(REDUX) ‘WHAT’S PAST IS PROLOGUE: CITY MANAGER REBECCA DAVIDSON, part 5 of 9

This story first appeared in the February/March Issue of the Zephyr. We’re reprinting it here, in smaller sections, to make it easier for our readers to absorb the information.

NOTE:  In preparing this article about Moab’s city manager Rebecca Davidson, the Moab City Council’s actions re: Ms. Davidson and the subsequent “restructuring” of Moab government, The Zephyr sought information from a variety of sources. We filed Freedom of Information Act requests, via the Wyoming Sunshine Laws, with the City of Kemmerer, Wyoming and the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. We filed a Government Records Access request (GRAMA) with the City of Moab, and we conducted interviews with numerous people personally involved in the issues raised here. We also contacted reporter Trevor Hughes, now of USA Today, who wrote a comprehensive article about the current Moab City manager’s tenure as city manager in Timnath, Colorado.

On January 11, we sent 15 questions to city manager Rebecca Davidson, in an effort to “clarify and resolve” issues raised in this article. She did not respond (Those questions are available to the reader elsewhere in this issue). Finally, we contacted the Moab City Attorney, Christopher McAnany, to seek clarification on the process used to fulfill our GRAMA request with Moab City. His January 24 response, which he noted was, “in lieu of any further response from  Ms. Davidson,”  is included elsewhere in this issue, and excerpted later in this article. Finally, we offer the City of Moab the opportunity to reply. But please note that all correspondence with this publication will be regarded as ‘on the record.’…JS

JENNIFER LASIK

Jennifer Lasik.

Jennifer Lasik came to Kemmerer in 2008. She’d been a history and geography teacher at a private religious school in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, but in 2004-05, Lasik went back to college and secured a Masters in Public Administration.  She was subsequently hired by Kemmerer’s previous city manager, Michael Archibald, as the city’s Events Center Director and still occupied that position when Davidson arrived in 2012.

Relations between Davidson and Lasik were excellent at first, and in January 2013, Davidson expanded Lasik’s duties, along with a new job title. The Kemmerer Gazette reported that, “Jennifer Lasik has seen her position metamorphose, too. As the city’s newly titled ‘cultural arts and events director,’ she’s moved from just managing the facility and associated events to managing other city events as well.”

In a memo to Lasik in 2012, Davidson wrote, “I wanted to take a few minutes to focus on some positive things that I have noted in your performance and teamwork…. I am glad that you are a part of this team.”

On several occasions,  Lasik and her husband Adam invited Davidson and her husband to their home for dinner.

But in late summer, 2013, Davidson’s high praise for Lasik vanished. Though Lasik had sensed something might be wrong as far back as June, Davidson first questioned Lasik’s job performance at an August 30 city council meeting. Two weeks later, Lasik received a long memorandum from her boss. (The Zephyr obtained copies of these emails via a Freedom of Information request to the City of Kemmerer.)

“Over the past several months,” Davidson complained,  “I have become steadily more concerned with your performance and your frequent absences from the City for a variety of reasons,” which included, “taking out of town trips, you taking a multitude of periods of time off,  you working inconsistent hours, and you not working during the day because you chose to take your daughter to personal events as well as dentist and doctors appointments.”

“Additionally,” she added, “I have watched you ‘drop the ball’ and not accomplish your work including timely organization of events, staffing the visitor center and perform other duties over which you are in charge. I have noticed a marked change in your ability to manage your department and the responsibilities given to you as a department head.”

When observing your work habits,” Davidson continued,  “I note that on a regular basis you do not come to work before 9 a.m., you take a lunch period and generally leave at or before 5 p.m. Additionally, I do not see you at work in the evenings, which I have been monitoring lately because of the concerns I describe above. This causes me to have an additional concern or question of how you accrue the Executive Leave that the City policy clearly provides with these kinds of hours.”

Davidson concluded, “As you can clearly discern from this letter, I have serious concerns that you are not adequately or properly managing your job and its responsibilities. I am unclear why this may be and welcome any response you may have to the concerns I have specifically described above.”

Two weeks later, Lasik responded at length, with a five page memorandum of her own, noting her surprise that Davidson believed the quality of her work had declined since April–and that she was just now telling her. “I was surprised by this and asked for examples,” Lasik wrote. “You said that you couldn’t give me details, it was more of an impression, although if you thought about it, you could probably give examples. When I asked why you hadn’t expressed that or talked to me before August 30^th, you stated that you were ‘waiting for me to come to you.’ When I pointed out that I had approached you twice, you said that this isn’t like kindergarten, it’s more like college, that I needed to figure some things out for myself.”

