An Open Letter to Ann Arbor: The Political Firing of Howard Lazarus

February 18, 2020

To the residents of Ann Arbor,

We are so fortunate to represent the people of the 3rd and 5th Wards on Ann Arbor City Council. Each day, we wake up in a city that provides an outstanding quality of life, delivers good services, and is a leader in working toward carbon neutrality. We rest easily knowing that the skilled public servants at City Hall work diligently to ensure that our kids get to and from school safely, that we have safe drinking water, and that we’re working to fix our roads, stretching every last penny to maximize what we can do.

Friends, all of these efforts are managed by our City Administrator, Howard Lazarus.  He is responsible for leading a complex organization comprised of more than 40 departments and a total annual budget of over $400 million. On February 18, after a series of clandestine meetings to generate seven votes from City Council, our colleagues Jack Eaton, Jane Lumm, Elizabeth Nelson, Jeff Hayner, Anne Bannister, Kathy Griswold, and Ali Ramlawi voted to terminate the employment of Mr. Lazarus without cause. In doing so, they trigger the severance clause in his contract paying him handsomely to leave our community.

Put simply, the City Council majority didn’t like Mr. Lazarus. They didn’t like that he pushed back when they pressured him to ignore city policy established through legislation passed in years prior. They didn’t like that he reminded them that their role is to set policy, not to micromanage and publicly berate public servants. They especially didn’t like him because, under their constant threats of termination encouraged by outside political influencers, he maintained his integrity and steadfastly followed the rules. This is exactly what any community wants in a City Administrator. And now our residents are paying $275,000 for Mr. Lazarus to not work. This decision damages our community, flies in the face of our values, and takes valuable resources away from important priorities.

We’re writing this letter today not because we want to, but because it is our responsibility to blow the whistle on the dysfunction of the current City Council. You see, this pressure campaign on Mr. Lazarus and his staff has gone on outside of the spotlight of City Council meetings. In the conference rooms and private offices of City Hall, these threats were real, expressed freely to Mr. Lazarus, and purposely shared in front of his staff. It was important to these council members that staff know the Council majority didn’t support their boss. This is not what Ann Arbor expects of their elected leaders. In fact, it’s not leadership at all.

Why does this matter? This backroom dealing violates every principle of transparency that we have worked so hard to foster over the years. Ironically, council members who campaigned on improved transparency and public input worked through secretive channels to remove the City Administrator without cause. This absence of public discussion – about timing, circumstances, and cost – is irresponsible governance and cowardly leadership. Paying our top appointed official $275,000 to leave without public input is an egregious violation of public trust and a corruption of process.

Clandestine scheming is routine behavior for this Council majority. Last fall, we learned that several members of the Council majority engaged in off-line email deliberations with unelected political influencers on a number of issues, most alarmingly a discussion of how to replace yet another senior public servant, the City Attorney. When a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was filed to get copies of these emails, which are public under state transparency law, two of these council members refused to turn over the emails and another alleged that the emails were “lost”. The District Court even had to step in and ultimately compelled the council members to disclose these emails. Without intervention from the courts, this detailed plan to replace a dedicated professional with a “new puppy” that could be trained to “your style” would have remained secret. This repeated willingness to break and ignore rules that are politically inconvenient continues to place the city at risk.

The decision to terminate Mr. Lazarus’ contract confirms a pattern of inept leadership. We are currently in the middle of several crucial initiatives that have been spearheaded by Mr. Lazarus, with our annual budget preparation and the negotiations with Gelman over the cleanup of the Dioxane plume leading the list. Mr. Lazarus has worked with City Council to implement priority based budgeting, a process that actively engages the public to determine how discretionary dollars are spent. In fact, he’s been the champion for this approach specifically because it promotes inclusivity and transparency.  Mr. Lazarus’ removal from this process by the Council majority leaves this transition in limbo and makes it even more challenging than usual to complete our $400 million budget responsibly. Mr. Lazarus also brings decades of experience working on Superfund sites to clean up groundwater contamination. Instead of taking advantage of his expertise and experience to resolve the Gelman situation, this majority has decided, as has been the case with countless other issues, that they know best when in fact they clearly do not.

The City Manager form of government took hold as a reaction against the corrupt political spoils systems of the late 19th and early 20th century. To combat replacing all key staff with incompetent political allies, city managers and the civil service system evolved to make sure cities were run effectively, efficiently, ethically, and professionally.  Ann Arbor has a proud history of a Council-Manager form of government, one that has served us well and for a long time. Removing a City Administrator without cause is nothing more than political retribution that we would expect to see while studying a corrupt Tammany Hall style government from the last century. This action reeks of this bygone politics and is certainly not what residents expect of their City Council representatives.

Finally, there’s the simple fact that if this Council majority wanted to change city policies they dislike, there’s a mechanism to do that – passing new resolutions and ordinances.  By passing a resolution that repeals a previous policy, the City Administrator would have direction to follow the new policy. In the 15 months this dysfunctional group has been in the majority, they have been unable to move any legislation changing city policies.  Why? If the ideas they put forth can’t get broad support, they are unable to change adopted policies.  So instead of working harder and more collaboratively to try and achieve their policy goals, they decided to terminate Mr. Lazarus without cause, which will certainly not accomplish any of their goals.

This action is unjust, it is unprofessional, and fundamentally it is un-Ann Arbor.  But, this action is also financially wasteful. It’s not lost on us that this Council majority is willing to spend freely to terminate Mr. Lazarus. Similarly, we expect that they will continue to hire consultant after consultant in the hope that expensive reports will arrive at conclusions that agree with their personal opinions. They have already done this on two occasions, expending nearly $100,000 on redundant consulting contracts because they did not like the original advice. If financial discipline is their mantra, we’ve yet to see any from this penny foolish and pound foolish Council majority.

Ultimately, elections do matter. Removing the City Administrator without cause, throwing away his skills when they are needed most, and using your money to pay him to leave is offensive to our most fundamental values. The Ann Arbor we represent believes in and expects transparency. The Ann Arbor we represent respects professionalism and expertise. The Ann Arbor we represent continues to hold integrity and character as core community values. We will continue to fight for these values and daylight any attempts by the Council majority to further damage our city.

Your neighbors,