Todd Mielke won’t seek Spokane County CEO post
Spokane County Commissioner Al French scuttled colleague Todd Mielke’s plans to seize the job of county chief executive and said the hiring process needed a reboot.
French said voting Mielke into the position as the last standing candidate for the job was “unfair.” Richard L. Davis, who was also interviewed last month by French and Commissioner Shelly O’Quinn, withdrew his name a few days later after taking another job in Baytown, Texas.
“I don’t think it’s fair to Todd, or fair to the county, that we end up with him by default and not by design,” French said.
He sat silent Monday morning as O’Quinn made a motion to hire Mielke for the position following a six-month search. With Mielke abstaining from voting for himself, his potential hiring fell to O’Quinn and French, who declined to second the hiring motion.
The failure to come to an agreement means the process will start over, and Mielke said after the meeting he’d withdraw his name from consideration.
“I don’t believe it would come to a different outcome,” Mielke said of another try at the job. He said he’d seek re-election next year but his pursuit of the county CEO job was finished.
O’Quinn said she was disappointed by the lack of a decision.
“I feel like we’ve wasted the last six months,” she said.
French said he was disappointed O’Quinn felt that way about the process. He said he’d learned a lot about hiring for administrative positions by consulting with other government officials statewide.
“As I talked to other people in the industry, they were telling me that the good ones, they don’t go looking for jobs, the jobs come find them,” French said.
The standoff occurred a month after county officials first intended to announce a replacement for Marshall Farnell, the longtime county budget chief who announced his retirement earlier this year. Mielke recused himself from the hiring process after announcing his intentions to seek the $160,000-a-year position.
French and O’Quinn put together a panel of business leaders – which included the heads of Rosauers supermarkets, Providence Health Care and Wagstaff Inc. – to review applications and forward their top picks. In April, the panel announced Mielke, a longtime state legislator and Spokane County commissioner since 2004, as their top choice. The second pick was Davis, a former city administrator in Utah.
Mielke’s selection as the top pick prompted an outcry by some, including former Spokane County Commissioner Bonnie Mager, who said the process was rigged in Mielke’s favor. A petition she circulated online included allegations forwarded to Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell of ethics and open public meeting law violations. The petition had more than 250 signatures.
O’Quinn said those complaints came from people who didn’t closely follow the county’s hiring process, which included the panel’s review of resumes and public interviews of Mielke and Davis in May.
“It’s easy to lob grenades,” she said.
French, too, said he was not swayed by Mager’s argument but by the opinions of other government officials who are also searching for top administrators.
Mielke said he approached French twice before putting an application together for CEO, asking his fellow Republican commissioner if he’d support the application if Mielke proved to be the top candidate in the job search. Mielke said he received confirmation that he would have French’s vote if that were the case.
“If he said no, I would never have applied,” Mielke said.
Mielke and O’Quinn said Monday they need to meet with Farnell, who had agreed to stay in an advisory role while the new CEO was selected. The county initially announced the new hire would start work June 15.
French said the decision was not about Mielke’s qualifications, though he noted the CEO job requires experience in administration and leadership. He said his choice to restart the process came from a desire to make sure the right candidate is put forward for the job.
“I would rather get it done right than get it done fast,” French said.