Backlash and Retribution: Death of the
Dream Team.
Stump was finally politically
astute enough to see the handwriting on the wall. He doubted that he could get
re-elected. He announced that he would not seek a second
term. But in all honesty, I suspected he wanted to cash in on his reputation as a bright, successful, administrator and seek more important, and therefore, lucrative positions.
The Clerk was hand-picked not because of his skills either as an administrator or politician but
largely, I think because he married a really nice girl who came from “Old
Money” in the community. Her family name
was well-respected in the community and the calculus was that would be enough
for the electorate as it was for Stump.
He was an awful
politician and ran a campaign based mostly on Stump's record, which, he never
seemed to realize, was precisely the reason Stump was not seeking re-election.
Unbelievably, the
newcomer spread rumors through the bar network that Stump and
Kuhlmey were somehow personally profiting from the “massive debt” Stump was running up. I never knew why or how he decided that
Kuhlmey was his “personal public enemy number one” but it might have had
something to do with Ed’s irreverent and often sarcastic public comments and
his combative stance against any alderpersons who might oppose him or worse
yet, considered as morons.
Steve won in a
landslide and unleashed two years of pure hell that saw him fire Kuhlmey and eventually turn his ire on me.
All progress in the City came to a screeching halt. Kuhlmey, before he
was fired, Denny Dutchman and I kept the downtown project and our project that
we considered Ashland’s salvation, a marina on Lake Superior, moving quietly
along to be ready for any grant or development opportunities..
One night after a
particularly rough Council meeting after Kuhlmey was fired, Thedens, Wickmann
Denny and I went to Mr Ed’s Bar to have a few beers and vent our collective spleens
about Steve's behavior and his absolute hatred of professional staff. Without warning, Steve walked in to the
bar. He wanted to buy us all a round of
drinks but we told him we were just leaving.
He went up to Thedens and said that he wanted to be friends with us and
he was sure that we could find some common ground as long as we didn’t make him
look bad in the newspapers. (It was too late, his antics and intemperate
remarks combined with his wild conspiracy theories had already made him an easy
target for the press.)
Thedens listened, took a
mouthful of his beer and promptly spit it on Steve's shoe. He put the beer on the bar and walked out of
the bar. As good as I am sure it felt
for Earl to do that, he made us all targets of Steve's plotting and
manipulation for another year.
Zohimsky eventually made
my life so difficult I ended up in a hospital with a perforated ulcer which
required surgery. When I announce that I
would be returning to work, I faced a charge from a project inspector I had to
hire to replace Joe, that I had “fired him because of his “medical issue”. The medical issue was he was too drunk to
come to work and we offered him a chance to go through the Employee Assistance
Program and come back to work or be terminated.
We didn’t hear from him for three weeks so we terminated him.
When I walked into the
hearing in Council Chambers, I found that one of our Aldermen who was also a
local radio broadcaster had set up a LIVE BROADCAST of the Personnel Committee
Hearing. He brought some friend from the
local AODA committee to tell the Committee that alcoholism was a “Federally
Recognized Disability” and that I had violated Federal law by terminating him.
They put the inspector up to say that he was too “sick” (aka drunk) to call in
and I should have sent an ambulance for him.
In the end the committee under the threat of a Federal discrimination
law suit, granted his request to be reinstated with back pay and have a warning
and reprimand placed in my file.
I resigned that afternoon
but Steve wasn’t done. He hired a replacement
to look for any sign of wrongdoing in the Community Development Block Grant
program I was handling. The person and
his female assistant looked at the housing rehab records and saw that we had
“over committed” the program by some $300,000 dollars. What he didn’t understand was that was the
total commitment for THREE YEARS and we were well within the limit for those
years. It didn’t matter to Steve. He called in the State Department of Criminal
Investigation (just as he did as an excuse to fire Kuhlmey) and they proceeded
to look up every one of our bank records, medical records and interview
everybody who had ever worked for me. I
came out clean but that didn’t matter either. He kept the conspiracy theories going that I
had to deal with for the next five years. He rehired Karl (remember him?) to
replace the inspector I fired.
Nine months after I
resigned. I filed papers to run for
Mayor.
[1] Based largely on his reputation, he was
appointed by a new, Democratic Party Governor to become the Secretary of the
Department of Local Affairs and Development (DLAD), a cabinet-level
position. When DLAD was dissolved by the
next Republican Governor, Bruce became Executive Director of the Upper Great
Lakes Regional Commission, which was dissolved by Ronald Reagan immediately
upon taking office.
[2] We had no
fireplace and used a gas-fired boiler.
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