In summary: The practice of hiring relatives into city government leads to bitterness among other job candidates and the general perception of favoritism.
Among the hundreds of Anderson city employees, the vast majority are not related by blood or marriage to the mayor, his department heads or other city managers.
But enough family members have been hired, appointed or promoted since Kris Ockomon took office to raise eyebrows and concerns over the fairness of the city’s hiring process. (See related articles in today’s newspaper.)
City officials indignantly defend hired relatives as the best people for the jobs. In many cases, they may be. Jerry Burmeister, who was promoted to deputy fire chief after Ockomon ascended to city hall, had the right experience for the job and has personality traits common among leaders. Burmeister also happens to be the mayor’s brother-in-law.
Whether the relative who was hired or promoted is truly the best person for the job, other candidates often feel that strings were pulled and the relative had an unfair advantage. When several family members are hired or promoted — four of Ockomon’s relatives have been since he took office in January 2008 — it can lead to a growing public perception that the family is feeding at the public trough while elbowing out others who could have done the job just as well.
These feelings can be exacerbated in difficult times, and the current city government budget crisis certainly qualifies as a difficult time. More than 40 city jobs have been eliminated since Ockomon took office, but many relatives of city managers hired since January 2008 are still working. This is a bitter pill to swallow for laid-off city employees.
There is no local law against hiring of relatives into city government. If Ockomon wanted, he could hire his wife as deputy mayor, his daughter as head of parks and recreation and his brother as fire chief. Incidentally, he does have a brother — Skip — on the fire department, and he did not promote Skip to chief after taking office.
Like Anderson, most Indiana municipalities lack ordinances to prohibit the practice of nepotism in city government. The state law applies only to state employees.
At least two members of Anderson City Council, Art Pepelea Jr. and David Eicks, have expressed an interest in supporting a local ordinance. Pepelea is a Republican and Eicks a Democrat, so such a proposal has the seeds of bipartisan support.
Anderson City Council should draft the ordinance right away, perhaps using a recently adopted policy in Michigan City as the template. The ordinance should forbid hiring or promotion of immediate family members — spouses, sons, daughters, parents, etc. — to serve in departments where a manager is a family member. This would help dispel the impression that department officials are using their influence to keep jobs in the family.
The ordinance would not affect previously hired family members already working in a department where one of the managers is a relative.
The policy would need to address the issue of the hiring or promotion of council members’ kin, cross-departmental family hiring and the eligibility of family members for jobs where test scores are the primary criteria for hiring. It would also have to take into account what Anderson city spokeswoman Tammy Bowman refers to as the legacy factor, the prevalence of sons following their fathers into law enforcement and fire fighting, for example.
Many family members have worked side by side over the years — long before the Ockomon administration — to provide important services to the people of Anderson. What has to be minimized is the possibility and the perception that they got their jobs because of bloodlines rather than qualifications.
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Editorial: City needs anti-nepotism ordinance
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