Bloodbath at City Hall

When Mike Hein took the reins of city government in 2005, he was
hailed as a man who could reach out to feuding jurisdictions and bring
peace to a troubled region.

The business community, led by restaurateur Bob McMahon, loved him.
Environmentalists like Carolyn Campbell, who dealt with him when he
worked for Marana and Pima County, embraced him. Developers felt as
though they could trust him.

Hein enjoyed close relations Pima County Administrator Chuck
Huckelberry, who then had recently hired Hein as an assistant county
manager. He had ties to former employers in Marana, South Tucson and
Nogales. He had the respect of the southside Dan Eckstrom machine.

Even Tucson’s hardest-to-please journalist, the late Chris Limberis,
praised Hein’s “lack of ego and presumptuousness” in a glowing
Weekly profile that examined the Wisconsin native’s humble
beginnings and rise to the top of Tucson.

“Mike Hein is a relaxed, fit man with a calm demeanor and
self-deprecatory manner,” Limberis wrote. “A lifelong athlete, he is
not too pious to have a cigarette. He is polite, but he isn’t overly
impressed. He is nice, but he isn’t weak, and you quickly get the
impression that he won’t be the one to back down from a fight.”

In his four years leading the city, Hein delivered on many fronts.
He forged new cooperative agreements with Pima County, convincing the
jurisdiction to take over the libraries, a move that will eventually
save the city $10 million a year. He aided in the effort to create a
Regional Transportation Authority. Last year, Hein and Huckleberry
launched an ambitious effort to get a grip on the region’s water
supply.

Mayor Bob Walkup remembered that the previous city manager, Jim
Keene, was regularly “locking horns” with Huckelberry, but once Hein
took over, “the conflict almost disappeared.”

Working with UA lobbyists and GOP leaders at the Legislature, Hein
was able to extend the life of Rio Nuevo, the city’s
downtown-redevelopment funding. The changes meant that over the next
decade or so, the city was slated to receive hundreds of millions of
additional sales-tax dollars to spend on downtown projects.

Hein also moved forward on the City Council’s sustainability plan,
paving more residential streets and hiring more cops and firefighters.
He trimmed the city staff, using an early-retirement incentive to
persuade longtime employees to depart. He got rid of high-end
bureaucrats and engaged in more direct management of city
departments.

But as budget pressures grew, and downtown redevelopment sputtered
through rapidly changing plans, Hein began to run afoul of City Council
members. Last summer, Ward 5 Councilman Steve Leal made an unsuccessful
push to fire Hein after the manager tangled with Ward 3 Councilwoman
Karin Uhlich over a proposal to raise bus fares. Hein cut short a
vacation to salvage his job and got a 7-0 vote of confidence from the
mayor and council.

But the underlying tensions continued to build as the city budget
was strained by the failing national economy. In recent months, Hein
had been warning council members that they would have to cut as much as
$80 million from next year’s budget. The options he offered them
included employee furloughs, department mergers, fee increases and cuts
to various agencies.

Instead, he was the one on the chopping block, as four of the
Democrats on the City Council—Uhlich, Leal, Regina Romero and
Shirley Scott—voted to fire him last week after a brief
evaluation behind closed doors.

Assistant City Manager Mike Letcher has moved into the top spot for
now, but he is scheduled to retire in November. Council members still
need to determine whether to do a national search or find local talent
to serve as the next manager.

The Democrats who voted to fire Hein were mostly evasive when asked
why they axed the city manager (who will receive roughly $100,000 in
severance pay), but it ultimately came down, in Uhlich’s words, to a
lack of “trust and confidence” in him.

Scott, who represents the eastside’s Ward 4, said she didn’t want to
discuss the reasons she fired Hein.

“We really don’t go into details when it comes to personnel
matters,” Scott said. “We need to talk more about the next steps in our
bright future as opposed to any of the minutiae of the details.”

Romero was most openly critical of the deposed city manager, saying
she was unhappy with his financial management and the lack of progress
on downtown development.

“It’s time for a new direction,” Romero said. “We need to look
forward.”

Walkup—who did not want Hein fired—sharply disagreed
with Romero’s criticism of Hein’s budget management.

“I think Mike, in comparison to almost any other city in the state,
has performed financially in a superior way,” Walkup said. “I had great
trust in the city manager to do the right things.”

Ward 6 City Councilwoman Nina Trasoff was also unhappy with the
decision, saying her colleagues chose a lousy time to fire Hein, given
that he was in the midst of preparing a budget and fighting to persuade
lawmakers not to strip the city of the Rio Nuevo funding.

“I completely disagree with the decision that my colleagues made,”
said Trasoff, “but they’ve made it, and now it’s time for us to move on
and protect Rio Nuevo and keep the downtown work going and get our
budget going and work on the behalf of the citizens of this
community.”

Ward 2 Councilman Rodney Glassman was “disappointed” by Hein’s
firing. He praised the manager and his staff for helping him with his
pet projects, including making a deal with the Tucson Unified School
District to use school campuses as parks in the afternoons and
increasing water-conservation measures.

“He was working well with our office, and I was not hearing concerns
from my colleagues,” said Glassman, who suggested that his fellow
council members could have provided Hein with clearer budget options.
“The city manager can only be as strong as the policy direction they
receive from the mayor and council.”

Business leaders were also upset. Developer Don Diamond made a point
of visiting KUAT Channel 6’s Arizona Illustrated to express his
unhappiness with what he called a “dysfunctional” City Council.

Perhaps the biggest immediate problem for the Democrats is
persuading Republican lawmakers to continue funding Rio Nuevo after
Hein’s dismissal. Although Uhlich and Romero said that they thought
lawmakers would be happy with the decision to can Hein, they may have
misunderstood the GOP’s concerns.

Republican state Sen. Jonathan Paton, who has been pushing to
preserve Rio Nuevo funding with a reform plan at the Capitol, said that
firing Hein significantly undermined the city’s credibility among
Maricopa lawmakers. He is now trying to figure out a way to bring in a
new oversight board and strip the city of any control of future Rio
Nuevo funding.

“He was the only guy left in the city that the business community
could trust, and without him there, I think that the business community
is going to write the city off,” Paton said. “And you can say the same
thing about the Legislature, too. They already have written Rio Nuevo
off. The day after his firing, I looked at the budget, and it was
out.”

This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.