THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 20, 1995 TAG: 9510200493
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR AND TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
Hours before the Chesapeake City Council fired its long-time city manager, Vice Mayor Robert T. Nance paced the sixth-floor corridors of City Hall.
He was enraged.
That day, Budget Director Claude A. Wright had been quoted in The Virginian-Pilot warning that water rebates - something Nance had guaranteed to half the city - were unwise.
Wright called refunds for this summer's salty tap water a short-term solution that could have sour fiscal consequences for the city.
James W. Rein himself hadn't been quoted in the article. But to Nance, there was no distinction: Wright worked directly under Rein, and that made the manager responsible.
Nance wanted Rein gone. Tonight.
``He looked disturbed, excited and angry,'' recalled Mayor William E. Ward. Others who saw Nance that night described him as a man on the warpath.
Ward said he knew something was up when Nance didn't show for the 3:30 p.m. agenda briefing usually attended by the mayor, vice mayor and city manager.
But Ward didn't expect what Nance was to do at the start of the official meeting: demand a vote to fire Rein on the open floor.
``It was like being hit by Mike Tyson from the left,'' said Ward.
Two other councilmen apparently knew what was coming. John M. de Triquet and Dalton S. Edge also came to the meeting ready to fire Rein, several council members said.
But Nance still needed two more colleagues to get a majority. He was ready to convince them in public.
Ward barely managed to win a vote to take the matter into an executive session, where personnel issues are normally handled.
When the council emerged an hour later, it quickly voted, 7-2, to terminate Rein's recently renewed contract. Only Democrats Ward and John W. Butt tried to retain Rein.
Those who took part in the closed door session said that Nance's rage was what triggered Rein's ouster. But the swing voters explained that their decisions came for other reasons, some of which had festered over time.
``We were going to be criticized no matter what we did,'' said Councilman W. Joe Newman.
For Newman, whose vote helped defeat the proposed rebates later that night, salty water had little to do with his decision on Rein.
Instead, he said, he was swayed by the Rein administration's overall lack of responsiveness.
Newman said he had recently talked with Rein about some department heads whose performance had dissatisfied him. Within the city's top rung of management, Newman said, he found an unacceptable lack of energy and vision.
Rein's answer, Newman said, was that some of those department heads were close to retirement anyway.
``That was not the kind of response I was hoping for,'' Newman said.
Councilman Alan P. Krasnoff had been one of Rein's harshest critics. But he said he only agreed to dismiss the manager Tuesday after he saw the critical five votes coalesce.
``Clearly, over time, the confidence in him has diminished,'' Krasnoff said. ``After all, the city manager's career expectancy is usually far less than Mr. Rein has enjoyed.''
Once they had the votes to fire him, the council gave Rein the option of resigning.
Rein declined. Under state law, he stood to lose a substantial amount of his pension if he quit rather than be fired.
Though many agreed that Rein had lost the council's confidence, some said there was no excuse for the way the matter was handled.
``You don't go in there like you're in a butcher shop, and get up there and start slicing and dicing,'' said council member Peter P. Duda Jr.
As council members debated Rein's firing, Duda was fighting an internal battle: He had just been fired himself from CBN after 23 years of employment.
``On Friday I got a piece of paper telling me I got laid off,'' Duda recalled. ``I was shocked, I was mad, I was upset. It's not the statesmanlike way to do something. I know.''
Duda said he had no problem with Rein but voted to fire him mostly to show a unified council once the five votes had been reached.
``I had a ton of people grab me by the arm today and tell me that they didn't like the way things were handled,'' Duda said. ``It was totally uncalled-for.''
Nance's anger toward the manager's staff, and the circumstances of Rein's firing, raised questions this week about the kind of manager Chesapeake wants and needs.
``The political rhetoric has heated up,'' Krasnoff, the lone council independent, said. ``We need to put away the notion of a party line, stop thinking about Republicans and Democrats, and deal with our problems as professionals.''
Other members said they found nothing wrong with the majority-rule system.
Edge, who was appointed to the council by the Republican-backed majority this summer, is now running for re-election and will have to do so again in May, should he win.
Edge said he didn't believe council members had an obligation to inform minority colleagues about everything, including important matters such as firing the city manager.
``I don't think it makes sense to tell everyone,'' Edge said, ``but I think it makes sense to tell some people.''
Did that include Chesapeake's mayor?
``No,'' Edge said, ``I wouldn't say so. Not the mayor, necessarily.''
Some in the majority said they wanted a city manager who would be more attuned to their agenda. Republican-backed candidates took control of the council in May, 1994.
``We have a majority on council, and we'd like to have someone who is more in line with us philosophically,'' said Edge. ``We need a city manager with vision. We need someone with imagination, to look into the future and see what kinds of trends will occur, someone with the ability to foresee events before they occur.''
The next manager, Newman said, must get the best performance out of the department heads. The council can't fire those employees, he said, but, ``We can make sure that the city manager understands our wishes.
``I sure don't want a manager who will take us backwards. We have to press on.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Chesapeake Vice Mayor Robert T. Nance, above, guaranteed water
rebates and blamed City Manager James W. Rein, below, for bad
press.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE CITY COUNCIL by CNB