Williams’ request for hearing denied

Sito Negron

Monday, Dec. 8, 2003 | 9:38 a.m.

Las Vegas officials have rejected Wendell Williams' request for a hearing before City Council.

Williams' request was made under a portion of the City Charter that calls for the City Council to ratify the hiring and firing of appointive officers. While Williams was an appointive employee, he was not an appointive officer, Deputy City Attorney Morgan Davis said in a letter sent Friday to Williams' lawyer.

A personnel policies manual adopted by City Council in 1997 "sets forth the appointive and ratification authority for appointive positions with the city of Las Vegas," the letter notes.

"As you can see, the city manager is the appointing authority, and the City Council is the ratifying authority for Appointment of department directors. However, the appointing authority for a position like the one held by Mr. Williams was the department director, and the deputy city manager was the ratifying authority," the letter states.

There are almost 300 "appointive employees" with the city of Las Vegas, "of which only a very limited few are 'administrative officers,' " according to the letter.

Semenza said he would examine the letter today. Nobody from the city was available for comment.

Also Friday Laura FitzSimmons, the lawyer for Williams' former boss Sharon Segerblom, said her client was still weighing an offer from the city to retain a job but be transferred to a different department. After the city investigated the city pay Williams had received while serving in the Legislature, Segerblom was removed from her position as Neighborhood Services Department director.

The job that she is now being offered, in the Department of Detention and Enforcement, would include a similar salary to that Segerblom was making previously, about $125,000 a year. FitzSimmons said she had few details other than that. Nobody at the city would comment on whether the position was an existing one or was being created for Segerblom.

The city's website did not list any available jobs in the department. A survey of the existing positions in the department shows less than 10 people making more than $90,000, topped by the director, Mike Sheldon, at $128,467 a year.

With the firing and demotion, the city is trying to wrap up more than two months of a scandal that developed after the media requested Williams' cell phone records, which showed thousands of dollars in charges. He agreed to pay the city back about $1,800.

After that, pay records showed he received city pay while he was serving in the 2003 Legislature, and when those records were questioned, he agreed to pay back the city about $6,700.

That led to scrutiny of Williams' 2001 time cards, which showed he and Assemblyman Morse Arberry, then his Neighborhood Services Department supervisor, collected city pay -- including sick time -- while serving in the 2001 Legislature. Williams took 208.25 hours of sick time while the Legislature was in session in 2001, and Arberry took 80 hours of sick leave during a time period in which he attended legislative meetings.

The city has not said whether it plans to seek repayment for the payments made to Williams and Arberry in 2001.

Williams claimed he helped the city with legislative issues during the 2001 session, and that the pay arrangement and a subsequent promotion came about because of that work. While Segerblom had recommended Williams for a raise, he could not receive one because he was at the cap for his current position.

The city had a hiring freeze at the time, but the city manager's office created a new position for Williams, and approved the promotion without Segerblom's signature.