Mayor Pushes Council to Protect and Reward John Fournier, Subject of Allegations by City Hall Whistleblower

by P.D. Lesko

An anonymous source emailed MLive’s government reporter a copy of a complaint submitted by a whistleblower who is among the ranks of Ann Arbor’s upper management. In the complaint, the whistleblower alleged to members of City Council that Interim City Administrator John Fournier had tried to force the individual to break the law, repeatedly. The 40 pages of materials provided by the whistleblower to Council outlined instances in which the interim City Administrator had allegedly harassed the individual and attempted to bully, coerce and otherwise force the staffer to break the law.

Fournier denied the allegations.

According to public records, in 2018, while employed by the City of Pittsburgh, Fournier was the subject of similar allegations. As the Director of the Pittsburgh Parking Authority’s Parking Enforcement Department, Fournier was involved in the investigation of a long-time Parking Authority employee. The employee’s union, AFSME Local 2719, filed suit against Fournier for allegedly threatening to fire the Parking Authority employee, a union steward. According to court records:

“Beck testified at the hearing that during this March, 2018, meeting, Fournier told Beck that he was going to get Beck and that he was going to fire Beck. Beck testified that said in response that he would file a charge if he was fired. Beck testified that Fournier said he would fire Beck if he filed a charge.”

Fournier testified at the September 2018 hearing that “the conversation alleged by Beck never happened and that he never threatened Beck.”

An examiner found that the union failed to provide proof of the alleged threatening conversation between Fournier and the employee.

The Ann Arbor Independent made a public records request to the City of Pittsburgh for John Fournier’s personnel file and copies of any complaints filed against Fournier during his years of employment with that City.

It’s unclear why MLive made the controversial decision to identify the whistleblower and to keep secret the identity of the individual who had leaked the whistleblower’s complaint against Fournier.

The Society of Professional Journalists and the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection and advocacy organization, publishes a guide to educate journalists about whistleblowers. The 36-page guide says, “Leakers release information about the inner workings of the government agency or corporation they work for, often for political gain, or to curry favor. Whistleblowers are workers who release information that shows serious wrongdoing, mismanagement, waste or other abuses of public trust.”

Kathleen McClellan is the Deputy Director for the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program at ExposeFacts NGO. “I think the press should respect a whistleblower’s right to remain anonymous,” she said.

Denise-Marie Ordnay works for The Journalist’s Resource, a publication of Harvard’s Kennedy School and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Ordnay says, “Before revealing details about a whistleblower’s identity, consider whether the value of reporting that information outweighs the harm the whistleblower and others might face.”

In the whistleblower’s complaint that was leaked to MLive before City Council members had received it, the whistleblower made clear that there was, allegedly, retaliation: “Fournier is attempting to set me up for failure by giving me written instructions to violate the law specifically as it relates to employment standards with the city. Today after further retaliation of me not following his illegal directives, he continued attacks against me.”

The leak of the whistleblower’s allegations against Fournier came shortly after the Interim City Administrator was the subject of a glowing memo circulated to Council by Mayor Christopher Taylor. On September 27, Council voted to hire Milton Dohoney as interim City Administrator, replacing Fournier. In Taylor’s September 28 email to Council, he recommended that Fournier’s terms of employment be changed so that he would receive a $3,000 per month stipend during Dohoney’s tenure. Taylor also recommended to Council that Fournier’s title be changed to “Deputy City Administrator,” and that his “for cause” termination contract clause be changed to make it much more difficult for incoming Interim Administrator Dohoney to dismiss Fournier.

According to one Council member, Taylor had recommended the additional pay and protection at Fournier’s urging.

The Ann Arbor City Charter charges Council with the direct supervision of two city employees: City Attorney and City Administrator. Taylor, in his email memo, claimed that his efforts to pay Fournier a stipend, to change his title and modify his Assistant City Administrator contract, had received the approval of City Attorney Stephen Postema.

The whistleblower’s complaint states, “Mr. Fournier and I have had a bitter relationship since the start of my employment, and things have only worsened since he has taken over as interim city administrator. I have repeatedly warned him that I would eventually bring my complaints to you and the city council if he continued his blatant discrimination against me.”

