Bingo! JanesvilleGate Is Born

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What should have been an open-and-shut case surrounding a charge of nepotism against Janeville’s former City Manager is now growing legs as administration insiders appear to be scrambling to redirect the investigation towards a possible cover-up.

JG Excerpt:
Everything stems from an incident involving then-City Manager Steve Sheiffer and his teen relative. The relative worked at the ice arena and in January made unfounded accusations against her supervisors. Some city employees said the teen's relationship to the city manager made it difficult to handle the matter.

But the real chain of events began when a city employee secretly recorded conversations between herself and her supervisor in order to protect herself from charges being levied against her from the teenage relative of the former city manager.

Things began to grow more suspicious when the Janesville Gazette, in a extremely rare burst of investigative reporting of local authorities, requested public records filed from original statements surrounding the charges of nepotism and city disciplinary action. Somewhere in between all of this, the lead supervisor is overheard on an audio recording that he destroyed records related to the original charge of nepotism stemming from the ice rink matter. Bingo! JanesvilleGate is born.

But now this episode is growing additional pairs of legs as the city has hired two outside attorneys to independently investigate whether city records were illegally released and/or whether city records were illegally destroyed. To make matters worse, the city of Janesville has it’s own on-staff attorney and legal assistant, but their long-time relationship with the former city manager apparently present a strong enough conflict of interest that officials felt it best to go outside the administration.

Additionally troubling is that the city council president position held by Amy Loasching, considered by some to be the city figurehead in Janesville’s form of democracy-lite government, seems to be deliberately kept in the dark over matters concerning the investigations.

JG Excerpt:
"If she (attorney) is really doing an independent investigation, in my opinion, she should be fact-finding," Loasching said. "Based on everyone who has contacted me who she has interviewed, it seems to be more of an accusation-type of investigation."

This lack of communication between the administration and council has been a chronic problem if not emblematic of the manager/council government. Janesville has been for all practicality - a leaderless city.

In the meantime, many new questions seem to go unanswered. Who hired the attorneys? And at this stage in the investigation, if the Council President wonders out loud why they need to hire outside attorneys, who approved of the hiring? Was city council approval required? Under who’s directive are they operating? Which officials do the attorneys answer to?

One could only imagine what would have happened to the city employee if she had not recorded her conversations to defend her position against this growing conspiracy. When employees have to start wearing voice recorders in order to defend themselves while on the job - something is seriously, seriously wrong with not only the system of government, but the people running it.