Amarillo City Manager Recruitment

Earlier this year, the City of Amarillo selected Baker Tilly Public Sector Executive Recruitment to conduct its recruitment for a city manager. In June, Grayson Path, the city manager for Paris, Texas, was hired to be the next city manager.

Baker Tilly has a history of engaging in unprofessional practices and incredibly sloppy work.

I have spotlighted these issues in multiple episodes of the City Manager Unfiltered podcast and in many posts on LinkedIn using the hashtag #BoycottBakerTilly. And who can forget the El Paso recruitment brochure littered with mistakes.

Because of this, I regularly receive reports and information about searches conducted by the firm.

Public Information Request

After submitting a public information request seeking documents and communications between representatives of Baker Tilly and the City of Amarillo pertaining to the city manager recruitment, as well as work they were contracted to perform with respect to a review of the city’s charter, I received hundreds of pages of responsive documents.

Approximately three dozen PDF documents have been itemized and posted here for your review.

I want to draw your attention specifically to the following documents listed below. These are communications between Baker Tilly representative Edward Williams and each member of the Amarillo city council by way of their personal email addresses — not their official city email accounts. We will come back to this issue in a minute.

Possible Open Meeting Law Violation

In the text exchange conversation between Williams and Mayor Cole Stanley, there was an exchange on page 22 (see image below) about a desire to have the finalists arrive an hour early for “private introductions” at 5 p.m. on Monday, June 3rd.

The only notice that was posted for this meeting was the 6 p.m. start time and I have confirmed with the city secretary (see email exchange) that no public notice for a 5 p.m. meeting was posted.

On the afternoon of June 14th, Councilman Tom Scherlen graciously returned my phone call. We spoke for a little more than 20 minutes. He answered my questions and concerns about this potential open meeting violation.

He confirmed that there was some kind of “meet and greet” at 5 p.m. and stated that some members of the public were in attendance. He also stated that a majority of the council was present during this time and that he did not recall how he was informed or learned about the meeting.

In my email exchange with City Secretary Stephanie Coggins, Mayor Stanley confirmed that the 5 p.m. interaction occurred and suggested that it was an opportunity for he and his wife to meet the finalists and conduct media interviews. However, he admitted that other members of the governing body were in attendance. Other individuals have confirmed Scherlen’s statment about other select citizens being in attendance during this period.

It appears based on the information I have been given that there may have been a violation of the state’s open meeting laws.

Personal Email Addresses Solicited by Baker Tilly

During my call with Councilman Scherlen, I raised my concerns about how Baker Tilly representative Williams had communicated with the council using their personal email addresses. He confirmed my suspicion and acknowledged that Williams had asked for his personal email account. Scherlen did not initiate the discussion or ask to communicate via his personal email address with any Baker Tilly represenative.

Deliberate Effort to Circumvent Open Record Laws

It appears to me that Edward Williams and Baker Tilly purposely sought to circumvent Texas open record laws by soliciting private email addresses from elected officials and engaging in sensitive communications with them.

There were several reasons why I was suspicious of Williams and/or Baker Tilly.

  • the firm engaged in unprofessional conduct in the past, most notably the Canfield, Ohio search discussed on the City Manager Unfiltered podcast
  • it seemed highly unlikely that all five members would independently reach out and request communication through their private email accounts
  • each member received the same email with sensitive information about the candidates to their private email addresses
  • this email contained multiple attachments that the city refused to turn over as responsive documents to my public information request and have petitioned the Attorney General’s Office for an opinion as to whether the documents are subject to disclosure
  • a copy of this email was not sent or “carbon copied” to their official government accounts

Why would a consultant communicate official business matter via personal email addresses to elected officials? And are we to believe that it is coincidence that the only responsive documents to my public information request that were withheld were the ones that were sent to the private email addresses of each elected official?