McKinney Out as Acting Interim Town Manager

The gloves are off.

Less than 24 hours after East Hampton’s new Chatham Party-led town council was sworn in, fireworks between the three parties in town have begun.

Anne McKinney, the interim acting town manager for the past six weeks, was informed by council chair Sue Weintraub early Thursday her services were no longer needed.

McKinney had served in Interim Town Manager John Weichsel’s place since Sept. 27, the same day Weichsel went in for surgery at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Initially it was thought he could be out for as long as three months while he recovers.

On Wednesday, McKinney informed the new council during its organizational meeting Weichsel would return Nov. 21.

Apparently, that wasn't soon enough.

According to Weintraub, the move to bring Weichsel back sooner came about after she called him Thursday morning to share with him news about Wednesday night’s meeting. During the course of the conversation, his health was discussed and she asked the former Southington Town Manager if he could come back sooner.

“I said is there any reason why you wouldn’t be able to come back to work this coming Monday,” Weintraub said. “I said there’s issues I know that need to be attended to and work that needs to be done in the police department and I want to draw from your town manager’s background to come up with solutions to help us move this town forward. He said that’s fine, he wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

Weintraub and Kyle Dostaler headed over to town hall around noon and told McKinney the news, explaining to her, “John’s our town manager. He’s available to come back this Monday. He’ll probably start slow but there are some things we need his expertise on. He’s got the experience being a town manager. We appreciate everything that you’re doing and we hope you can pass on all the information properly to him and make it a smooth transition.”

Weintraub said initially McKinney seemed to be a little defensive, but as the decision was explained further, she seemed better.

“She was smiling when we left,” Weintraub said. “She sounded on board.”

The news took McKinney by surprise.

“They said that John Weichsel would be coming back to work on the 14th and their interpretation basically of the contract says that if he comes back, mine ends.

“I was surprised because I thought, ‘What is two weeks?’  I think they were too afraid I was getting too close to making decisions.”

What appeared to bother McKinney most was that the decision was coming from two members of the town council, not the entire council.

“If it had been something the town council had made a decision on, I would have been much more accepting,” she said.

However, all may not be what it appears.

McKinney also spoke with Weichsel on Thursday and gave a different account of how the decision for him to come back to work came about, saying Weichsel was directed back to work.

“Those were his words, ‘They directed me back to work on Monday,” McKinney said.

The move is not sitting well with the others on the council.

“It just comes down to the matter that if they wanted to do this, they needed to call a special meeting and they needed to inform everyone and have it go through the process,” Democratic council member Barbara Moore said. “They just can’t go over there and do it. They are not the town council. There’s five other people on the town council.

“It’s very upsetting and townspeople are not going to like this."

Republican town council member Ted Hintz Jr. certainly didn’t, pointing out the rules and regulations governing the council were not followed.

“I’m beside myself. I am absolutely beside myself,” Hintz said. “They have not been sworn in for 24 hours. I am faced with a chairwoman who has violated at least three sections if not four sections of the charter, the code of conduct, which she herself and Dostaler wrote [during the Chatham Party’s control of the council in 2005-07]. They have violated Anne’s contract. They have authorized payment for services, which is a town council responsibility.”

Hintz is referring to a contractual obligation to give McKinney seven-days notice. She did not get it but will instead receive payment for next week.

Was McKinney fired? Dostaler said no.

“John Weichsel is returning on Monday, which would terminate Anne McKinney’s contract,” he said. “That we fired her is contrary to her contract. To fire her we’d have to give her seven-days notice to terminate her employment. We’re not going to be doing that because John Weichsel is going to be returning on Monday. There is no need to be going through the process of terminating her employment.

“Fired her is not the correct term. Frankly, to fire her the council would have to terminate her employment with the seven-days notice,” Dostaler said.  “Certainly somebody would say she was fired because they want to create a political issue where really it’s just a matter of a contractual issue.”

Dostaler went on to say that it was unfortunate that this is being politicized. Meanwhile reaction was swift throughout the day.

“I’m truly saddened for the town of East Hampton because I thought the people would want to start anew," McKinney said. "The fact that [Weintraub and Dostaler] came in themselves and the other town council people did not know just shows that they are going to proceed in the same manner that they have in the past and it’s sad. If they were truly going to work together they would have at least let the others know.”

Council vice-chair Glenn Suprono didn't hide his disappointment with the day’s events.

“What happened this morning, was, in my opinion, not the appropriate way to handle the situation,” he said.

Suprono, a member of the Chatham Party, said he was trying to contact all the parties concerned to get the truth about what happened Thursday.

“I will still support the town council in what they did, but I don’t support how they did it,” he said.

Suprono’s concern was that this would only serve to cement the council being divided along party lines. He wants to see the council making decisions as a group of seven, not along the line of four-two-one or four-three.

“We can not be divided. We can not do the wrong thing,” he said. "We have to do what we said we were going to do by order of the charter to bring our town back together and to do the right thing for the benefit of all the people for our town. This morning was not a good way to start.”

Weintraub, though, defended the move.

“The people in this community, after 18 months of turmoil and mayhem not created by me or the Chatham Party, have entrusted myself and three other of my Chatham Party members to move this town forward,” she said. “They gave us a majority and we told them we would hit the ground running. We have a professional town manager who is on sick leave and who is available to come back. We need him in the office to do the job before us. It’s that simple.

“The town manager is coming back. That’s his job, his rightful job. That’s what we hired him to do.”

McKinney was disappointed she didn’t get to finish some of what she had started.

“It’s the unfinished things I wanted to do,” she said.

She also expressed concern for the police department. In her short time as acting interim town manager, McKinney had worked to address concerns within the department and to get the Internal Affairs investigations into Sgt. Michael Green resolved.

“I don’t want to feel I have exposed the men in the police department unnecessarily and that they’re going to be retaliated against.”

McKinney, however, did say she would share her recommendations with Weichsel on the pending IA investigations.

“I would hope John will be able to follow through on those and at least entertain my suggestions,” she said.

Weichsel for his part, said he was ready to come back to work. If he was directed to return to work on Monday, he didn’t say.

“The Weichsel’s are always impatient,” he said of his sooner-than-expected-return. “I was going to come back on the 21st, but then talking with Chairman Weintraub, she thought it would be helpful if I could be there sooner and I am feeling very well, so I will be there on the 14th."

Whatever momentum the Chatham Party-led council had heading into its new term, it appears to have been slowed by the hit its public image took on Thursday. Campaign talk of working together, restoring trust in the council – not just by the Chatham Party but all three parties – seems unlikely just one day since the council started.

“For Day 1 of the new town council, it couldn’t have been worse than it was,” Suprono said.