All lawyered up

My post of last week about Portland's new city manager-nominee, Raymond C. Lee III,  gained a fair amount of attention, as well it should. The circumstances under which he left his previous job as city manager in Greeley, Colorado are unclear at best. I asked a few questions, on which one would hope members of the Portland City Council will follow up before voting to confirm Lee's appointment.

I won't rehash everything in the previous post, but having brooded about it over the weekend, I think there are a couple of wrinkles worth expanding on. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that 11-page severance agreement that was finalized a week before Lee was named one of the last three candidates still in the running in Portland. Now, why there was a need for a severance agreement is question enough, but this contract was a real doozy. Not only did it contain mutual denials that any laws were broken, and not only did it impose a gag order on Greeley officials who might have anything negative to say about Lee, but it also was signed both by Lee and by his lawyer.

Now, back in the 1900s, I represented a few clients in contract negotiations, but never was I required, or even asked, to sign their contracts along with them. Somebody in the Greeley city H.R. department must have been quite concerned that it be absolutely clear from the documents that Lee had an attorney. When people are just innocently "moving on to other opportunities," this doesn't happen, does it?

Then there is his lawyer, Michael Gates of Foster Graham, a law firm in Denver. According to the firm website, Gates's practice includes employment law – but on the employer's side, not the employee's. In listing Gates's particular areas of expertise, the firm notes:

Often the single most important resource of any company is its employees. Hiring, firing, and managing those employees, developing employment policies and manuals, addressing wage and hour issues, handling family leave matters, and responding to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Colorado Civil Rights Division charges is much easier with the assistance of experienced counsel who can guide the employer through the process quickly and efficiently. Our employment group offers a wide range of services from consulting with clients to develop strategies to avoid litigation to defending against employee claims. FGMC’s employment attorneys have extensive experience preparing employment agreements and policies, investigating employee charges, and litigating employment disputes. 

The representation of a departing employee by an employer-side law firm seems as curious as the lawyer's being required to sign the severance contract. (I'm assuming lawyer Gates is not related to John Gates, the outgoing mayor of Greeley, with whom Lee was as tight as could be. That would be beyond curious.)

Interestingly, lawyer Gates's firm says he's an expert on "employee discipline and investigation." Was any of that involved in Lee's case?

Michael is a Colorado native born in Fort Collins to a career military officer. After studying trumpet at the Lamont School of Music, he plunged into law school. He is a civil litigation specialist with considerable experience in construction industry disputes, business and commercial litigation, employment disputes, general liability, and insurance matters. He has assisted clients with matters such as construction defect disputes, construction contract disputes, trade secret protection, employee discipline and investigation, civil rights, insurance coverage, and premises liability.

Okay, enough about the severance agreement. The other fact that Portland Polite is ignoring is that at the same time that Lee left the Greeley city leadership, one of his top managers, a guy named Paul Trombino, also apparently left the city's employ. Is that guy just coincidentally "pursuing other opportunities," too?

Trombino was mostly in charge of public works in Greeley. On Friday afternoon they posted a formal announcement seeking someone new to take over that role. It's here.

It's all odd, if you ask me. But you wonder if anyone on the Portland City Council Book Club will pipe up and say anything. Given the dimness of some of the wits on that dais, I'd tend to doubt it.

But ask yourself, if you were on a board of directors, and you were about to hire a new CEO, the highest-paid person in the organization, and you saw that a candidate's previous employer had agreed in an adversarial setting not to say anything bad about him, and his stated reasons for leaving were vague, and another guy right beneath him on his former org chart left at the same time he did, would you hire him without getting a straight answer as to what happened and why he's on the market? I wouldn't. But hey, that's just me.

That's Lee, second from right, at his last Greeley City Council meeting on November 18. They were swearing in a new mayor and new council members that night. Maybe regime change had something to do with his exit. But honestly, no one in Portland appears to know.