Derek Allen: From Pigwa to Porksmouth

      Our piggish city manager is at it again. Here is the  overly generous package he received when he was hired in 2013—an annual salary of $105,000; a $50,000 lump sum severance payment when he departs; health, disability, and life insurance benefits; payment for all unused leave days; and a $2500 annual vehicle allowance. He received all this in spite of his spotty work record. He had trouble holding down administrative jobs. In addition to being fired from one job,  he had been convicted of having perjured himself in testimony related to his conflict of interest when he was serving as the Assistant City Manager of Piqua. He received a suspended jail sentence and fined for perjury.

     For the last two years he has as city manager been getting away with highway robbery because he has continued to make his home in Piqua while working part time and receiving big bucks  as Portsmouth’s carpetbagging  city manager. But that has not satisfied him. Now, like a highwayman  he is trying to hold the city up again. What he is trying to do is get the city to provide him with a $250,000 life insurance policy, a five week annual vacation, a $600 increase in his automobile allowance, up to $3100, as well as having the city pick up his annual membership in the Ohio City/County Management Association, which illegally helped him get hired as city manager in Portsmouth and which the city picked up the tab for him to attend its annual conference. In making his latest requests for more money and benefits, I would not be surprised if Allen had learned at that conference how to further gouge the city where he's city manager. 

      The chief argument being made by Allen and  his supporters on the city council  to support increasing Allen’s vacation time and other benefits is that he works like hell. Allen’s chief supporter  is Kevin W. Johnson, the Primary Prevaricator on the city council. Johnson is quoted in the PDT report as saying, Allen needs more time off because he does not want to see him “worn out.” Johnson made similar observations when Allen had not been city manager  very long. “I’m just going to try to take some more time away,” Allen himself is quoted in the PDT. “I am exhausted.” I suspect that Allen is exhausted because he is already spending too much time away from Portsmouth, what with the commuting he is doing  between his job and his home in Piqua, and if it is true that he works long hours on the days he is in Portsmouth it is because of the long weekends and the other days he’s in Piqua, and there is no sign he is going to move. 

The photo of Allen's Piqua home on the Miami County website (2007)

      I just checked electronically again with the Miami County auditor’s office, which still lists Allen and his wife as the owners of 805 Boone Street, in Piqua. The biggest commitment Allen could have made to his job as city manager was moving to Portsmouth, but he rented a pad from Neal Hatcher, which speaks volumes about what his financial priorities and personal preferences are, as Kevin W. Johnson’s announcement that he will run for Scioto County Commissioner, which pays about $55,000 annually, shows what his are.

      To live in the same city where Allen is city manager is to have your intelligence constantly insulted. In response to the report  in the PDT, one longtime Portsmouth resident said, “This guy refused to live in Portsmouth! Now he wants the citizens to pay for his refusal to live in Portsmouth. This guy  must think the citizens of this town are real country bumpkins!”

Relevant River Vices Posts

Derek Allen's Cock-amd-Bull Open Letter. (Click here)

The Carpetbagger from Piqua. (Click here)

Portsmouth's Carpetbagging City Manager (click)

ICMA: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, or Worse?

One of the curious things about  the campaign in Portsmouth in 2011 to change back to the manager-council form of government was the role played  by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), which, though I did not know of its existence at the time,  I now view as a somewhat stealthy and deceptive organization, a wolf in sheep's clothing, if not worse.

In the last one hundred years, 1915-2015, which coincides with the existence of the ICMA,  the United States has been strongly influenced in its international relations by the doctrine of American exceptionalism, which is the quasi religious belief that America is unique in the history of the world, being  the most  favored nation of, if not of  God,  then at least of  History. From the perspective of American exceptionalism, America is the home of true  freedom and democracy, which gives  it not only the right but the obligation to spread that  precious birthright around the globe. America promotes its exceptionalist view of freedom and democracy internationally in any number of ways and places, including Afghanistan, and through any number of organizations, including most notably and controversially the CIA. Where does ICMA get the money to operate its domestic and international operations? Domestically it has conservative corporate sponsors, which could foot the bill. Where the ICMA gets the money to finance its international operations it doesn’t say, but who else could it be if it is not an agency of the U.S. government?

Portsmouth is one of the American cities to which the ICMA provided financial and logistical assistance to electorally replace the mayoral-council form of government. But was the election fair? In  2011, the ICMA helped city councilman Kevin W. Johnson and the Committee for Better Government get a charter amendment passed  in the November election that returned Portsmouth to the manager-council form of government. The Portsmouth Daily Times  reported that the "ICMA and the Ohio City/County Management Association assisted the council-manager advocacy group Committee for Better Government Management by providing educational materials and guidance on the development of the charter amendment text. ICMA also contributed financial support to [the] Committee from the Fund for Professional Management to aid the group in mailing 4,000 educational postcards." But not many people read that squib in the PDT or knew the ICMA existed let alone that it had been instrumental in Portsmouth’s return to the city manager form of government. The margin of victory in that election was very small—just sixty votes—or a little over one percent of the votes cast.  I very much doubt the charter amendment would have passed if the ICMA had not interceded on the side of manager-council supporters. 

I first learned of the ICMA and its intervention in the 2011 election only recently  when I  read the minutes of  the 8 August  2011 meeting of the Portsmouth City Council, which you can read by clicking here.  That meeting took place only three months before the November election, but at least several people at the council meeting were surprised to learn about the charter amendment and even more surprised to learn  about the role of the ICMA. They learned of ICMA’s involvement because a member of that organization, who was the city manager of Loveland, Ohio, was at the August 2011 council meeting. He was present but he claimed he was present only in an educational capacity. This is what the ICMA consistently claims, that it is not taking sides in the manager-council versus the mayor-council form of government struggle, that it is just playing an impartial, educational  role, but that is a canard. The ICMA does everything it can to spread the manager-council gospel and to disparage the mayor-council form of government, all the while claiming to be impartial. ICMA claims to have a strict code of ethics that all its members, including city managers,  must follow. The ICMA may not have a dog in the fight, but it  has a wolf, a wolf  in sheep's clothing, and the wolf unethically carries on in its sheep's clothing not only before a city switches to a city manager but also afterwards, providing  its allegedly non-partisan assistance in the city's search for a city manager. ICMA can be so brazenly hypocritical at times that a shark may be a more appropriate metaphor than a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Derek Allen, who was chosen as city manager,  was judged to have lied under oath as a public official and received a suspended jail sentence. Is he the ICMA's idea of a highly ethical city manager? 

I have checked with the Scioto County Board of Elections to see if the ICMA or any of its many corporate sponsors filed any report on its financial involvement in the 2011 election as is required by county regulations. The Board of Elections could find no filing by the ICMA, which presumably considers itself, as a self-proclaimed impartial organization, above such requirements. It may have gotten away with such high handedness in Afghanistan, but can it also in the United States? Perhaps the Scioto County prosecutor can answer that question.

Valentine for Our New City Manager

Hey sitty man’ger, pal o’ mine!

Won’t you be my valentine?

We never new which day was pickup.

It was unpredicable as a hickcup.

We never new, we never new, no way.

But now it’s definit: pickup is no day.

We never new when they’d be here.

Or off sumwears havin’ a beer.

But now with you we can rust ashured.

Our sitty trash probplums  sugar cured.

Because sitty gov'men's on the fritz

Our overflowin ’ trash jest sits and sits.

                                   Snuffy Smith