Official 'charity' isn't new [Understanding Durham dysfunction: a rather lengthy history]
Author: Jim Wise; Staff Writer, N&O, May 7, 2005
You gotta hand it to former Durham City Manager Marcia Conner. Out of the job almost a year now, and still costing Bull citizens money.
A veritable executive's executive. Even by Durham standards.
Last month a jury awarded Ava Hinton $1.59 million for her unfair dismissal from the city payroll on Conner's watch. Durham's lawyers wheedled Hinton down to settling for $390,000, but then our City Council agreed to pay Conner's former assistant, Sharon Laisure --- who signed off on Hinton's firing --- $30,736 in severance and unused-vacation pay, even though she has another job in Norfolk, Va.
According to news reports, Laisure had the Norfolk job in hand before she went off Durham's payroll, but apparently thought she had grounds for a lawsuit, thanks to the severance clause put into her contract by Conner, who left office in August under fire but with a reported $164,991.25 of your money and mine to keep her cool.
Marcia the formerly Great and Powerful took a lot of heat during her three years as Durham's CEO, but in these latest cases a charitable soul might cut her a little slack. For there were precedents.
Remember James Tabron, the administrator who made the Durham Housing Authority what it is today? He resigned under fire too, in 2003. He got no severance package, just a few months' consulting work for DHA at $2,576.50 a week.
Talk about "worker's" compensation --- Trevor Hampton had no severance deal either when he left as police chief in 1992. He was under fire too, and left with $20,000 --- three months' pay; however, he was subsequently cleared of allegations a prostitution ring was running through his department.
Hampton was followed by the late Jackie McNeil, who took early retirement in 1997. McNeil had already given up his administrative duties in the wake of sexual-harassment accusations; officers filed two lawsuits against him (eventually dismissed) and the city settled a reported 19 officers' claims for work-related stress during his tenure; meantime, Durham had a record 43 murders in 1996. Since the city counted his military stint as time in Durham's service, McNeil pocketed full retirement benefits, plus $46,602 from a new, temporary city policy that rewarded early retirement.
That policy was devised by then-City Manager Orville Powell, who retired early at the end of 1996 with his own a going-away present of almost $70,000 plus a $30,000 consulting job with the city to help ease his transition.
Earlier, Powell arranged for fired Durham County Manager George Williams to perform an $11,000 survey of the city's cemetery needs. One of his recommendations was using telephone solicitors to hawk burial plots. Williams' brother-in-law is veteran City Council member Howard Clement.
Indeed, in Durham charity is a way of life. Depending, of course, on just whose life you're talking about. Marcia Conner wasn't with us very long, but she sure caught on that, in Du'm, public officials take care of their own.