Why did the Mill Creek City Council ask the city manager to resign two weeks ago?
Just what were the “irreconcilable differences” that led to the resignation?
There are sure to be rumors, but shouldn’t the citizens who pay the city manager’s salary know the truth behind the departure of the city’s chief executive?
We’ll never know because Washington’s public meetings and public records laws, and those of all but two other states, have exceptions for review of the performance of a public employee.
The two states that don’t have this exception — Florida and Tennessee — seem to survive despite having to open all meetings and records relating to personnel actions.
Should every personnel action relating to a secretary or truck driver be public? Maybe not, but discussion relating to the hiring and evaluation of city managers and school superintendents should be public.
So, let’s change Washington law to say that “personnel” exceptions to public-meetings and public records laws don’t apply to an entity’s highest paid employees — those earning the top 1 or 2 percent of the entity’s salaries.
That way, when a city manager or school superintendent is hired or fired, we’ll hear the truth rather than rumors.
No one gave reasons for city manager Steve Nolen’s departure, but one councilman said he wanted a new city manager with “honesty and transparency.” Does that mean the council thought that Nolen wasn’t honest? We ought to know.
Too much about the Dreamliner
Our daily newspapers and local TV newscasts early this week seemed to be infomercials for Boeing. Shouldn’t we see if the 787 can fly before we have All-Dreamliner-All-The-Time news?
Don’t tear up Eastside tracks to build light rail
King County leaders want to tear up the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad tracks east of Lake Washington and spend years and billions of dollars building a light-rail line on the same corridor.
What a waste.
Wouldn’t we save time and money by running commuter rail trains on the existing tracks rather than tearing them up and building an entirely new system?
One argument is that by replacing the railroad tracks with light rail, there will be room for bike trails. But there must be plenty of right of way for trails along the existing tracks, and, where there’s not, King County could certainly buy it for much less money than it would spend tearing up old tracks and building new ones.
Another argument is that we should have a modern system, but we could get that faster and less expensively by repairing the old tracks and running modern Sounder trains on them.
Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinion@heraldnet.com.
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