Salem Political Snark

Councilor Nishioka calls Keith Stahley a liar. I'm inclined to believe Stahley.

Today the Salem Reporter has a story about the shifting explanations city officials have been coming up with about the disturbing way Keith Stahley, the recently-resigned City Manager, was removed from his important position.

I already knew most of what was said in the story, "A timeline of statements surrounding Salem city manager's resignation."

After all, I've begun the process of filing a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission regarding how Stahley was forced to resign outside of a public process, as detailed in a February 15 blog post, "I just initiated an ethics complaint against the City of Salem."

My complaint focuses on a violation of Oregon's public meetings law, which prohibits serial communications by a public body. Meaning, in this instance, Mayor Julie Hoy can't talk individually in private with a majority of city councilors about whether Stahley should resign, because the decision to hire or fire the city manager has to occur in a public City Council meeting.

A February 13 statement from the City of Salem that I got via FlashAlert says just that: 

The City Manager is the sole employee of the City Council. Decisions regarding the City Manager's employment are made by Council collectively and in a public setting.

Well, that's what supposed to happen. But what actually happened in this case wasn't that at all. There's plenty of evidence that Mayor Hoy (no relation to the previous mayor, Chris Hoy) set in motion a private  illegal process that resulted in Stahley's forced resignation. 

That February 13 City of Salem statement describes what happened on February 7.

February 7, 2025.  As Mr. Stahley noted in his resignation letter, Council President Linda Nishioka met with Mr. Stahley and discussed his potential resignation.  Councilor Nishioka met with Mr. Stahley because she believed that Council could conduct a public process leading to Council asking Mr. Stahley for his resignation.  She has stated that she wanted him to avoid the potential embarrassment of that process. Due to public meeting law limitations, Councilor Nishioka was concerned that speaking with other members of Council about this issue would violate the law. She relied on her understanding of the situation after speaking with Mayor Julie Hoy.  This conversation triggered an Executive Session to consider the dismissal or discipline of an employee (ORS 192.660(2)(b)).

So Nishioka met privately with Stahley to discuss his resignation, believing that otherwise the City Council could conduct a public process leading to the Council asking him to resign. Well, that's what should have happened -- a public process. Unfortunately, the Executive Session where the Council considered Stahley's dismissal occurred after he resigned, not before.

But Mayor Hoy didn't want a public process. To her credit, Nishioka didn't want to speak with other members of the City Council because she knew this was against public meetings law. Hoy, however, didn't have that worry. 

Amazingly, and disturbingly, in a February 15 City of Salem statement that I also got via FlashAlert, City Attorney Atchison says that he told Hoy it was perfectly fine for her to have "individual communications with different members of City Council concerning Keith Stahley's performance and potential separation from the City."

Wow. It sure seems like the City Attorney advised Mayor Hoy to break the law that Councilor Nishioka realized prevented her from doing what Hoy did. This is why I'm filing a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission: to learn whether the commission agrees with the City Attorney, or whether Mayor Hoy did indeed violate public meetings law.

A key question: how do we know that Hoy privately spoke with a majority of the City Council about Stahley resigning? This is important, since serial communications are forbidden when they occur among a quorum of the members of a governing body, as contrasted with the Salem mayor talking with a minority of the City Council about an issue.

Linda Nishioka

One reason we know this is what Councilor Nishioka said in a February 16 statement that's included in the Salem Reporter story.  

Mayor Julie Hoy told me that a majority of councilors believed Mr. Stahley should consider resigning.

Since we can assume that Mayor Hoy doesn't have a mystical ability to read the minds of City Council members, obviously the only way Hoy could know that a majority believed he should consider resigning is if Hoy talked with a majority of councilors outside of a public meeting.

What Keith Stahley said in his resignation letter also shows that Hoy spoke with a majority of the City Council about his resignation.

I am submitting this resignation based on a meeting that I had with Councilor Nishioka on Friday February 7, 2025, where she represented that she was the duly authorized representative of the Mayor and a majority of City Council and requested that I tender my resignation. 

Note that Stahley says that Nishioka represented herself as being both a duly authorized representative of the Mayor and a majority of the City Council. Since Nishioka is president of the entire City Council, her saying that she was a representative of a majority of the council clearly indicates that she’s speaking here about whether Stahley has the support of that majority to remain in that position. 

