See the full
text of Chinosi's resignation letter
A year ago Sherrill Whittemore hired Joseph Chinosi to
help revamp the city's struggling Bureau of Emergency
Communications by professionalizing the way 911 dispatchers
are trained. Two weeks ago he quit, saying that Whittemore,
director of the bureau, is a big part of the problem.
On Dec. 15, Chinosi handed in his resignation letter
and walked away from his $53,000 job. Chinosi, 44, apologized
for not giving the traditional two weeks' notice but
said he couldn't work another day for his boss. In his
letter, a copy of which was obtained by WW through
a public-records request, Chinosi calls Whittemore "condescending
and vituperative" and "abusive."
It's not that unusual for city employees to quit in
a huff. But Chinosi is the first manager to leave the
embattled agency in the midst of the recent turmoil.
Whittemore is the central focus of a six-week-long special
investigation of BOEC being conducted by City Auditor
Gary Blackmer. Other recent allegations that have come
to light include payroll and overtime abuses, slippery
contracting practices and a top BOEC official running
a side business on city time ("Bureau of Elusive Contracts,"
WW, Nov. 23, 1999; and "Fax Checking," WW,
Dec. 1, 1999).
Chinosi told WW that BOEC's in-house training
program was little better than an ad-hoc system when
he took over. The bureau's four trainers, for example,
didn't have any formal lesson plans for instructing
the 911 dispatchers, who triage a million emergency
calls a year in Multnomah County. Nor, he says, was
there a performance-appraisal system for supervisors
and managers.
But most troubling, he says, was the bureaucratic culture
in which deadlines and assigned tasks were routinely
ignored.
"My biggest job was trying to hold them accountable
to the work I wanted them to perform," he says. "When
I came on board, one of the first things I noticed was
that if I had a meeting with my training staff and wanted
to know what they were doing, where they were at with
their projects, they had nothing to show me. Strangely
enough, they were doing nothing."
Chinosi says one of the employees he supervised regularly
billed the city for overtime work on projects that weren't
pressing. Another turned in time sheets requesting pay
for days he never showed up, Chinosi says.
Efforts to get Whittemore's support in demanding more
accountability were futile, he says. Indeed, Chinosi
says she, too, "spent a lot of time at home" during
working hours and allowed a mood of despair to fester
among BOEC's 145 employees, including the 120 dispatchers
and supervisors.
Whittemore would not comment on Chinosi's departure
or his characterization of her. Other BOEC employees
contacted by WW have made similar comments about
her management style.
As 1999 crept along, Chinosi says he tried to graft
innovative training programs onto BOEC's sluggard culture.
But he says that at each step, Whittemore stymied his
efforts. By late October, Chinosi says, Whittemore had
put his four trainers under the supervision of another
manager and was forcing Chinosi into make-work exercises.
Chinosi says city auditors interviewed him last month
for two hours about Whittemore and the working atmosphere
at BOEC. While soured by his year on the job, he says
he'd like to return to the bureau if it gets new leadership.
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Willamette Week | originally
published December 28,
1999
