Atherton, home to many of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest, is once again embroiled in controversy over management of its local government.
This time it is the well-publicized case of former finance director John Johns, who was suspended in August after the police chief claimed he created a hostile work environment at town hall. After an investigation by an outside attorney, Mr. Johns was fired in October, not on the hostility charge, but for allegedly viewing pornography on a city computer, bullying fellow employees and submitting dubious expense reports.
It was an ignoble end for a man asked to clean up an accounting mess and to get to the bottom of a scandal in the town’s building department. Mr. Johns, whose accounting skills were never questioned, managed to find some skeletons in Atherton’s closet. And though some claimed he wasn’t easy to work with, he was the darling of the town’s independent audit committee, in part because he produced the first “clean” audits the city had received in many years.
Mr. Johns is not going away quietly. After his dismissal, he filed a $500,000 wrongful termination suit against the town, and strongly disputes many of the conclusions in the 35-page report prepared by San Francisco attorney Mary Topliff. His attempt to stop Atherton’s effort to release the report was turned down by Superior Court Judge John Runde, who sided with the town and media representatives, including the Almanac, who argued that the report was a public document.
A similar investigative report, which is expected to shine light on operations of the building department under former manager Mike Hood, has been bottled up by the town and although it was scheduled to be released with the report on Mr. Johns, it has now been delayed four times, frustrating the Almanac’s efforts to publicize it last week. Mr. Hood resigned in June 2006 and left the state before the investigation of the department was complete.
In reading the report on Mr. Johns, it is clear that he was free to come and go as he pleased, and rarely, if ever, was disciplined by City Manager Jim Robinson, who announced his retirement one day after the hostile workplace charge was filed. According to his fellow workers, whose names were blacked out of the report, Mr. Johns allegedly:
• was frequently belligerent to fellow workers;
• worked irregular hours, and often took a one-and-a-half-hour break at noon to swim;
• was reimbursed after he purchased an iPod and other electronic equipment for his own use (some of this equipment is still missing from his office);
• refused direct orders from the city manager to sit down with the police chief and work out differences between them; and
• was logging on and viewing pornography on a laptop computer owned by the town.
All of these behavior issues should have been addressed by the city manager. It is difficult to understand how one employee could so wildly interrupt the decorum of city offices without immediately being disciplined by his supervisor. If we are to believe the report, Mr. Johns should have been let go long before this incident arose.
Now the question is: Will the next city manager be a “take-charge” person or someone who is unwilling to rock the boat, even if an employee is out of line? For reasons that are still a mystery, Mr. Robinson was unwilling to confront Mr. Johns.
The new manager cannot let this happen again. A good leader does not need to be a tyrant, but neither can he or she allow any employee to operate beyond the bounds of cordiality and workplace rules. Although a skilled accountant, Mr. Johns lost his job for failing to respect his office and his fellow employees. He may be missed, but the town is far better off without him.
