Manatee County Commissioners appoint Hopes to be administrator

The Manatee County Commission appointed Scott Hopes as county administrator May 25 by a 5-2 vote, removing the interim tag from his title.

Commissioners said the move essentially creates a tryout for Hopes, citing clauses in the contract they said would provide easy outs if they later decide he is not the right person for the job. George Kruse and Reggie Bellamy cast the dissenting votes.

The contract includes a 30-day notice for termination with no severance pay and an opportunity to revisit the contract Dec. 1. If Hopes’ contract is not extended at that date, his term will end June 1, 2022, and commissioners will search for a new administrator in the meantime.

Commissioners said Hopes needs to resign from the School Board of Manatee County as soon as reasonably possible because the administrator position is a strenuous full-time job that shouldn’t be split with other duties.

Hopes said he anticipates he will resign from the school board shortly after graduation and the completion of his evaluation of Superintendent Cynthia Saunders on June 8.

Commissioners who voted in favor of appointing Hopes said the changes to his contract were only tweaks, but necessary ones if the county is going to determine over the next six months whether Hopes should continue in the job permanently.

“The reason that we wanted to move forward with this contract was to take out the word ‘acting,’” Baugh said. “Dr. Hopes has been anything but an acting county administrator since he took the board role.”

Commissioner Vanessa Baugh said she wanted to remove the restrictions under which Hopes was operating, such as limitations on his ability to hire and fire staff. Baugh said county employees have enjoyed working with Hopes thus far and he deserved the opportunity to direct staff with autonomy.

“To my knowledge, not one administrator has ever had the restrictions on them that we've put on Dr. Hopes,” Baugh said.

Hopes said he has no plans to fire any county directors, adding that it takes time to get to know and evaluate employees. He said he doesn’t think it’s wise when new bosses start a job insisting on making major personnel changes right away.

“Actions like that would risk my success,” Hopes said. “If I don’t have the confidence of the staff from every level down, I’m not going to be successful.”

Kruse, who said May 11 he was opposed to making Hopes the permanent administrator without conducting a search first, said it didn’t make sense to approve a contract so similar to his previous one simply to remove the interim tag from Hopes’ title and raise his salary. Kruse said if the county had moved to keep him as the interim administrator while lifting restrictions such as the hiring and firing limitation, he might have voted in favor.

“We can pass this today, and then come back the next meeting and give him 30 days notice and he'll be out the door,” Kruse said. “There's nothing to it. We took away a tag on the front of a title, and that's it. I don't know why we went through this.”

The contract included a salary increase from $187,000 to $199,000, which Baugh said was negotiated to ensure Hopes was the highest-paid county employee.

“I don't buy it,” Kruse said. “To say, ‘Well, someone else makes it, so he has to make it,’ you know, he's been here for less than two months. It's a 6.5% pay increase to do the exact same job that we technically have him under contract for through next spring. So I'd like to know what we're getting for $12,000 of additional annual salary for the exact same job.”

Bellamy said he was concerned about appointing Hopes for several reasons. He said the county promised citizens a search. He also said it was strange to change his title and raise his salary less than eight weeks after he was appointed to the interim role. Bellamy said county directors have a 90-day probationary period when they are hired, and he was worried about the example Hopes’ appointment would set.

“The interim county administrator through these seven or eight weeks has done some things, but any employee who wants to keep his job is going to do some things,” Bellamy said.

County resident Michelle Martin said appointing Hopes was a violation of the process commissioners promised just eight weeks after he was appointed to the interim position. She said the commissioners were acting as if there were urgent reasons to appoint Hopes, but she didn’t think any of the reasons they gave justified the rush.

“The word for this is gaslighting,” Martin said. “‘We're going to say that he's a permanent, but he's actually just an interim. It's the same contract.’ ‘No no no, he's an interim, but we're giving him all the authority of the permanent.’ So right there, it's confusing. That feels dishonest.”

County resident Andra Griffin liked the contract. She said she was glad there were multiple ways to get out of it if Hopes doesn’t work out, and she said the commission did a good job keeping his salary under $200,000.