Explaining my vote on Fairfield City Attorney

To all interested residents of Fairfield,

On Monday, Jan. 22, the Fairfield City Council took a series of votes regarding the position of the City Attorney, John Morrissey. On each of these votes, the City Council was divided 4-3 with Paul Gandy, Elizabeth Estey, Tom Twohill, and Terri Kness on one side while Doug Flournoy, Judy Ham, and myself were on the other. The meeting can be viewed on the Fairfield Media Center Youtube Channel.

I cannot speak to the votes or opinions of any other council member. However, I felt it important to make my own position public for any vote where I stand against the majority.

During my campaign, I promised to balance the budget for the city of Fairfield. I pledged to promote accountability and transparency to accomplish this goal. The subject of reappointing the city attorney was the center of the discussion in question, and two contentious motions were made on that subject.

First. A motion was made by Flournoy to move the issue to the Personnel Committee. He wanted to have that committee oversee a performance review before recommending the reappointment of the city attorney.

This motion was voted down.

Second. A motion was made by Gandy to appoint the city attorney.

This motion passed.

The city of Fairfield has established policies that seek to hold all members of the city government accountable through performance reviews (or elections). This is appropriate, and builds accountability and transparency for city employees and the City Council. It became clear throughout the discussion that Fairfield has never done a performance review on the contracts for the current City Attorney (33 years of service), or the previous City Attorney (30 years of service).

Flournoy mentioned when making the first motion that, to his knowledge, our city attorney has not had a performance review at any point during his tenure in city government. Morrissey has held the office of city attorney for 33 years.

When I asked for clarification, Flournoy confirmed his original point. In addition to that, Morrissey give two reasons for this state of affairs.

First: His predecessor, who had held the office for 30 years, was never given a performance review either. The fact that the work of the office of city attorney has not been properly reviewed in 63 years is shocking. This fact alone confirmed in my own mind the nature that my vote would take.

Second: He is not an employee of the city. Instead, he is contracted through his firm.

I found both arguments unconvincing. The exact legal employment status of a person doing work for the city has little bearing on the value of a performance review.

The responsibility of reviewing the city attorney’s job has been overlooked for 63 years, and now members of the city council have shown interest in setting this situation straight. Under normal circumstances, I would expect the City Attorney, or any city employee, to eagerly help rectify this problem. Instead of agreeing to the logic of a performance review, the City Attorney provided us with ineffectual arguments for why he considered the lack of such a review acceptable. Thinking back at how the council meeting unfolded, this fact might be the most peculiar.

I hope this provides some clarification on the reasoning behind my vote for anyone curious as to why I split from the majority.

If you have any questions or comments about this, or any other issue of city business, please reach out to me at:

ward4@fairfieldiowa.gov

641-451-4913

Matthew Rowe

Councilman – Ward 4

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