By Lee Melsek

For the Record

Scott Janke quarrelled repeatedly with his boss, Mayor Larry Kiker, in the weeks and months before his firing. Sometimes the exchanges were subtle, other times sharp and pointed.
The exchanges came in public meetings but the local press almost never reported them.
At one point last month Janke couldn't restrain himself after Kiker questioned some of the work of he and his staff..
"This pisses me off," he told his five bosses as television cameras honed in. He then vigorously defended himself and his staff's hard work.
Could this on going rancor have been what was really behind Larry Kiker's swift move to run off his manager?
The spin coming from Kiker and the rest of the council is simply too transparent to be taken seriously, and few islanders are. Why should they? It strains believe that the town manager was sent packing for his own good and the good of the community, as this council has so sanctimoniously claimed.
And there was this: His termination had nothing to do with Mrs. Janke's career, they assured us.
But none of that was selling well here at home or with the press. And why should it? The hypocrisy was simply too deep, the excuses too limp, the "emergency" meeting to outrageous.
Actually, the expressed reasons for the firing took on different shades depending on which council member was talking.
Jo List, a self-proclaimed journalist, pleaded with the press to leave her town alone and worried about our image. And she claimed that it would somehow be wrong to keep Janke while dealing with county government after that government fired it's manager for sending sexually explicit e-mails.
Huh? We have to do what the county does? Didn't our voters reject that idea when they voted to part company with county government years ago? And let's remember, their manager was violating a county policy while our manager was not violating any town policies. How we deal with our employees should be none of the county's business.
Meanwhile, Larry Kiker keeps saying the council was doing all this at Janke's request. He wanted to be fired, we've been assured. The council wanted him to be spared the hot lights of the press, the mayor keeps claiming.
Really? So, why were Janke and his wife on national television, voluntarily, explaining their side. And why is it Janke criticized some of Kiker's claims and said it's the council that triggered all the bad publicity?
One of the council members, I forget who, mumbled something about "trust." That's an interesting concept in all of this. Didn't Scott Janke have a right to "trust" the council to honor his contract and to defend his right to be married to whomever he chose to be?
What's also really bothersome in all of this is this council's continuing disregard for the spirit and intent of the Sunshine Law. That, and the mushy claims about protecting Janke, his family and all of us from the heat of the media.
The excuses for firing his town manager in the heat of a moment, I believe, are as shallow as a mud puddle.
In reality, the outing of Mrs. Janke must have come as manna from heaven for Larry Kiker.
Sharp exchanges between Kiker and Janke had been escalating at public meetings for months. Kiker didn't like the way Janke presented the budget, didn't like his budget suggestions, didn't like his failure to change people's minds on signing renourishment easements, didn't like his responses to the mayor's criticisms.
"That pisses me off," Janke told Kiker at a public meeting several weeks ago when Kiker leveled criticisms of Janke's work.
Some town employees say it's been Kiker, not Janke, who has been managing the town for some time on visits to Town Hall.
Kiker was not happy with Janke's disclosure that the town had failed to collect $2.4 million in water fees from individual condo units over the past seven years. The mayor implied Janke didn't have all his facts straight. But a review of Town Hall records by Tidelines shows that Janke was indeed correct. So far, that issue has been swept under the proverbial table. A committee is reviewing our water rate structure, but it isn't at all clear that it's digging into the fee collection failure.
The renourishment issue also was irritating the mayor. I'm sure he's been getting heat from his Friends in the business world who are upset with the impending demise of renourishment, which Kiker and the rest of the council promised us.
Someone had to pay. Since this council likes slapping backs with Ray Judah - the real culprit in that colossal failure - why not take it out on Scott Janke.
In the end, I believe, Larry Kiker leaped at Mrs.Janke's outing to rid his staff of her husband. After all, the mayor and Councilman Herb Acken never really wanted Janke in the first place.They wanted Jack Green, and this was the perfect opportunity to have their way.
Scott Janke deserved a chance to address the council even after the mayor's initial phone call and subsequent shifty move to hold a private meeting. I say private because the public wasn't made aware of it, at least not in any reasonable sense.
Apparently, the mayor expected all of us to simply accept the spin of this limp excuse and believe in it as if it were gospel.
Apparently also, many islanders who know how to think for themselves just aren't buying it. Except for a few of the obvious butt-kissers and the blogger who apparently makes a living outing adult film actors, the public hasn't seemed to buy into it.
The council's campaign to bash the press hasn't worked, either. The press wasn't buying the council's claims, and well they shouldn't have.The hypocrisy was simply too deep, the excuses too limp, the "emergency" meeting too outrageous.
As for the rest of that council, they sounded like sheep. Their response was pure knee-jerk. Instead of thinking for themselves for awhile about what the mayor had just thrust upon them in this "emergency" meeting, they folded. Shouldn't someone have at least suggested taking a few days to digest all of this, talk to Janke, ask lots of pertinent questions and then discuss the matter further. Not this bunch. They simply gave the mayor what he was looking for. Did they really believe the press was somehow going to miss this story or, at least, leave it alone?
They knew the mayor and our town manager had been at odds for months. In the end, and much too quickly, they helped him put a new face in the manager's office.
And then there's this thing of theirs with our Sunshine Law. It's beginning to be a habit with this council.
Some months ago they ignored the fact it hadn't been advertised on the meeting agenda and voted, late into the night, to approve the controversial inter-local agreement with Lee County on beach renourishment. That was very convenient since few of the opponents were at the meeting. It didn't violate the law, but it sure violated it's spirit and intent.
Our residents deserved much better than what they got from this knee-jerk, media-bashing, open government-skirting sideshow of a town council.
And Scott Janke deserved much better, too.


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