City council will formally ask for mayor’s resignation

WASHINGTON — With Mayor Pro Tem Millie Youngquist out of town, the Washington City Council voted 5-0 Tuesday night to send Mayor Jaron Rosien a letter asking him to resign from the office.

Rosien has spent the last 11 months on a voluntary, unpaid leave of absence after being accused of third degree sexual abuse by the state of Iowa, which announced the charges Jan. 24, 2023. He has pleaded not guilty to the accusation, and stated his resolve against stepping down in a written notice to the city back in February of 2023.

At that time, only one city council member — Elaine Moore — openly called for Rosien to leave office while criminal charges made their way through the court system.

Tuesday night’s unanimous vote represents a sea change in the months since.

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“He’s had a year to resolve whatever he needs to resolve,” said Council Member Illa Earnest, the acting Mayor Pro Tem in Youngquist’s absence. “We’re all getting inquiries from folks who don’t understand when we tell them that we can’t do anything.”

Others agreed that they felt the public getting antsy about the mayor’s status, given his legal troubles.

“When I was collecting signatures to (run for office,) every single person asked me, ‘What’s going on?’ and I didn’t have an answer,” said Council Member Patrick Morgan, the most recently elected member of the municipal body. “We have a number of individuals in the city that probably have questions. I think at a minimum, the residents of Washington deserve at least some sort of an update from us, as a council.”

Members of the council said Youngquist’s lengthy stay as Washington’s mayor pro tem was both unfair to ask of the at-large council member, and a disservice to the city which has spent nearly a year in uncertainty about its leadership as Rosien’s day in court was repeatedly rescheduled, sometimes due to attorneys’ availability, or to make time for plea negotiations, and most recently, “pursuant to agreement of counsel.”

Council members said they planned to have a letter to Rosien drafted, signed, and mailed by week’s end, and would likely ask for the mayor’s response by the next regular council meeting on Feb. 6.

Rosien said he disagreed with the premise of the not-yet-sent request.

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“I have been putting the city of Washington first for 11 years and that hasn’t changed over the last year,” he said in a text message to The Union. “I will have an answer to the request after I receive it.”

Youngquist, who is traveling outside of the country, declined to comment, saying she wasn’t aware of the Tuesday night agenda item and would hold off on weighing in, “until I know more of the facts and other discussion that took place.”

In conversations at the Tuesday night meeting, Council Member Fran Stigers compared the city to “a snake without a head,” saying its leader needed to be someone who ran for that office intentionally.

Council Member Ivan Rangel agreed, saying the executive position demanded stability.

“We need a more permanent position for our mayor, they could drag this thing out to the end of his term,” he said. “I would like to see him resign, too, if that was an option, so we could get someone into that position more permanently.”

Rosien cannot be forced out of office under state law except by a court order, if he’s convicted of a crime.

While decision-makers adopted a “code of ethics” in May, establishing a no-confidence voting process as a consequence of municipal elected officials’ “actions and involvement that might prove embarrassing for the city of Washington,” that resolution does not apply retroactively to incidents preceding its passage.

That makes a voluntary resignation the only way for Rosien to leave the mayor’s office until the next mayoral election in 2025, or the resolution of his court case, although both of those avenues depend on other outcomes, like voters’ opinions, or the findings of a jury.

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“Our hands are tied,” Moore said. “I would hope that in the best interests of our citizens, and the best interests of the city, he would consider resigning. And when this is all said and done, and reaches an outcome of not guilty, than he is more than welcome to run again.”

Asked about the timing of the request, Earnest and Moore said it was entirely coincidental that the discussion came up during the Mayor Pro Tem’s vacation.

Moore said the action was spurred instead by the most recent delay of the mayor’s jury trial, announced after a pretrial conference on Friday.

“It needed to be addressed, it had nothing to do with Millie being out of town,” she said. “It’s been a year … we figured something would come out the week before, and, nothing. It needed to be done.”

That latest pretrial conference ended in the fourth continuance of Rosien’s court case since charges were first announced in January of 2023. The next such conference is set for May 10, with a trial to follow on May 21, although previous court records suggested the parties involved were engaged in plea negotiations.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com