The Michigan Whistleblower Protection Act states that: “Michigan’s Whistleblowers’ Protection Act (WPA) shields employees from termination for protected activities related to reporting illegal conduct by an employer. “Protected activities” include reporting situations at work where they reasonably believe their employer is in violation of a law, rule, or regulation or participating in an investigation of potentially illegal activity. Specifically, the WPA makes it illegal to discharge or discriminate against an employee in retaliation for reporting a suspected violation of a federal, state, or local law or for participating in an investigation, hearing, inquiry, or court action.”

The City of Ann Arbor whistleblower told Council members that the City Attorney Stephen Postema was not capable of offering protection from alleged retaliation by Fournier. Nonetheless, rather than place Fournier on administrative leave, Council members instructed the City Attorney to put into place “safeguards” to protect the whistleblower from Fournier.

In disclosing Fournier’s alleged illegal activities to Council, in writing, the whistleblower fulfilled a critical step in being protected by the Michigan Whistleblower Protection Act. According to the Act: “An employee who merely discloses or reports wrongdoing to a supervisor or internal department (like accounting or human resources) is not protected by the law.”

Former City Administrator Tom Crawford was forced to resign in July 2021 after Fournier and City Attorney Stephen Postema orchestrated what can only be described as a palace coup. According to information Fournier provided to Council members, five anonymous staff members came forward with allegations about comments Crawford had allegedly made that were racially insensitive. Crawford denied having made some of the purported comments. A 9-page report produced by an independent investigator who interviewed the five anonymous staffers recommended that Crawford receive additional sensitivity training. Instead, against the recommendations of the investigator, a majority of Council members, including the Mayor, forced Crawford to resign.

Since there were no allegations in the July 2021 9-page report that Tom Crawford had broken any state or federal law, the identities of the anonymous staffers who were interviewed were not protected by any federal or state whistleblower statute. Nonetheless, in response to The A2Indy’s FOIA which sought to have the names of the staffers released to the public, John Fournier denied the FOIA request. It’s unknown, then, who the five individuals were, or whether any of them were staffers whom Crawford had recently put on improvement plans.

The same scenario played out in 2020, when former City Administrator Howard Lazarus claimed that five anonymous AAPD command officers had come forward with allegations about the new Chief of Police, Michael Cox. When Cox was placed on a two week paid leave by City Administrator Howard Lazarus, he then repeatedly refused to provide Council members with written evidence or a detailed explanation concerning why the Chief had been placed on leave. On February 12, MLive.com reported that, “Lazarus…said definitively, however, that Cox is not under investigation for sexual misconduct.”

Former members of City Council in February of 2020 not only refused to ask for Cox’s resignation, they demanded he be reinstated with an apology. City Administrator Lazarus was then forced out of office for, among other things, insubordination, dishonesty and allegedly harassing treatment of several of the women on City Council.

In September 2021, after Crawford’s departure, Fournier informed Council that he intended to give $200,000 in raises to five senior city staffers in order to improve “pay equity.” The staffers included the whistleblower, who had allegedly been instrumental in the discharge of Tom Crawford. The other staffers to whom Fournier gave the raises included Marti Praschan, Ann Arbor’s CFO (the job Crawford had held before his elevation to City Administrator), Lisa Wondrash, Communications Director, Dr. Missy Stults, Sustainability and Innovations Manager, and City Clerk Jackie Beaudry.

At the October 4 Council meeting, there was a heated argument between members about placing Fournier on administrative leave during the upcoming investigation. The Mayor and several council members said they couldn’t do without the services of Fournier. Council members Hayner (D-Ward 1), Griswold (D-Ward 2), Nelson (D-Ward 4) and Ramlawi (D-Ward 5) voted unsuccessfully to sideline Fournier during the investigation.

The refusal to put Fournier on leave came little more than a week after a September 24 open letter signed by five members of Ann Arbor City Council members Linh Song (D-Ward 2), Kathy Griswold (D-Ward 2), Julie Grand (D-Ward 3), Jen Eyer Irwin (D-Ward 4) and Elizabeth Nelson (D-Ward 4) in which the women demanded SafeHouse Center put its own Executive Director on leave during an independent investigation of alleged wrong-doing within the non-profit.