“Cruel.” “Vicious.” “Unprincipled.”
Those are a few of the words Haines Borough Assembly members and one borough employee used to describe assembly member George Campbell’s comments about clerk Julie Cozzi this week.
Prompted by assembly member Mike Case’s proposal to raise Cozzi’s salary from $70,000 to $85,000, Campbell recently sent a seven-page email to fellow assembly members describing problems he has had with Cozzi’s performance.
One of Campbell’s biggest complaints, and the one he focused on most at Tuesday’s meeting, was Cozzi’s statement at a Dec. 29 assembly meeting that she had interviewed lobbyist Bill Thomas for the $45,000 job. When Campbell asked her for the interview questions via email after the meeting, she said she hadn’t conducted a formal interview.
“We keep asking, ‘Well, how do we get our citizens to trust us? Why are they so mad at us? How come there is so much conflict?’ It comes from the fact that we sit here, we see things like this happen, and because we’re a group, we don’t do anything, because we don’t want to upset somebody or something. I’m sorry. There is not an excuse for what happened in that meeting,” Campbell said about the discrepancy in Cozzi’s statements.
Other criticisms outlined in his email to assembly members included Cozzi’s failure to forward committee reports to the assembly during the minor offenses ordinance controversy, and Cozzi’s reluctance to adhere to the organizational chart and serve as acting manager when former manager David Sosa departed.
Campbell’s email apparently caused a lot of distress among assembly members and borough staff. Assembly member Ron Jackson said he had been “dreading” the meeting all week because he knew what had been “brewing.” Assembly member Diana Lapham chastised Campbell for “putting everyone through the wringer.”
Borough administrative assistant Kathryn Friedle stood up during the public comment period and admonished Campbell for his “unfounded,” “mean” and “cruel” accusations.
“If he had worked with Julie the number of years that I have, he would find that she is a very hard worker (and) goes above and beyond to meet the needs of the community,” Friedle said. “It’s just very sad to have an assembly member such as Mr. Campbell representing our community. I’m ashamed to have him as part of our community.”
At the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting, assembly member Case withdrew his resolution to increase Cozzi’s salary. After the meeting, he offered an explanation.
“I did a very poor job of trying to correct what I considered a serious wrong. My resolution made it look like I was trying to give Julie a performance raise. Several people took it that way and I don’t blame them. What I had meant to do was bring the salary of the Haines Borough clerk up close to the average of similar positions in Southeast. I did a dismal job of explaining that and it is nobody else’s fault but mine,” Case said.
Before it was pulled, though, the salary proposal prompted some assembly members to ask for Cozzi’s last performance review, to use it in their considerations of whether or not to pass the resolution. Cozzi hasn’t had a performance review since 2013, though her contract stipulates the manager shall complete an annual review.
Mayor Jan Hill said it isn’t Cozzi’s fault managers have failed to evaluate her regularly, and said she is working to schedule a review around Cozzi’s employment anniversary in May. “It’s been a shortcoming of many, many managers that for whatever reason have not kept up to date on their annual evaluations, and we need to not let that happen again, and hopefully that will keep us from having to go through what has been happening this last week.”
When contacted via email this week, former manager Sosa confirmed he hadn’t done a written performance evaluation. “If I had, it would have extolled Ms. Cozzi’s professionalism and high standards in the conduct of an extraordinarily challenging work environment,” Sosa wrote.
“I would further state that Ms. Cozzi’s actions and efforts are not understood or appreciated by many in the community and that she is not compensated nearly enough given her experience, competence, forbearance, and willingness to suffer fools such as myself and others,” Sosa added.
Assembly member Case read Sosa’s comments aloud Tuesday, and added that he believed Campbell was on a “vicious witchhunt.”
“Whether or not there was an error made, I don’t know. It’s very possible, because some of us do make errors. It’s surprising to some, I guess,” Case said.
Assembly member Lapham also reprimanded Campbell. “To personally attack someone in our small town – our little piece of paradise – you’re a contributing factor to the divisiveness in this community,” Lapham said.
At one point during the meeting, assembly member Margaret Friedenauer asked Cozzi to offer her side of the story regarding the discrepancy in what she said about the Thomas interview.
Cozzi apologized for the misunderstanding, and said she believes there is a difference between “formal” and “informal” interviews. When she said at the Dec. 29 meeting that she had conducted an interview, she meant she had spoken with Thomas, just as she had spoken with the other applicant, Denali Daniels.
When she responded to Campbell’s email requesting notes and questions from the interview, she said she hadn’t conducted a “formal interview.”
“No dishonesty was meant. I will try to be more careful in the future not to use the word ‘interview’ if I mean something other than a formal interview. I am not a liar,” Cozzi said.
On Wednesday, Campbell reflected on how the meeting had gone. “Professionals with high levels of ethics and integrity don’t spend their time defining their version of words like ‘committee’ and ‘interview’ after the fact,” he said.