Jen McDonough

TOWER— The city of Tower is looking for a new ambulance supervisor after Jen McDonough, who had overcome a move by Mayor Dave Setterberg to fire her last week, submitted her letter of resignation on Friday. The council, on Aug. 10, voted 4-1 against Setterberg’s motion, showing their support for McDonough, who served in the position for the past eight months.
Fire chief and EMT Steve Freshour has stepped in on an interim basis to fill the position, and McDonough is continuing to serve as an EMT.
McDonough’s resignation letter, which runs 11 pages and is accompanied by a 33-page supplemental document detailing her own concerns, is gracious to her fellow staff members of the ambulance service and the four members of the city council who blocked Setterberg’s effort to terminate her at the Aug. 10 council meeting.
In her resignation letter, she lays out in extraordinary detail her frustrations over the process that led to what she said was “one of the most painful professional decisions I have ever made because I truly love this job.”
She said her frustration began to build over the past few months, as Setterberg repeatedly expressed opinions about the service in public meetings that McDonough maintains were inaccurate. That included claims that the city was paying $500 for criminal background checks for new hires, a figure that would be far out of the line for the checks. McDonough maintains they were done at no charge to the city.
Setterberg also complained that the city had paid for EMT training for an employee who never finished the class, a bad investment of city resources. While the incident apparently pre-dated McDonough’s tenure, she maintains she investigated the case and found that the employee’s training had been funded by a grant from an outside health system, not with city tax dollars.
She was also disturbed to hear Setterberg complain at a recent council meeting that the service was ordering too many advanced life support, or ALS, runs, versus basic life support. She said she had never been asked for any comparisons of run data, nor had ever heard of the complaint before. McDonough did, however, provide a comparison in one of her subsequent monthly reports to the council, which indicated that the service’s use of ALS service was largely on par with the past several years.
“I am not resigning because I am unwilling to receive criticism or constructive feedback,” wrote McDonough in her resignation letter. “I recognize that I am a direct leader, that my communication can be strong, and that there are circumstances I could have handled with greater patience or a softer delivery. I have acknowledged those areas and am willing to learn from them. I am resigning because I no longer have confidence in the process by which concerns regarding my leadership have been raised, investigated, characterized, and communicated by the mayor.”
McDonough wrote that she was stunned by a July 21 meeting of the city’s “Human Resources Committee,” which she went into expecting good news about a request for overnight quarters for on-call personnel, only to have Setterberg lay out five allegations, including that she was insubordinate for not following a scheduling guideline that the service had adopted several years ago. McDonough said the mayor had brought up the issue a couple times before and she had acknowledged she had changed the process to provide more flexibility for ambulance staff when they sign up for on-call hours. She maintains that her new system had increased the city’s on-call coverage to 100 percent, as required by state rules. She indicated that city officials had requested updates to guidelines and procedures to make the service operate more efficiently, and she was surprised when Setterberg insisted she go back to the old system, which she indicates she agreed to do in the wake of the July 21 meeting.
McDonough’s concerns go back months. She relates a troubling conversation she had with the mayor shortly after she began her service as interim ambulance supervisor. At the time, she wrote, she was proud that the service had finally begun consistently meeting the required 100 percent on-call staffing. But she said Setterberg viewed it much differently, complaining that the city could only afford 70-80 percent coverage, since the city had to pay staff for scheduled on-call time.
“When I repeatedly raised my understanding that 24/7 ambulance coverage was mandated by the state,” wrote McDonough, “his response, also repeated several times, was words to the effect of, ‘What are they going to do, shut us down?’ This placed me in an extremely difficult position as interim ambulance supervisor.”
In the end, she writes, she sent an email to Setterberg, notifying him that unless she received different guidance from the state of Minnesota, she would continue to seek to provide 100-percent staffing, 24/7.
McDonough states that when she expressed her concerns about the mayor’s directives to her supervisor, clerk-treasurer Tammy Mortaloni, she was told repeatedly that “the mayor runs the city” and that she needed to do what he said.
