of harassment, discrimination, intimidation and creation of a hostile work environment, Miller said.

Fuller said in his own deposition that he requested the investigation after hearing anonymous complaints over management training issues and micromanaging tendencies. Fuller said “there was quite a bit of angst and anxiety in our department” around the American Public Works Association accreditation process, which involved creating written procedures for all activities, that took much of 2007 to accomplish. Fewer than 50 cities in the United States have gone through the accreditation process.

Fuller emphasized in the deposition that it was “nothing related to investigations with immoral, illegal, unethical issues.”

Later in the deposition he said, “basically what has come out of it is becoming better managers, all of us.”

When asked whether the investigation or its outcome pushed him toward resigning, Fuller said some of the changes he instituted in the department upset some employees. He denied that there was low morale.

“I don’t think that public works has low morale,” he said. “I think the public works department as a whole has undergone significant changes in the last five years.”

He pointed to the accreditation process, a management reorganization, the creation of a transit system and the creation of a storm water fee as significant projects that tested public works during his tenure.

“Morale in a department like ours is sometimes like public opinion,” Fuller said. “It goes up and down like the tide.”

Fuller said he plans to return to private consulting, something he did for more than a decade before coming to Bend. He’ll stay in the Central Oregon area with his wife and three young sons, he said.

Paul Rheault, who is currently an assistant public works director, will be the interim director, King said.