A Matter of Style

San Diego residents may never fully know why eight members of the City Council decided to dump City Manager Sylvester Murray, and that’s a shame.

Was Murray inept at running the city bureaucracy? Did he fail to change practices the council complained about last summer? Did he overstep his authority? Is there an element of latent racism here? Or was it simply a difference in style?

Being a personnel matter, the council members are not obliged--and perhaps are not even technically allowed--to disclose the reasons why they asked for Murray’s resignation. That’s a pretty unsatisfactory situation for those who saw Murray as a bright light, a strong administrator, a role model for young blacks.

Murray made mistakes, to be sure. Much has been made of his earthy expression of satisfaction that he had risen from being a ghetto kid who ran from cops to a municipal administrator who was their boss. The ill-chosen words Murray used in a June interview with this newspaper may have typified a style the council members found offensive, but they certainly were not the stuff of firing offenses. The trouble is that neither are any of the other reasons offered by council members in on- and off-the-record interviews. We searched the newspaper accounts for legitimate reasons to fire a manager after 13 months, but the hunt was futile.

There were differences in “management style and organizational leadership.” For a time, there were complaints that Murray traveled too much--surely not an issue for Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who was away from the city 18 of her first 90 days in office. Some council members said he did not respond quickly enough to requests for information. Others griped about his helping Councilman Ed Struiksma negotiate a city land swap with the federal government, though that can’t possibly have bothered Struiksma, who was among those voting to can Murray. All we know for sure is that, as far as the City Council is concerned, Sy Murray just didn’t work out.

In Cincinnati, where he was city manager before being offered the job here, Murray was well-respected. Council members there say they were sorry to lose him and don’t understand what the San Diego council members wouldn’t have liked about him.

It seems unlikely that Murray has changed his style or has become a less effective administrator since he was hired. What seems more probable is that, with then-Mayor Roger Hedgecock handling the bulk of the interviewing and negotiating, the council members did not really know what they were getting in Murray.

Hedgecock, who is not easily intimidated by the strength or intelligence of others, left the council shortly after Murray arrived. And when the new city manager proved to be insensitive to petty political considerations and determined to fulfill his charter-designated role as administrative leader of the city, council members suddenly realized they didn’t approve of his “management style.” Murray’s departure is in part the price of a poor job done by the council when it hired him.

One can only imagine the tough questions the council members will have to answer from the next batch of candidates for manager, at least if they go after top people like Murray. How will they explain that, while they faulted Murray’s style of management, they could find no way of managing him other than to fire him?