Webber belatedly cleans house
The campaign trail was almost too easy for Alan Webber. A natural politician with an all-American success story in magazine publishing, he walked into neighborhoods across Santa Fe and won over voters.
As a candidate for mayor, Webber sold hope as much as he sold himself.
Many voters were suspicious of city government, whose leaders had mismanaged money and public works projects.
Those same voters saw Webber as smart, sincere and unencumbered by political debts. He didn’t owe a thing to anyone at City Hall. That meant he might reform it.
The campaign trail is a memory. As Santa Fe’s mayor for six weeks, Webber is now on the comeback trail.
He stumbled early and disappointed many by supporting a secretive maneuver that gave 10 percent to 15 percent pay raises to 37 city employees. They are working on a project to modernize computer operations.
But on Friday, the mayor showed decisiveness by halting the raises and shaking up his administration, two important steps in regaining public trust.
Webber said he had just discovered a city personnel policy that prohibited the special raises authorized by former City Manager Brian Snyder.
Snyder pushed through the pay increases as Webber was being sworn in as mayor, the oddest timing imaginable. Why not wait until the new mayor took office so he could decide on any plan to give large raises to one group of workers?
Webber dismissed the idea that Snyder rushed the raises to keep him out of the loop.
“Brian doesn’t have a political bone in his body,” Webber said one recent day.
Snyder also failed to consult with City Council members before approving the raises, which would have cost $400,000 and supposedly would have lasted for only one year.
Freshman City Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler, herself a former city human resoures director, told Webber that Snyder’s actions probably violated city policy. Webber checked and she was right.
A personnel policy established in 1992 requires the city manager to receive approval from the council before any employee can receive incentive pay such as the temporary raises.
Webber then abandoned his defense of the pay hikes and of Snyder.
“I had [first] concluded the approach was managerially correct but flawed” by a lack of communication, Webber said. But he called Snyder’s violation of a written policy “a very different level of failure.”
Webber terminated the special raises, though they are likely to be revived in a modified proposal that would go before the council.
In an overdue shakeup, the mayor obtained Snyder’s resignation as city manager. In addition, Lynette Trujillo retired immediately from her $104,000-a-year job as city human resources director, having played a part in issuing the raises.
As Trujillo leaves City Hall, Snyder will remain on the public payroll.
Supposedly apolitical, Snyder was astute enough to negotiate a contract under the previous administration that guarantees him a return to a classified supervisory job with a salary of no less than $93,724 annually. He made $145,662 as city manager.
Webber said he also plans to eliminate the job of deputy city manager, a position held by Renée Martínez, who had a leading role in deciding who would get the special pay increases.
The mayor does not have direct authority to fire the deputy city manager, an unnecessary position larded onto the administration in 2016. Martínez, like Snyder, might survive the purge and remain on the city staff in another job. She makes $132,600 a year as deputy city manager.
Webber belatedly did the right thing by stopping the raises and cleaning house.
But it is troubling that he ever bought into the plan for hefty pay raises. Webber ignored what he had learned while campaigning.
He met countless people in private-sector jobs who pay the city’s bills. None is getting 10 percent or 15 percent salary increases.
Running a city is always harder than running for office.
The mayor is lucky to get a fresh start. Maybe he can hit his stride now that he has separated himself from the old guard.