In League City, just as in Joplin and every other town in which Rohr has held the city manager position, he has run into "good old boys."
In many instances, these have been people who were already seated on city councils or as mayors and who were supposedly unwilling to do things any way except for the way they have always been done.
Rohr's good old boy in League City is newly elected Mayor Pat Hallisey, who was elected by a wide majority of the voters. Hallisey will present the motion to fire Rohr next Tuesday.
From the Galveston editorial:
Rohr had to have been expecting such a move, because Hallisey has been clear about his lack of confidence in the city manger.
He foreshadowed Tuesday’s news more than two months ago.
“Frankly, I don’t think you’ve got a big, long future in this city,” he told Rohr at a late September meeting during which Doan (the city attorney) had presented an item proposing the second investigation of Hallisey, that one on claims he had violated the charter and other city rules in various ways.
When the editorial writer mentions a second investigation of the mayor, the first was one pushed by Rohr which accused Hallisey of sexual harassment against city employees. That turned into a fiasco as Rohr and the city attorney violated Texas open meetings laws and the city employees in question did not feel the mayor had sexually harassed them.
In Joplin, Rohr collaborated with Globe Editor Carol Stark to push an investigation into Councilman Bill Scearce's alleged involvement in a gambling operation that was being done by tenants in a building Scearce was renting 20 years earlier. Rohr's efforts to have Scearce removed from the council were unsuccessful and backfired on him, just as his attempt to have Hallisey kicked out of his job appear to have done in League City.
If Rohr does not survive Tuesday's vote, perhaps he will at least have the satisfaction of telling newspapers how corrupt League City is and how everyone who voted against him will go to hell.
Unlike Joplin, Rohr does not have the protection of the local newspaper behind him.
The editors in Galveston and League City appear to be made of sterner stuff.
4 comments:
Indeed, a stark contrast.
To 9:11.... I see what you did there. Clever, very clever.
You know, any city manager starting in a new city is going to be faced with an existing "power structure" or whatever you want to call it. A core competency of a competent one would be working with that existing structure from the beginning, immediately targeting any who are too corrupt to be tolerated but otherwise getting along with the rest, and so on.
Rohr's pattern of thuggishness in Joplin and as reported in his prior position, which I assume continued in League City, is going to upset any of the existing "good old boys", or new ones, or pretty much anyone around him (wasn't it rumored his wife decided to stay in Joplin?). It's a little late when you're in the process of being fired to trot out this same excuse, it won't do any good and makes you look like an idiot after it's been repeated too many times.
I don't understand how this could occur. Anson Burlingame told us he looked into Rohr's eyes and saw a hero. The savior of the Joplin tornado won that national award, sounds like the "under bellies" won again. Damn those good old boys.
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