When East Lansing officials began the search for a new city manager last year, they took their pursuit to a national level — and spent $26,000 along the way — only to hire internal candidate George Lahanas.
Although it was smart to look outside of current city officials when looking for potential candidates, city council members might have went overboard on their expenses.
During the search, executive search firm Affion Public was paid $18,000 as part of its contract with the city, and other expenses reached $8,077 while looking. After looking through 56 total applications, the city eventually narrowed it down to five finalists.
And that’s when the money started flowing.
The city paid about $3,898 for travel and lodging for three out-of-town candidates, and then about $1,683 for a community reception with the five finalists.
The money used for searching for the most qualified candidate was money well spent, but the city spent entirely too much on accommodating the out-of-town finalists, and a lavish reception was unnecessary.
It was an inefficient use of a large amount of funds. Residents also believe the search for city manager was a very rushed process, which makes the amount of money spent in such a short amount of time even more unbelievable. The city hired Affion Public in early October 2011 and hired Lahanas in January.
After the city chose to hire internally, it’s hard not to wonder if they had plans to do so all along, or if it just happened by coincidence.
There’s a chance that Lahanas, who was interim city manager at the time of the search, just was the best fit for the job. There’s an equally likely chance city officials were leaning toward hiring him the whole time. If that was the case, then the $26,000 undoubtably was a insensible use of city money.
Finance Director Mary Haskell told The State News in a recent article (“More than $26K spent on search for East Lansing city manager” SN 4/19) that the city didn’t have to budget any additional money for the search.
It is a positive point that officials didn’t go over their allotted funds, but it is not known how much money was budgeted to the hunt for a city manager.
Haskell also said the city was able to save about $108,000 across its city council, city manager, human resources and city clerk budget during the past fiscal year, but that isn’t an excuse for going over the top in the search.
The city being under the budget in other areas of city council spending does not give officials the go-ahead to spend $26,000 on their city manager search. Saving money in one area is not justification for spending to excess in another area.
City officials would have been wrong in not spending enough money to search for the most qualified candidate for the job, but they also are wrong in spending as much money as they did. It was a smart move to take the search to a national level and look externally, but they likely could have done it without spending so much money.
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