State skips jobs site in hirings

Copyright 2014, Des Moines Register and Tribune Company

Gov. Terry Branstad's administration has hired at least 386 people without advertising the positions on a statewide public notification system, triggering criticism that the practice sows seeds of cronyism in state government.

A Des Moines Register investigation shows the hires, made since Branstad resumed office in January 2011, are paid more than $25.1 million annually.

Critics want the practice stopped, arguing it robs job-seekers of opportunity and potentially cheats taxpayers out of finding the best employee for the money. Some of the positions were advertised through other means, but some were not advertised at all.

Such word-of-mouth hiring makes it more likely that campaign donors can get plum jobs, critics argue.

"Do you have to pay to play in state government?" asked Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines and Senate chairwoman of the Legislature's Government Oversight Committee. "What is going on here?"

Branstad spokesman Jimmy Centers pointed out rules allowing most of the governor's staff to bypass advertising requirements. He also noted that 2,300 people have been hired using the state's advertising system.

The issue surfaced during an April 3 oversight committee hearing, but the practice is longstanding. During Chet Culver's four-year term before Branstad, 604 employees were hired into unadvertised positions.

The oversight committee hearing involved secret settlements the administration made with current and former employees — a practice first revealed by a Des Moines Register investigation on March 16. The administration has since acknowledged it brokered secret settlements with 24 people, totaling more than $500,000.

Democrats contend the secret settlements are indicative of a culture of cronyism, although confidentiality settlements also were made under the administrations of Culver and former Gov. Tom Vilsack — albeit at a far lesser amount than during Branstad's current term.

Hires are at-will

The 990 hires made since January 2007 without using the statewide notification system are all considered "non-merit" — a term used to describe at-will jobs, which have far fewer job protections than other public-sector positions.

It's a legal practice. But Branstad's critics say he positioned the state to take the practice to excessive heights after changing rules to reclassify almost 300 positions to at-will status. The positions are no longer eligible for union representation, and employees can be fired at the will of the governor and his top staff.

At the April 3 hearing, lawmakers initially began questioning Doug Wood­ley, chief operating officer of the Department of Administrative Services, about the unadvertised hires. But then-DAS Director Mike Carroll stepped in, telling lawmakers those questions usually fall under his purview.

Carroll told lawmakers the positions are classified as non-merit based on factors such as whether the person supervises other employees. By law, those positions don't have to be advertised, he noted. He said both he and the Iowa Department of Management signed off on the hires.

Carroll has since been fired because of other testimony he gave at the hearing that proved to be inaccurate. Carroll said his department never paid former employees for their silence as part of settlement agreements, but email records published by the Register later showed at least one employee was paid an additional $6,500 to maintain confidentiality.

At the hearing, Carroll confirmed nine top unadvertised jobs in his department: Paul Carlson, the department's chief resource maximization officer, who testified with Carroll; Michelle Minnehan, a human resources executive; Richard Schnoes, a financial officer; Kevin Beichley, procurement manager; Deb Krueger, a financial officer; Nick Miller, a financial officer; Dave Peterson, a resource manager; Evan Heggen, a resource manager; and Charlee Cross, a resource manager.

Abuses of system?

Former employees involved in Iowa's secret settlement scandal pointed the Register to two instances when jobs were not advertised and were filled by Republicans, which they called abuses of the system.

One such job is held by DAS communications director Caleb Hunter, a former Senate Republican staff member.

Hunter makes $98,207 a year — about $20,000 more than Robert Bailey, the department's spokesman when Culver was in office. Bailey lost his job shortly after Branstad took office.

The other is a DAS position filled by Lon Anderson, a former longtime House Republican staffer. Anderson makes $126,000 annually, which is $4,000 shy of the governor's salary. He performs the duties once handled by Pat Mullenbach, the department's former chief financial officer and a registered Democrat. Anderson's pay is about $25,000 more than Mullenbach's was.

Mullenbach told the Register in January that she was pushed out of her job by Republican cronyism. She said department officials in meetings would sometimes identify employees by R's and D's for their political affiliation.

Hunter and Anderson's names were not listed in the database, obtained by the Register, of nearly 400 jobs not posted on the notification system. After an inquiry, Hunter said he doesn't believe those positions were advertised, but their exclusion from the list was not intentional.

The nine positions identified by Carroll, plus the two held by Hunter and Anderson, have an annual combined salary of more than $1 million, the state's salary database shows.

The DAS alone has filled at least 24 positions since January 2011 without using the state's advertising system, according to the list.

