Joel EngelhardtCandidates for Palm Beach County administrator won’t be seen publicly until day before commissioners make selection.
The question that proved a task force’s undoing: Can we just forward you six names instead of five?
The task force charged with whittling 96 qualified applicants for Palm Beach County administrator to five or fewer, narrowed the list to six in its first go-round.
Next would come in-person live-streamed interviews, scheduled for May 23, of the six finalists to replace Verdenia Baker, the county administrator for nearly 10 years.
But first the task force wanted to know if those interviews could be 45 minutes long, instead of 20. And if they liked all six applicants at the end of the interviews, could they simply recommend them all?
Staff posed the question May 20 to county commissioners. No one from the seven-member task force, chaired by business leader John R. Smith, appeared.
If you forward just six names, county commissioners opined, what’s the point of putting the candidates vying for the $400,000-a-year job through the travel and stress of a public interview?
“Why would we put these six applicants through interviews with the task force to then just come to us and do the interviews again?” Vice Mayor Sara Baxter asked. “It seems redundant and a huge waste of time for a lot of people.”
During the 80-minute discussion, no one mentioned that just two of the six finalists are from outside the county. They are Cornell Wesley, director of the Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity for Birmingham, Ala.; and Eric Johnson, city manager of Norcross, Ga.
The other four are Deputy County Administrator Patrick Rutter, Assistant County Administrator Isami Ayala-Collazo, County Clerk and Comptroller Joe Abruzzo and the county’s director of strategic planning and performance management, Keith Clinkscales.
Even candidates could watch
Commissioners seemed vexed that under the Sunshine Law, they would have no right to tell applicants they couldn’t sit in on their competitors’ interviews. That’s because public meetings are open to everyone, even candidates vying for a job.
“Candidate 1 gets to hear what Candidate 2 says?” Commissioner Bobby Powell asked. “Or Candidate 6 has watched all the interviews? I believe it gives that candidate an advantage.”
Commissioner Gregg Weiss, who voted with Powell against dropping plans for the initial round of public interviews, pointed out that since all candidates will face the same questions, they could be provided in advance to avoid an unfair advantage.
But Mayor Maria Marino, Baxter and Commissioners Marci Woodward, Maria Sachs and Joel Flores voted to cancel the May 23 interviews, accept the six finalists and end the task force’s work.
The search has been rife with speculation that it is designed to favor Abruzzo. The commission’s action spares Abruzzo and his fellow finalists from overcoming one more hurdle, a public interview, before the final decision round.
Likewise, the leading insider, Rutter, moves on to the final review. He faced criticism from task force members over his changing county roles, without an opportunity to explain that his job changes were promotions, taking him from the planning department, where he worked 15 years and ended up as director, to climbing the ranks of county executives to become Baker’s top deputy.
‘We owe it to the public’
Commissioners, however, focused their decision on the task force’s request to provide six finalists rather than five.
“If they are asking to bring us six candidates and they have six candidates, I don’t see the purpose of having this production of another task force interview just to send us the same six people,” Woodward said.
The commission’s decision removed the opportunity to see the six finalists under independent questioning a month before commissioners would make a decision.
“I do believe we owe it to the public to put them in front of them (the public) as much as we can,” Weiss said in explaining his opposition to concluding the task force’s work. “I think by not doing that we’re doing a disservice.”
Weiss’ appointee to the task force, consultant Jay Nisberg, said he had many questions after reviewing candidate resumes that interviews would have helped settle.
“Whether there were six or three I was truly hoping they would let us take the next step to do the interviews. It would have provided more insight into who those people are,” Nisberg told Stet.
He left the task force’s May 14 session still willing to change his mind about candidates who made the first cut. “Without meeting these people and asking questions and probing, I felt we had done an incomplete job,” he said.
What’s next?
The candidates will have an opportunity to lobby county residents between now and their next public appearances.
Commissioners will interview the candidates privately on June 16. As no more than one elected official will attend each interview those interviews would not be subject to the Sunshine Law’s open meeting requirements.
Later that night, the county will provide a yet-undefined forum in which members of the public can ask the candidates questions.
The next day commissioners say they will conduct public interviews of the candidates before making a decision.
Commissioners decided that Assistant County Administrator Todd Bonlarron will serve as interim administrator until the new administrator agrees to a contract and begins work.