Stahley also said that Nishioka requested that he tender his resignation. This fits with what the City of Salem said in the February 13 FlashAlert communication about what happened on February 7.

As Mr. Stahley noted in his resignation letter, Council President Linda Nishioka met with Mr. Stahley and discussed his potential resignation.... She relied on her understanding of the situation after speaking with Mayor Julie Hoy.

And what was that understanding? Nishioka described what it was in her February 16 statement. To repeat, it was:

Mayor Julie Hoy told me that a majority of councilors believed Mr. Stahley should consider resigning.

So Hoy told Nishioka that a majority of the Council wanted Stahley to consider resigning. The City of Salem says that Nishioka met with Stahley and discussed his potential resignation. Stahley goes further and says that Nishioka requested that he tender his resignation. 

But somehow Nishioka said in her February 16 statement:

At no point did I: 

• Tell Mr. Stahley I represented the City Council or acting on City Council’s behalf.

• Tell Mr. Stahley I was acting as an authorized representative for the Council.

• Ask for his resignation.

• Nor did anyone ask me to ask him to resign. 

This contradicts what Stahley said in his resignation letter. Basically, Nishioka is accusing Stahley of lying. It also contradicts what the City of Salem said in its official February 13 statement regarding the City Manager's resignation:

As Mr. Stahley noted in his resignation letter, Council President Linda Nishioka met with Mr. Stahley and discussed his potential resignation.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe Nishioka. She wants us to believe that after speaking with Mayor Hoy, who told Nishioka that a majority of the City Council wanted Stahley to resign, Nishioka met with Stahley and didn't ask for his resignation, even though the City of Salem says that Nishioka discussed his potential resignation.

It sound to me like Nishioka is trying to act like Bill Clinton, who in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, famously said, according to Wikipedia:

A much-quoted statement from Clinton's grand jury testimony showed him questioning the precise use of the word "is". Contending his statement that "there's nothing going on between us" had been truthful because he had no ongoing relationship with Lewinsky at the time he was questioned, Clinton said, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the—if he—if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."

I can't understand what Clinton is trying to say, just as I deeply doubt what Nishioka is trying to say. Namely, that even though she is the President of the City Council and had been told by Mayor Hoy that a majority of the Council wanted Stahley to consider resigning, she never told Stahley that she was acting on behalf of the City Council when she discussed his potential resignation on February 7.

Me, I believe Stahley. To repeat what he said in his resignation letter:

I am submitting this resignation based on a meeting that I had with Councilor Nishioka on Friday February 7, 2025, where she represented that she was the duly authorized representative of the Mayor and a majority of City Council and requested that I tender my resignation. 

Of course, I could be wrong. But so could Nishioka. I just don't understand why Stahley would lie about what happened in his meeting with Nishioka.

New info shows forced resignation of Salem City Manager was even more illegal

Before I describe how new information shows that the recent forced resignation of Salem's City Manager, Keith Stahley, was even more illegal than how it appeared a few days ago when I wrote "Salem City Council seems to have acted illegally in forcing City Manager to resign," let's take a step back and consider the broader context here.

The folks at City Hall -- Mayor, City Council, city staff -- have been trying hard to regain the trust of Salem citizens after the debacle of July 2023 when the City Council voted to impose an employee payroll tax on everybody who works in Salem that would bring more money into the general fund of the city budget, where deficits loomed.

They did this without asking approval of voters, which, not surprisingly, ticked off voters.

After a business-backed coalition gathered enough signatures to put the payroll tax on the November 2023 ballot, it was soundly rejected. The negative fallout continued when Mayor Chris Hoy, who backed the don't-ask-citizens approach to the payroll tax, was soundly defeated by Julie Hoy (no relation) in the May 2024 mayoral election.

Since, City Manager Stahley, other city staff, and the City Council have been diligently working to fashion a proposal to increase revenues that almost certainly will be on the May 2025 ballot, as a special "livability" property tax measure that would fund the library, Center 50+, and parks/recreation only needs final approval by the City Council at an upcoming meeting.

So one would think that the Mayor and city councilors would want to do everything possible to project an aura of calm, considered competency in the run up to voters deciding in a few months whether the City of Salem deserves an additional $14 million a year in property tax revenue.

Well, think again.

