After criticism, more diverse board appointees are on the way, Annapolis officials say
The City Council has approved an overwhelming number of white males to Annapolis’ boards and commissions — a move some are questioning after officials pledged to improve diversity.
Mayor Gavin Buckley committed early in his administration to fill vacancies on boards with an eye toward diversity of all types including race, age, experience and geography. But of the appointees on the July 23 agenda, 10 of 12 were white and nine of 12 were male, raising eyebrows from some community members. One nominee, Dr. Michael Metzger, dropped off the agenda after Alderwoman Shaneka Henson took issue with his appointment.
The city has 24 mayor-appointed boards and commissions made up of volunteers serving various multi-year terms. Each board has its own responsibilities, from approving public art to deliberating over sensitive zoning issues, that fall outside the purview of the City Council, the mayor’s office and the city staff — but often directly affect city residents.
Of the more than 170 volunteers staffing bodies, including aldermen, at least 58 are serving under expired terms. Another 55 do not have definitive term limits spelled out on the city website. Men make up about 56 percent of the total.
City resident Gillian Thompson found it disappointing that the first batch of appointees were largely white men, a population already represented in city government. The city is about 51 percent female and 44 percent black or Hispanic/Latino, according to 2017 Census estimates.
William Rowel, put in charge of the overhaul by Buckley, said he understands the criticism and agrees the city can do better to communicate with residents about the process. Rowel, who is black, was a community activist before joining the Buckley administration and a critic of past administrations on behalf of marginalized residents.
Thompson was one of many residents who called the mayor’s office in the weeks after the meeting to question the appointment process.
“(Rowel) knows some educated black people in the city,” Thompson said. “I kind of feel like, ‘How did this happen on your watch? You were brought as an agent of putting diversity on the commissions. I had high hopes.”
The appointees approved in July were placed on the agenda as an emergency measure to fill immediate needs — such as leadership vacancies or issues establishing a quorum, Rowel said. The chosen applicants were those who were specific about their interests or transfers from other boards who didn’t need additional training.
The mayor’s office started the process prioritizing community engagement over placing people for diversity’s sake alone, Rowel said. Buckley has hired Hispanic community services specialist Adriana Lee and African American community services specialist Adetola Ajayi, as well as ombudsman Janice Hayes-Williams, to build relationships and trust in marginalized communities with a partial goal of casting a wider net and elevating previously unheard voices, Rowel said.
He has a list of 30 or so upcoming appointees — spanning different genders, ethnicities and backgrounds — who are still being vetted and interviewed with the tentative goal of appointing them in September.
The council voted to remove one July appointee to the Human Resources Commission, Metzger, after Henson, D-Ward 6, found an anti-LGBT study from an organization in Sweden sharing the same name as Metzger’s non-profit Clapham Institute. Henson said she wants the opportunity to address Metzger in person to clarify his personal beliefs and any affiliation with the Swedish institute.
Metzger said his nonprofit, geared toward promoting leadership in the city, is not affiliated with the Swedish institute, nor has he penned any anti-LGBT studies. Metzger runs a blog that discusses his Christian faith and other faith traditions. He has written about the LGBT community before, he said, but not in nearly a decade.
“Way back when, maybe in 2008, I wrote about how good people can disagree, but that’s not a barrier for working together,” he said.
Metzger, when reached by a reporter Monday, said he hadn’t been informed the council rejected his appointment.
Thompson said Rowel told her he had trouble finding qualified people of color who could pass a background test. Rowel denied saying this.
“I talk a lot and I’m not always clear, so it might’ve come out sounding like that,” he said, but insisted the notion is untrue.
The city is not conducting criminal background checks on applicants, Rowel said, only the ethics screenings mandated for some boards by city code. Some volunteers are required to file financial disclosures to ensure their work with city government does not conflict with private interests.
Rowel noted the bureaucratic process of vetting candidates and getting their names in front of the council has occasionally slowed his efforts. The overhaul has been a learning process in general, Rowel said — originally a group of city staffers interviewed and scored each applicant, but the process became time consuming and difficult to coordinate.
Now, each nominee still must go through an interview process, get approval from Buckley, go before a standing committee and get on the City Council agenda with enough time for the aldermen and the public to review. Sometimes, the moving parts don’t line up, causing delays.
But the process is intentionally slow, to avoid putting forward people who might have ties to City Hall, but might not be the best fit.
“I know lot of people, but I’m a public servant, so the personal aspect of how I feel about someone or whether someone deserves to be on a part boards and commissions is also something that gets in the way of diversity,” Rowel said. “All of those dynamics mean we take it slow and steady — otherwise, I could have come in day one, day two and been like, I just need to replace people on these boards and then went with everyone that I knew.”