The Standard-Examiner Defends Reid "Good Ole Boy" Windfall

The Standard-Examiner, constant and slavish proponent of all things Ogden city "Godfreyesque" (rhymes with Kafka-esque) government does, ran a story in yesterday's edition, adamantly defending the Mayor's actions in the ongoing Stuart Reid severance bonus situation. In the interest of saving WCF front-page space in the two days remaining in the primary election, I'll simply link the full story here.

In a nutshell, the Standard-Examiner has taken the position that Mr. Reid's severance windfall was all nice and legal, inasmuch as the secret Godfrey-Reid severance agreement purportedly pre-dated the current version of the ordinance. The Std-Ex position thus seems to be that the ordinance in effect at the time of Mr. Reid's original hiring permitted the Mayor to award severance packages in its discretion irrespective of whether the termination was voluntary or involuntary.

Whether this is true or not is anybody's guess at this point. I visited what's left of the Weber County Law Library yesterday though, and am presently unable to determine what the ordinance said at the time of Mr. Reid's hiring. The only version there is the current ordinance. Prior versions are unavailable. Nor are they available on the internet.

Consider this an ongoing story folks. I'm definitely going to look into this ordinance authority question further, once the primary election has been concluded.

Suffice it to say that I'm not going to take the Standard-Examiner's word for it though, because the ordinance in question, Ogden City Code Section 2-6-9 was first enacted in 1979, well before Mr. Reid's 2002 hiring. It has however been amended numerous times. I'm thus going to leave this question open until I'm able to get my hands on a copy of the ordinance that was in effect at the time that Mr. Reid was first hired by Ogden city. When that happens, I will publish a copy of that ordinance here.

The most interesting feature of this story is a second "wrinkle" that the Std-Ex editors decided to "throw in."

The John Wright article says, "Stephen Schwendiman, a Utah assistant attorney general, said the state Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that verbal agreements are as valid as written ones, meaning Reid could have sued the city if he had not received the severance pay."

It then goes on to make a logical leap and attribute this non-sequitur to Mr. Schwendiman: "A court would undoubtedly find that binding," Schwendiman said of the agreement."

Being the curious type, I put in a call this morning to Mr. Schwendiman, to verify his quote. He very graciously returned my call; and we spoke for a few minutes about the telephone interview he'd had early with Mr. Wright.

He explained that Mr. Wright had merely asked him a general question, "Are verbal employment agreements enforceable under Utah law?" Mr. Schwendiman provided the obvious and correct answer. Yes they are, of course.

Mr. Schwendiman makes it very clear however, that he did not render any opinion as to whether the Reid-contract was legal under its particular factual circumstances. Mr. Schwendiman informs me that he hasn't read the written employment agreement, nor has he reviewed the applicable ordinance, nor investigated or examined any other facts particular to the transaction, to determine whether Mayor Godfrey had the authority to enter into the agreement in the first place. As to that, that's an open question in Mr. Schwendiman's mind, as in the minds of numerous others among us.

I told you the Std-Ex "fudged" on the facts. What they did was try to bootstrap an off-the-cuff informal statement about general Utah law into an Attorney General Opinion. Tsk, tsk, tsk...

Is the Standard-Examiner a great newspaper, or what?

Incidentally, there was an articulate and perceptive Std-Ex guest editorial on the general subject in yesterday's edition, for anybody who'd like to take a look.

Comments, anyone?