With a deadline approaching to officially hire a county manager, Clark County council Chair Marc Boldt and Councilor David Madore have offered conflicting visions for how to move forward with the top executive job.
The county council is faced with either rehiring Acting County Manager Mark McCauley or hiring someone else to take his spot.
McCauley’s contract runs through Dec. 31 and can be extended for an additional year. His contract, however, requires the newly expanded five person county council created by the home rule charter to decide by June 30 whether it should keep McCauley in that position. It takes a majority of councilors to hire or fire the county manager.
Several weeks ago, in an interview with The Columbian, Boldt, no party preference, said it appeared likely that the county would hire an independent consulting firm to perform a review of McCauley by interviewing department heads and other community leaders to evaluate McCauley’s performance. That process, however, has not been finalized or discussed in public meetings.
But at the council’s board time on Wednesday, Madore called for the county to run a national search to find potential candidates for McCauley’s position so as not to set a pattern of appointing white men to top spots.
The argument was an unusual one for the Republican councilor, who has never spoken publicly about employee diversity one way or another. Madore listed the hiring of state Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, as an example of the county hiring white men to director seats.
“Our previous administrator (Bill Barron) appointed a director without opening it up and someone else (Anita Largent) sued for discrimination because the opportunity was not afforded to her,” he said.
Madore and Republican Councilor Tom Mielke directed Barron to hire Benton in 2013, skipping the typical county interview process, at a now infamous board time meeting. The decision prompted a discrimination lawsuit from Largent, who served as the interim director of the department before Benton’s appointment. The county never admitted wrongdoing in the hiring and eventually paid $250,000 to settle the lawsuit.
Tensions high
Tensions between Madore and McCauley have been high since the beginning of the year. At one point, Madore took to Facebook to accuse the county manager of insubordination.
The conversation Wednesday left Boldt visibly frustrated.
“If we go to an open process for the county manager, we also rectify what we did with Don Benton and go for a hiring of that position, too,” Boldt said.
The county council no longer has authority over the hiring and firing of any department heads under the home rule charter.
After some bickering among the council, Republican Councilor Julie Olson eventually said the county should reserve the conversation for executive session, ending the conversation without a path forward.
McCauley, who is on vacation and was not present at the meeting, was hired to the county administrator role after Barron retired in 2013. He was appointed acting county manager — with an annual salary of $163,000 — in December 2014 with the implementation of the home rule charter, which separated the legislative and executive branches of the county.
McCauley declined to comment on the matter when reached Wednesday afternoon.
