The Port of Vancouver Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to hire a third-party recruiter to help them review the pool of applicants vying to be the port’s CEO.
Port spokeswoman Abbi Russel said port staff are still figuring out how the board’s direction will integrate into the recruiting process and deciding on a consultant.
The application window for the port CEO was open from Oct. 1 until Oct. 24. Director of Human Resources Jonathan Eder said the port received 75 applications, two of which were from current employees. Applicants include people in 15 different states and three countries.
The decision came the day after the application window closed and in the wake of criticism from some skeptical members of the public.
A handful of those critics attended Tuesday’s commission meeting and spoke highly of port staff but decried the process for finding the new CEO, saying that the port needs to rebuild trust with the community.
Before the commissioners made the motion, some audience members questioned why the candidate search is being handled almost entirely in-house. They argued that bringing in a recruiter would gather a broader group of talent and avoid any possibility of bias when reviewing internal applicants.
“I’ve spent almost 30 years in the public sector … and my experiences has been when key leaders are selected for hiring by a public agency almost exclusively — if not universally — it’s done through the use of outside consultants,” Ted Gathe, former Vancouver city attorney and a member of Taxpayers for a Responsible Public Port.
After a lengthy discussion by the commissioners on whether to extend the hiring window, have an individual commissioner review all the application, or to bring in a third party, Commissioner Brian Wolfe said he had “a concern with it all being internalized” but stopped short of making a motion.
“I don’t know that I want to make a motion to have us add outsiders to the process which questions Jonathan’s integrity … staff has done an incredible job,” he said. “But there’s this perception of people in the community that if we internalize it; and if we end up choosing one of the two internal applicants, then everybody is in question about whether the process was fair.”
Commissioner Eric LaBrant made and amended a motion to retain a third party recruiter.
“Not for any lack of confidence in Jonathan by any stretch, but because we do need that independent eye on things,” LaBrant said.
It passed 2-1. Commissioners La Brant and Wolfe approved.
Commissioner Jerry Oliver abstained from the amendment and voted against the motion, saying a few minutes before the vote, “we have a plan, and we’re working our plan and it’s yielding results in the timetable that we agreed to, and I think we need to continue working our plan.”
Jim Luce, also of Taxpayers for a Responsible Public Port, said the motion was a step in the right direction.
“Mr. Eder, we have confidence in you. That is not the issue,” he said. “The issue is perception and inherent conflict and trust, overriding trust.”
The original hiring process the port commission approved in September called for port staff to interview CEO candidates and send a small group of applicants to a committee comprising community and business partners. That group’s feedback would then go to Eder.
The candidates would then meet with the commissioners individually. Later, commissioners will meet in executive session to discuss candidate qualifications. Then the commission is expected to vote on a candidate during their next regular meeting.
Members of the community have expressed distrust of the port for its decision to lease property to Vancouver Energy — a joint venture of Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. that wants to build the largest oil transfer terminal in the nation — with little public involvement.
Also, in 2011, port officials faced criticism from open meeting law advocates for meeting behind closed doors to evaluate the credentials of Todd Coleman, its then second-in-command, before hiring him as its next CEO. Coleman was broadly supported, but at issue was the fact that the public had no real opportunity to weigh in before the decision was made.
Coleman resigned in May. Julianna Marler, the port’s top finance official, currently serves as interim CEO.