Because additional information from City officials and the Salem Reporter shows that what I said in my previous post about Keith Stahley's forced resignation makes what happened look even worse than it originally appeared. I wrote:

It isn't a good look when the Salem City Council does something that reminds me of a recent action by President Trump.

Well, it's actually worse than that, because what the City Council did appears to have been illegal (in the sense of going against the Council Rules), while Trump's action was within the scope of his powers.

What I'm talking about is forcing a senior official to resign because the alternative is being fired. This occurred when Trump made it clear that even though FBI Director Christopher Wray had three years left in his term in office, after Trump was inaugurated he was going to get rid of Wray.

So shortly before Trump took the oath of office, Wray resigned rather than be fired. Pretty much the same thing happened to City Manager Keith Stahley, as I'll describe below -- again, the difference being that the City Council seems to have acted illegally in forcing Stahley's resignation, while Trump was just acting like the authoritarian that he aspires to be.

The illegality stems from the fact that only the City Council can hire or fire the City Manager. As noted in my previous post, in his February 9 resignation letter Keith Stahley said:

I am submitting this resignation based on a meeting that I had with Councilor Nishioka on Friday February 7, 2025, where she represented that she was the duly authorized representative of the Mayor and a majority of City Council and requested that I tender my resignation. 

That made it sound like Councilor Linda Nishioka, the City Council president, somehow had spoken with the other seven members of the City Council (which ordinarily has nine members, including the Mayor, but one seat is temporarily vacant) and confirmed that a majority, five or more, wanted Stahley to resign.

However, a decision to either fire the City Manager or ask him to resign can't be made in secret, as happened here.

The City Council met in executive session prior to their February 10 meeting to discuss Stahley's resignation. That happened after Nishioka had told Stahley that a majority of the City Council wanted him to resign. So at first I thought that Nishioka and her fellow councilors had only violated City Council rules and Oregon's public meeting law, as a majority had reached a private decision that Stahley needed to resign.

But a statement issued today by the City of Salem regarding the City Manager's resignation, which I've included as a continuation to this post, includes a timeline that includes this:

• February 7, 2025.  As Mr. Stahley noted in his resignation letter, Council President Linda Nishioka met with Mr. Stahley and discussed his potential resignation.  Councilor Nishioka met with Mr. Stahley because she believed that Council could conduct a public process leading to Council asking Mr. Stahley for his resignation.  She has stated that she wanted him to avoid the potential embarrassment of that process. Due to public meeting law limitations, Councilor Nishioka was concerned that speaking with other members of Council about this issue would violate the law. She relied on her understanding of the situation after speaking with Mayor Julie Hoy.  This conversation triggered an Executive Session to consider the dismissal or discipline of an employee (ORS 192.660(2)(b)).

Wow. Actually Nishioka hadn't spoken with other members of the City Council about Stahley resigning. So it appears that Nishioka lied when she told Stahley that "she was the duly authorized representative of the Mayor and a majority of City Council" in requesting his resignation. Poor guy. What was Stahley supposed to do when the City Council president tells him that most of the councilors want him gone, so it's either resign or be fired?

Maybe he wouldn't have resigned if he'd known the truth: that Nishioka had only spoken with Mayor Julie Hoy about the resignation. That's two members of the City Council, a long ways from a majority of five out of eight. Joe Siess of the Salem Reporter adds more important details about this outrage in a story today, "Mayor Julie Hoy set in motion events that led to Keith Stahley's abrupt resignation."

An orchestrated effort to remove City Manager Keith Stahley was launched privately by some city leaders at least a full week before the Salem City Council acted to accept his resignation, according to a new statement from city officials and interviews.

Council President Linda Nishioka approached Stahley last week about resigning with the “understanding” from Mayor Julie Hoy that she was acting on behalf of the council, according to a new city statement on the matter issued Thursday, Feb. 13. 

The city had earlier said that Stahley resigned “at city council’s request” but provided no explanation for how councilors agreed to take that action when there had been no public meeting or vote on the matter.

Interviews and the city’s new statement fill in some of the blanks of what happened while raising new questions about actions by the councilors. The city issued the new and unsigned statement a day after Salem Reporter sought records of communications among the mayor and seven councilors regarding Stahley’s resignation.

His abrupt departure comes as Salem city officials plan to ask voters in May to raise property taxes to cover city services. They have said that they need to have the trust of the community for the vote to succeed.