Lasik added, “At that meeting, I asked you to watch my performance the next few weeks and told you that I would check in with you again. You agreed. I left feeling that things would improve between us from that point since you had been able to express your concerns and I had agreed to pay attention to my time and productivity. Our interaction did not seem to improve much since then. I feel that there is some kind of personal element involved, but I do not know what that would be.”

Lasik’s long letter then attempted to address specifically  to Davidson’s criticisms. She wrote, “I dropped off a binder to your office that contains a detailed response to your email… In addition to my responses, wherever possible I attached documentation and/or verification of what I was saying. I’m not certain that you were looking for that detailed of a response from me, but I felt it important to include documentation and full explanations because of your concerns over my performance, the changes you want implemented, and most of all because I feel there is an implication that you are questioning my veracity, and I wanted to demonstrate that things are as I say or have said.”But Lasik tried to end her long letter on a conciliatory note:

“Rebecca, it is not my wish,” Lasik explained, “to be antagonistic to you or to make things worse. I just feel as though some of the assumptions or perceptions you have are not fair and are not accurate and it is important to me to explain as best I can where I am coming from and what my steps have been to solve any misperceptions as well as to correct any missteps on my part. I so admire your ability, intelligence, work ethic and most importantly your vision for Kemmerer. I want to work in harmony on the goals you set and to be part of the City team.”

Lasik concluded,  “I work best and am most productive when I am able to discuss things with you, bounce things off of you, and be ‘in sync.’ I am interested in getting back to that place, and am actively working on the things you have set before me. Please let me know what we need to discuss further and how to proceed.”

Davidson, according to Lasik, did not reply directly to the letter. Instead more disagreements followed. On October 7, Davidson questioned Lasik’s time sheet, regarding a couple hours she took off. Lasik replied that she, “came in at 10 am because I had a doctor’s appointment (which you approved).”

On October 8, in another memo, Davidson notified Lasik that she would be required to reduce all Events center staff to 12 hours/week, “because of your high expenditures of employees…Is this being implemented?”

And Davidson inquired about food costs at the visitor center: “In looking through the costs for food, etc.  Can you answer when the last time we ordered ice cream bars and when was the last time we utilized those?”

Clearly frustrated, Lasik replied, “I have no idea.” She offered to check all the Sysco receipts for the past year and asked, “Would you like me to do that?” And she reminded Davidson that, “when the freezer fluctuated to 80 degrees a few months ago…a lot had to be thrown out.”

That afternoon,  October 8, 2015. Lasik resigned. She hand-delivered the letter to her boss. In part, Lasik wrote, “It was my sincere hope that you and I could come to some kind of reconciliation and that through doing the things you have directed me to do and focusing on the things you have asked, our goals would come back in line and our working relationship would be restored. This morning it became clear that those hopes will not be realized…I wish the Event Center, the advisory board, the city council and the community at large the best of success.”

Lasik gave the city almost a month’s notice, writing that her last day would be November 1, but with plans, as her resignation letter noted, to take some leave days in mid-October.On October 16, Lasik took a sick day and stayed home, but two hours later, the chief of police, Stacy Buck, arrived at her door. According to the Kemmerer City Police report:

On 10/16/2013, I was requested by the City Administrator to go to 1**2 North S******t Dr and deliver the final pay stub to Jennifer Lasik and collect any property belonging to the City of Kemmerer. I made contact and delivered an envelope to Lasik and collected from her a City of Kemmerer Visa card and a Samsung cell phone in a blue case. Lasik stated that her keys were in her personal car and that her husband had taken that car to work. Lasik made arrangements to have her husband deliver the keys to me by 1700 hours on this date. I then went to the South Lincoln Training and Events Center and met with Cathy Bluemel. Bluemel and I went through the rest of the list of City owned items that I had been given. All items were accounted for in the SLTEC. I did observe that one of the Ipods had a shattered screen.

Lasik had hoped she could help with the transition, but she never returned to her Kemmerer job. Later in the month, Lasik interviewed for a position in Evanston, Illinois and was eventually hired to be its Cultural Arts Coordinator. Over the winter, as Lasik settled into her new job and what she described as a much healthier work environment, memories of Kemmerer began to fade.

