Our Opinion: Communication needed for prosecutor problem, not a charter change

During the past two years, a perceived problem has been festering at City Hall, but few people have been willing to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

On Sunday, City Hall’s worst-kept secret became public. We published a story in which city staff alleged City Prosecutor Brian Stumpe has been missing court days without notice and cases have been dismissed because of his no-shows.

Stumpe, for his part, said he informed city officials ahead of time in the instances he couldn’t make it to court, and that nobody has told him there’s a problem.

Rather than tackling the issue head-on, city officials slowly have spread the news via whispers and rumors. About a year ago, the city’s Law Department came up with a passive-aggressive fix: It recommended changing the city charter to make the prosecutor position appointed rather than elected. Then, Stumpe would be accountable to the City Council.

Stumpe’s job performance was never listed as a reason for the requested change.

We were able to inform readers about the issue in our Sunday edition through several open records requests. Until now, Mayor Carrie Tergin, council members or other city officials haven’t been eager to talk about it publicly. We reviewed city emails and found that, last December, the city’s court administrator discussed the problem via email with the city counselor, who shared the concern with the mayor.

The council (minus Ward 5 Councilman Jon Hensley, who was elected in April) was informed about the problem in a Dec. 22 email in which City Counselor Ryan Moehlman said the legal staff had to fill in for Stumpe eight times.

Dealing with the problem, we acknowledge, is tricky, because Stumpe is an elected official. As such, he’s accountable to the voters, not to the mayor, council or city administration.

The city’s Law Department was especially stuck between a rock and a hard place: It serves more than one master, including the council and Stumpe. As such, it wasn’t the Law Department’s place to complain publicly about the job performance of Stumpe.

But the mayor and council do not have attorney-client privilege preventing them from addressing the problem or informing city residents. It’s also not a confidential personnel issue, since the mayor/council don’t employ Stumpe, give him performance reviews, or control his salary.

The Law Department and the Jefferson City Charter Review Advisory Committee erred in suggesting a charter change, the local equivalent of a constitutional change, if a main reason was to deal with one employee. (They did cite other reasons, but, again, it’s difficult to tell how much of a factor Stumpe was in the decision since the issue wasn’t being discussed publicly.)

A disconnect between city officials’ view and Stumpe’s view of the situation seems to indicate a lack of frank discussion between the two. As our representatives, Tergin and the council should have alerted both him and us and the public to the perceived problem sooner.

Now, the council has shelved the bill containing the charter change issue — along with four other proposed charter changes — on the “informal calendar,” where it will die in after three council meetings if not acted upon.

Any charter changes would have to be approved by voters, and the council just missed the deadline to submit any issues to a November vote. Now, voters would have to wait until at least April 2019 to have their say on some of the other proposed changes, which may have merit.

We urge the council to publicly discuss the Stumpe issue, then act on the bill.

As for the prosecutor issue, we don’t need a charter change. We need more open communication, leadership and a basic human relations handbook.

News Tribune