One councilor, Micki Varney, responded to written questions from Salem Reporter on Wednesday, Feb. 12.

Varney said she talked by phone with Hoy on the evening of Sunday, Feb. 2, about the city manager. She said she didn’t commit then to supporting Stahley’s removal.

“I said I needed more information in order to make a decision either way,” Varney said in her email. “I said that we, as a council, needed to collectively discuss what needed to change and then provide that information to Mr. Stahley. I told her that Mr. Stahley needed to decide himself as to whether he could comply with our directives before we as a council could discuss any further action.” 

Councilor Shane Matthews told Salem Reporter that he too had a private conversation with Hoy and the two discussed a recently released performance audit of the city manager’s office. He said he was not asked directly if he would support Stahley’s resignation and he didn’t indicate support for that action. He said Hoy asked him how he felt generally about city leaders and the audit.

Councilors Vanessa Nordyke and Paul Tigan declined to comment. Hoy and Councilors Deanna Gwyn, Irvin Brown, and Nishioka haven’t responded to emailed questions about when they decided the matter of Stahley’s resignation and to whom they communicated that decision.

So nobody on the City Council other than Mayor Hoy and Councilor Nishioka have indicated that they wanted Stahley to resign. Yet Nishioka claimed to represent both Mayor Hoy and a majority on the council in asking for his resignation. 

I'm seriously considering filing a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission.

What Mayor Hoy and Councilor Nishioka did was wrong, and seemingly illegal. Keith Stahley wasn't a perfect City Manager, but he appeared to be a damn good one. He deserved better than to be forced to resign under false pretenses, especially when the scheme cooked up by by Hoy and Nishioka also violated the rules of the City Council and Oregon's public meeting law.

NEXT DAY UPDATE: Today, February 14, the Salem Reporter has another story about the forced resignation of Stahley, "Councilor Micki Varney breaks the silence about city manager's resignation." This is Varney's statement, which reflects her concern about the inappropriate way this debacle was handled:

“I write this feeling great sadness and regret at what has transpired over the past week. It has eroded the trust and transparency we as a Council have been trying to rebuild over the past year.

The public has every right to, and deserves, an explanation of the events leading up to and following the city manager’s submission of his letter of resignation. The public has a right to demand that their elected officials follow the rules and statutes they all took an oath to uphold when they took office. 

I believe that trust matters and respect is the currency of trust. I also believe that my duties, as your elected city councilor, include the sharing of concerns when warranted, and in a timely manner. 

Transparency is a standard you have every right to expect of your government.

Members of the public and members of the Council deserve answers. The manner in which the city manager’s resignation occurred is untimely and unacceptable. I believe we all must continue to ask questions in order to discover exactly what actions were taken, and by whom and why, between the timing of the recent audit report and the abrupt resignation of the city manager earlier this week.

I am unaware of what really happened over the past few days, and I believe it is essential that we understand the reality of how we ended up in the situation we now find ourselves. Namely, we are now without a city manager while beginning the city budget setting process for the upcoming fiscal year.  

There are many reports circulating around the various media speculating what may or may not have occurred. This suggests that either the facts were not provided to the media, or someone, or someones, misreported the facts to purposefully shape the larger narrative for a desired outcome. 

It is apparent the city manager accepted a request to resign from a representative of the whole or (at least as stated in the resignation document), a majority of the council. However, no single city councilor – or mayor – has the authority to ask for a resignation absent a vote of the entire council. In this instance, this never occurred.

I, and to the best of my knowledge many of my fellow councilors, were not aware of what was transpiring during the week prior to the city manager’s resignation. We were following the rules which specify that we do not communicate with one another regarding city matters outside of a public meeting.

I was shocked to hear of the city manager’s resignation. 

I am looking forward to being able to fill in many of the gaps as more facts are brought forward. I urge patience as more information is gathered.

In conclusion, I ask our city and community to remain engaged and participate in the steps ahead of us. I recognize the need for trust-building and truth-telling, and that is precisely why I am sharing my concerns with you in this message. 

Together, I believe we can and will move Salem forward, but it will take all of us working together to be able to achieve that objective.”

Here's the statement from the City of Salem regarding Stahley's resignation. It's good to have this, as it alone provides a solid basis for a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission.