But on March 4, 2014, almost five months after her last working day in Kemmerer, Lasik received a call from an agent at the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, informing her, for the first time, that based on allegations by Kemmerer city manager Rebecca Davidson, his department was pursuing evidence in a case, regarding possible theft and misuse of government funds and property. The DCI report stated:

On Tuesday, October 29, 2013, Special Agent (SA) Jack Killey of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), South West Enforcement Team (SWET), received a FAX copy of a request for DCI assistance from the City of Kemmerer, Wyoming, Police Chief, Stacy Buck (Enclosure #1). The request stated that Chief Buck had been contacted by the Kemmerer City Administrator, Rebecca Davidson, in regard to a former city employee who had possibly, fraudulently used city funds.

Via a search of Kemmerer City records from the FOIA request, The Zephyr obtained handwritten notes from Davidson, reflecting her change of heart. It appears the notes were written sometime in late July. Davidson wrote:

“I have begun to organize my thoughts & findings RE: JL (Jennifer Lasik) and her employment at SLC (SP?)” And she saw the issue in several categories, including: “Embezzlement,” “Fraud,” “Misuse of city money,” “Inappropriate recording of time,” and “Poor management.”

There is no evidence, however, that Davidson ever accused Lasik of criminal activity while she was employed in Kemmerer.

Now, in an October 29, 2013 interview with DCI, Davidson provided a laundry list of allegations, including, “unusual credit card charges” and  “irregularities” on her travel expenses, and claimed that at one point, Lasik “could only produce $10 of the $100 petty cash fund.” Later, Davidson conceded,  Lasik found the missing $90 in another drawer in her desk.

According to the DCI report, Davidson claimed that, “During LASIK’s employment with the city of Kemmerer, there were multiple occasions where LASIK would claim to have mistakenly used the city credit card for personal use. LASIK would then note an IOU for the transaction and repay the city at a later date.”

Davidson also suggested that  Lasik’s husband, a computer technician who occasionally worked on the Event Center computers, had acted illegally. According to the report, “(Davidson) believed that A. Lasik had access to all Events Center computers and deleted information from them when Lasik ended her employment.” And Davidson complained that “invoices were not detailed and did not itemize revenues generated from events and training.”

Finally, according to the DCI report, Davidson claimed to have, “conducted an internet search of LASIK and discovered she had worked for a church in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and possibly left that job due to irregularities with church funds”

In a phone interview with a DCI investigator, on March 4, 2014, Jennifer Lasik responded to the allegations by Davidson. According to the DCI report:

*  “She (Lasik) adamantly denied stealing any money from the Events Center or the City of Kemmerer.”

*  “She had not erased or deleted any city files from the Events Center computers.”
*  At a training event in Oregon, Lasik had used the city credit card during the training. At the end of the session, she rented another car for her own use and she did use the city card, but she reimbursed the city upon her return to Kemmerer.

*  “She had received calls from Event Center clients after she had left the city. The clients told her that the interim Event Center Director did not have their records and it was difficult to book and use the facility. She told them to have the interim director call her and she would instruct them where to find the information.
She was contacted by a former Event Center co-worker and was told that Rebecca Davidson had advised all Event Center employees that contact with her (LASIK) about any city business would result in termination of their employment.”

One Davidson allegation was especially painful to Lasik. In the DCI interview, Davidson inferred that Lasik, in a previous job,  may have absconded “with church funds.” Davidson based her suspicions on an alleged “internet search.” As noted earlier, Lasik worked previously at a private church school in Wisconsin, as a geography and history teacher. She did have a long history with the institution. The principal of the school was the wife of her first cousin.  Her grandfather founded the church and was also the co-pastor, with her uncle, at the time she worked for the school.

Lasik explained that she wasn’t remotely involved in the accounting or finances of either institution and noted, her “record-keeping was limited to attendance-taking and grading tests.”

DCI turned over its report to the Lincoln County Attorney to review. On October 3, 2014 DCI received word that, “The Lincoln County Attorney’s Office has reviewed the information received from DCI regarding the above-named individual (Lasik) and has made the decision to decline prosecution in this matter.” It was signed by Deputy County Attorney Scott Sargent.  Almost a year after Davidson first made the allegations, the status of the case was listed as: “closed.”

Lasik still works for the City of Evanston, Illinois as its Cultural Arts Coordinator. and enjoys the full confidence and support of her supervisors.

Coming in Part 6: TARA SMELT & DARWIN PARKER

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