The Register also identified a high-profile Democrat whose position wasn't advertised but wasn't on the list: former House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Des Moines, who was hired last year by Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, another Democrat.

McCarthy works as an attorney supervisor at an annual salary of $131,000.

"Attorney General Miller felt that Kevin was uniquely qualified with public policy experience, criminal trial experience and previous experience in this office," said Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for the office.

In addition, the positions listed as unadvertised by the attorney general's office weren't accurate, Greenwood said. The office used the statewide notification system for 19 of the 33 listed positions, he said.

While the DAS believes the information is mostly accurate, it's possible some positions were left off or added in error, said Hunter, the DAS spokesman. The department doesn't closely track whether at-will positions were advertised on the statewide system, he said.

"It's the closest we can come to providing a database that is responsive to your request," Hunter said.

Changes needed?

Sen. Julian Garrett, R-Indianola, said he's not convinced that failure to advertise the positions poses a problem. He said he would need more convincing before supporting a change in advertising requirements.

Garrett, a member of the oversight committee, noted some of the secret settlements stemmed from a reorganization of DAS that it says saved at least $730,000 a year.

"I don't have any reason right now to think there has been abuse or that we're not getting good people under the current system," Garrett said. "If we were to make a change, I would think there would need to be some reasons for the change."

Response from Branstad's office staff to questions did not indicate whether the governor would be open to changes that would require a more widespread state job posting requirement.

Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines, said he will push his peers to support legislation this year that would change the system so almost all state positions must be advertised. McCoy has described the current system as the Wild West, saying that "cronyism is the rule of order right now."

Regardless of party affiliation or who is in the governor's seat, Iowans deserve a fair state employment system, McCoy said.

"It galls me to have to do this because common sense should say that if you want to find the best applicants, you advertise and you make the process as open and transparent as possible," McCoy said.

What the law says

Whether a state job must be advertised depends primarily on whether the position is part of what is called the "merit system" within state government.

Merit-coveredemployees generally aren't managers and have more options than non-merit or appointed personnel during layoffs or reorganization. Merit employees, for example, often have "bumping rights," which help protect more experienced workers. Unlike appointees, merit employees also are legally protected from political discrimination in employment.

Iowa law (Code: 8a.413) requires public announcement of vacancies in merit-covered positions. Management positions are often considered non-merit or "at-will" and are not required to follow public announcement guidelines.

Professor: Not advertising can have benefits

Hiring without advertising can be viewed as a strategic move to help an administration move swiftly toward common goals, said Lance Noe, director for the Center for Professional Studies and an adjunct professor at Drake University.

"One person's cronyism is another person's, 'I need to get people in that I know will make changes that I was elected to carry out,' " Noe said. "I think that's the tug, and it's not an issue that's party specific."

The private sector generally conducts some type of job search before filling positions, although networking often plays a major role in final decisions, he said.

"People tend to hire people they know," Noe said. "That's good perhaps at creating a corporate culture, but the downside is unrealized opportunities that can be missed from people outside of that network."

Some agencies advertise in other ways

Some of the nearly 400 positions that weren't posted on a statewide notification system known as the "BrassRing" were advertised in newspapers, trade publications or online services, department officials told the Register.

That includes jobs filled by the Iowa attorney general's office. The Department of Administrative Services initially listed 33 positions that were not listed on the statewide system. All but two of those were advertised in The Des Moines Register, the office said.

Most of the Iowa Department of Education's 58 positions that didn't use the state's system also were advertised in local papers or online, said Jeff Berger, deputy director of the department.

All state departments can use the state's advertising system even if a position is not, by law, required to be posted there. But Berger argues using the statewide system doesn't yield results in recruiting for some specialized positions.

"Most of state government doesn't have the right credentialing for us," Berger said. "We require master's degrees with teaching licenses. You just aren't going to find people like that on BrassRing."

While state government does not post hundreds of jobs on the statewide system, legislators last year passed a law that requires all public schools, charter schools or area education agencies to post all job openings to one central site: TeachIowa.gov.

After the July, 1, 2013, launch of that site, the department of education now advertises all of its jobs there, too. Previously, the state's districts used a hodgepodge of publications or methods to seek employees. The centralized effort has helped make the information more accessible to the public and has aided with recruitment, said state education department spokeswoman Staci Hupp Ballard. The service is free to Iowa schools.

Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, argues that posting all state jobs at a central location online makes sense even if their classification allows them to avoid the state's BrassRing system.

"What does it hurt to let people know about opportunities in state government?" Petersen asked.