Lack of clarity over supervision and role
One of the outstanding questions surrounding McDonough’s tenure was who at the city was supposed to serve as her supervisor. The job description approved by the city council last December, implies but does not state clearly that the ambulance supervisor is overseen by the ambulance director. Yet the city, at the time, was in the process of dismissing their ambulance director, Dena Suihkonen, due to her spinal injury. Over the past eight months, it appears the city has yet to undertake any steps to hire an ambulance director, who would have provided supervision of McDonough’s position, while relying on McDonough to perform most of the duties of the director.
In detailed monthly reports to the city council, such as one submitted in July, McDonough indicated she spent time working with state EMS officials and the service’s medical director “on operational questions and quality improvement initiatives” and that she spent “considerable time reviewing operational data and developing recommendations regarding the proposed ambulance agreement.” Such high-level operational oversight and planning has long been the purview of the ambulance director, not the supervisor. In addition, providing the monthly ambulance report has historically been the responsibility of the director.
As McDonough had noted in recent reports, the service was maintaining 100-percent on-call staffing, had not missed a call even when the primary ambulance was out, and had increased revenue substantially through undertaking more transfers. Those improvements had improved the service’s financial position and prompted the city council to approve a dollar-an-hour raise for McDonough, to $12.41 an hour (in addition to health benefits), just last month and were among the reasons cited by members of the council for rejecting Setterberg’s call to terminate McDonough.
While McDonough may have undertaken the duties of the ambulance director, in addition to those of the ambulance supervisor, by labeling her position as “supervisor,” the city has avoided having to replace the “director,” a position that is now part of a collective bargaining agreement.
Supervision of the ambulance supervisor was not well established. While the job description implies supervision by the ambulance director, the city has rarely, if ever, had both positions filled simultaneously and as the experience with McDonough has demonstrated, the duties of the two positions are largely interchangeable.
While McDonough’s job description listed deputy clerk-treasurer Terri Joki-Martin as her “HR contact,” all available evidence suggests Joki-Martin had little or no oversight role over McDonough. Instead, McDonough maintains in her resignation letter that it was Setterberg, with input as well from Mortaloni, who directed her actions. That’s consistent with McDonough’s claim, quoting Mortaloni, that “the mayor runs the city.”
City charter tells a different story
In fact, according to the city’s charter, the mayor has no independent role in supervising city employees. The city operates under what is known as a “weak mayor” system, which is, by far, the most common municipal governance system in Minnesota. Per the city’s charter, the mayor has the authority to run council meetings and vote on matters before the city council, sign official documents, and represent the city in official or ceremonial situations.
Per Chapter 6 of the city charter, it is the clerk-treasurer who is authorized to manage the day-to-day operations of the city and supervise and direct the activities of city staff. That was an authority that was fervently guarded by prior clerk-treasurers, most notably Tim Kotzian and Victoria Ranua, but has been undermined in recent years by mayors who have taken a much more active role in directing city operations and clerk-treasurers who have declined to push back against actions that appear to conflict with the city’s charter.
While the clerk-treasurer is answerable to their own supervisor, the charter makes clear that that oversight function is provided by the full council. What’s more, the charter states that it is the responsibility of the clerk-treasurer, not the mayor, to make recommendations to suspend or terminate city staff.
Setterberg response
The Timberjay did submit several questions to Mayor Setterberg for this story, offering him an opportunity to respond to claims made by McDonough about his actions as well as the origins of the city’s “Human Resources Committee,” which does not appear to be a formal city committee. The Timberjay also asked about Setterberg’s close involvement in the supervision of city employees and its conformity with the city charter.
In response, Setterberg wrote that he is not able to respond, pursuant to the Minnesota Government Data Practice Act (MN GDPA) because the resignation occurred while the complaint or charge is pending, and there is not a court order that allows the release of the non-public personnel information.
None of the questions posed by the Timberjay sought personnel data that would be controlled by the state’s Government Data Practices Act.