Mayor-elect Julie Hoy faces censure over City Council vote involving campaign donor

It's another battle of Hoy vs. Hoy.

Chris Hoy, Salem's current mayor, lost the first battle with his unrelated namesake when he was soundly defeated by City Councilor Julie Hoy in the May primary election that decided the race because she got more than 50% of the votes, so a rematch in the November general election wasn't necessary.

Julie Hoy and Chris Hoy

Depending on your point of view, the second Hoy vs. Hoy battle either is a sour grapes attempt by Chris Hoy to get back at Julie Hoy for snatching the mayor position out of his hands, or Chris Hoy's high-minded determination to make sure that Julie Hoy complies with City Council ethics rules.

On the agenda for tomorrow's (November 12) City Council meeting is this motion from still-Mayor Chris Hoy.

MOTION:
I move that City Council publicly censure Councilors Julie Hoy and Deanna Gwyn for their failure to recuse themselves under Section 62 of the Salem Charter during a land use public hearing that occurred on October 14, 2024.    

DISCUSSION:
When a participant at a public hearing, where any participant will receive a pecuniary benefit, has made a campaign contribution of more than $501 to a member of Council, Section 62 of the Salem Charter requires that member of Council announce that contribution at the hearing and recuse themselves from participating in the hearing if, in the mind of a reasonable person, their participation would create the appearance of bias or impropriety in the mind of a reasonable person.

At the October 14, 2024 City Council meeting, Council held a public hearing where the applicant and property owner was Creekside LLC. The principle of Creekside, LLC is Larry Tokarski, through his company Mountain West Investments. Mr. Tokarski made campaign contributions over $501 to both Councilors Hoy and Gwyn for the most recent election.

As elected officials, we have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and the City Charter. We do not get to pick and choose which of those laws we follow. Faith in our laws and institutions of government is paramount. The City Charter is the foundation of our city government and must be honored by its election officials.     

My view is that Julie Hoy seems to have complied with the letter of the law, though perhaps not its spirit.

She will probably argue that the "mind of a reasonable person" criterion is subjective and that, in her own reasonable person mind, she didn't feel that her decision on the Creekside issue was swayed by donations to her campaign for mayor by Tokarski in the amount of tens of thousands of dollars. Since it is up to a city councilor to decide whether to recuse from a decision after announcing a possible conflict of interest, she chose not to do this.

A Salem Reporter story by Joe Siess, "Two city councilors who didn't recuse themselves in land use decision could be publicly censured," contains some information about the issue that spurred the censure motion.

The council voted 6-2 on Oct. 14 to grant an appeal related to an 11-lot subdivision on behalf of Creekside Golf Course LLC and the land’s buyer and developer, Don Lulay Homes. Creekside is managed by Mountain West Investment Corp. and Tokarski is Mountain West’s president.

With the council’s decision, Don Lulay said, his project would be spared $216,000 for sidewalks required by the Salem Planning Commission. 

He said his purchase of the property had been contingent on getting the needed land use approvals. He said his firm would have been responsible for the sidewalk costs, not Tokarski’s company.

...The appeal would have been granted even if Councilors Hoy and Gwyn had recused themselves. According to the engineering firm that appealed for Creekside and Don Lulay Homes, Lulay Homes is the sole beneficiary of the sidewalk savings. 

Don Lulay of Don Lulay Homes and his company, The Lulay Group, also donated to both Gwyn and Hoy’s campaigns.

The fact that  the motion to grant the appeal that got Don Lulay Homes off the hook for $216,000 worth of sidewalks at Creekside would have passed even without the votes of Julie Hoy and Deanna Gwen shows that the four other councilors who approved the appeal (Mayor Hoy didn't attend the meeting, so he didn't vote) agreed with Hoy and Gwyn.

While this probably isn't legally germane to the question of whether they should have recused themselves, in the court of public opinion it matters. I'm no fan of Julie Hoy or Deanna Gwyn, who are too conservative for my political liking, but I find it difficult to criticize their failure to recuse when their position on the appeal was shared by four other members of the City Council -- which has nine members, but only eight were at the October 14 meeting.

The City Council may still vote to censure Hoy and Gwyn tomorrow. However, I suspect that they won't. Of course, I thought Kamala Harris was going to defeat Donald Trump, so my recent prognosticating when it comes to voting isn't great.