Councilwoman sues Boulder City over survey

By Cassie Tomlin

Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008 | 12:41 p.m.

Boulder City Councilwoman Linda Strickland has sued the city to get the original copies of an employee opinion survey taken last year.

A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in District Court in Las Vegas, when a judge will determine whether the surveys are public record.

Strickland said she's hoping to see the 96 questionnaires, which were given in July 2007, before the council's Nov. 18 review of City Manager Vicki Mayes.

All City Council members last year received a summary of the surveys of city workers, which shows significantly negative attitudes in relationships between employees and management.

Strickland said she is not confident the summary includes all of the comments from the surveys, and she wants to read what employees had to say before Mayes' next review.

The councilwoman filed the lawsuit Thursday. It also names City Clerk Pamella Malmstrom, after being denied several informal requests to see the reports and after the refusal of an Oct. 7 public records request, she said. She had also offered to review the surveys in private at City Hall, to avoid the need for duplicates, according to her lawsuit.

City Attorney Dave Olsen told Strickland in an Oct. 8 e-mail the surveys were "nonrecords" and protected by a previous court ruling that requires measuring whether the public interest in nondisclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

Malmstrom said the city still has the completed 100-question surveys in storage, and only two people have seen them since employees filled them out: the two members of the city's "Change Leadership Team," who prepared the summary, which shows percentages of how questions were answered and bulleted suggestions based on the survey results.

The survey asked respondents to rank "strongly agree," "agree," or "disagree" about communication in the workplace, corporate culture, management and supervisors, and 16 other subjects. It also allowed the space for comments.

Olsen said of the 96 respondents, 40 made additional comments, and the summary Strickland received includes every comment made on every survey returned.

Strickland in her lawsuit notes that one survey was provided to her anonymously, and when she compared the comments from that survey against the summary, she found those comments were missing. She now wants to compare all of the questionnaires against the summary.

Olsen said that survey was not turned in to the city, which is why it wasn't included in the summary.

In 2006, Mayes implemented the leadership team, and last year she authorized spending about $25,000 to boost morale, with most of the money being used for employee recognition, wellness and training.

Strickland said she's not sure how to evaluate Mayes on that fiscal decision, because she doesn't know why city employee morale was so low at the time of the survey.

"I think I have right to know not only because I'm a taxpayer, but as a City Council person making decisions of how tax money is spent," she said. "For the performance review, I don't know if have the information to make all the decisions I need to make. The city is fighting so hard to prevent me from seeing them."

She said since the forms were "distributed, kept and paid for by taxpayers," they're public record.

Malmstrom and Olsen both told Strickland the surveys wouldn't be released because the city had promised the employees confidentiality in the surveys, which were filled out anonymously.

"I don't think the employees really meant they were concerned the City Council would see them," Strickland said. "But confidentiality is irrelevant. You can't turn a public record into a confidential document by promising somebody something. It has to be declared confidential by law."

Olsen said breaking the promise of confidentiality would "damage the city's relationship with the employees, which would spill over into damages in services to the city."

Strickland is also seeking the city reimburse her for $4,353 in legal bills.

Malmstrom, in a four-page response given to the Boulder City News, a sister publication of the Las Vegas Sun, said she condemned the legal action a waste of taxpayers' money.

"Thoughtful consideration should be given before legal action is taken against the city and its employees," she wrote. "Residents have the right to question and critique city employees, but there are alternative processes."

Cassie Tomlin can be reached at 948-2073 or [email protected].