The City Manager Brouhaha : Toledo: As city manager, Philip Hawkey cleaned up a financial mess but incurred charges of bias.

When Philip Hawkey became city manager here in 1986, he inherited racial problems, partisan political fighting and a city government characterized by mismanagement.

Despite his best efforts to improve the administration--he substantially increased minority hiring, tightened and reorganized a foundering bureaucracy, and cleaned up a housing mess that had led to a cutoff of federal funds--Hawkey became ensnared in the political and racial crosscurrents that flow through this Midwestern city like the slow brown waters of the Maumee River.

Now those problems have stretched west, threatening to scuttle Hawkey’s selection last week as the new city manager of Pasadena. The Pasadena Board of Directors voted late Tuesday night to reconsider their selection of Hawkey to replace retiring 17-year-veteran Donald McIntyre after a crowd of angry blacks cited Hawkey’s performance in Toledo as a reason to reject him.

Although Hawkey insists that he has made significant reforms, many of Toledo’s black leaders believe he has failed to be responsive to their community’s needs.

An examination of Hawkey’s record yields a picture of an embattled city manager struggling to overcome problems he inherited; making significant reforms and taking decisive action, but perhaps lacking in sensitivity in a community already divided racially.

Hawkey arrived in Toledo as the hand-picked candidate of then-Mayor Donna Owens, a Republican. His predecessor had lost $19 million in city money that had been placed illegally in a Florida real estate brokerage that went belly-up.

Hawkey came with the understanding that he would clean house and re-establish the city’s financial soundness, which he immediately set about doing. He also had to deal with racial problems.

His most vocal critic--who showed up in Pasadena Tuesday--is the Rev. Floyd Rose, pastor of Family Baptist Church.

With a fuzzy croak of a voice and a tendency to break out into high-pitched, mocking laughter in the midst of serious political discussions, Rose would seem an unlikely man to galvanize the black community. But in 1986, Rose grabbed headlines in Toledo when he organized protest rallies over a black youth who had allegedly been beaten by Toledo police officers.

Later, when three black teen-agers were arrested for the beating--and charges were dropped against two police officers who had been arrested in the case--the incident became known, Rose said, as “the City Park Incident or the Floyd Rose Fiasco.” The officers later filed successful grievances against the city.

Hawkey handled that first racial conflict well, Rose said, but there was more to come.

In a reorganization of city government that was one of his first major actions, Hawkey made eight high-level administrative appointments, none of them blacks or women, Rose said.

Responding to criticism of those appointments, Hawkey points out that five of his 14 top administrators now are black.

City job statistics show that the number of blacks in top administrative positions has more than doubled under Hawkey. The percentage of all minorities in top administrative positions is now 22.8%, compared with 12.7% when Hawkey took the job in May, 1986.

In addition, a city study soon to be released will show that blacks, who constitute 17.4% of Toledo’s population of 343,000, hold jobs in Toledo city government in a percentage above their representation in the work force, said Toledo affirmative action specialist Gloria Ruiz. But Hawkey’s image was formed with that first reorganization. That was the backdrop for what would become the most volatile racial situation of his tenure.

In June 1988, Hawkey discharged Pete Culp, a black administrator in the Community Development Department who oversaw $1.5 million annually in federal Housing and Urban Development money.

“There was a long history of disparate treatment toward black folks at City Hall,” said Councilman Jack Ford, the only black on the City Council. “The only area that blacks were given an opportunity to manage at the highest levels was Community Development. It was kind of seen as a black reservation.”

Given that history, many blacks were not persuaded by Hawkey’s explanation that Culp’s dismissal was necessary because HUD was freezing city funds due to what the federal officials called “gross mismanagement.”

Hawkey appointed an “Intervention Team” of city employees, who examined the housing fund files. The team found federal money had been given out, and no applications or documentation existed for many of the grants.

Some city employees had received federal money in violation of federal regulations. Also, applicants with high incomes that disqualified them from some programs had nonetheless received money.

And some prominent black activists were among those awarded money by Culp, including Rose and Lee Williams, head of the Toledo chapter of the NAACP.

An independent audit conducted later by the firm of Deloitte Haskins & Sells made similar findings.

Yet, Rose, Williams and other black activists rallied to Culp’s defense, asking for public hearings on the matter. They also argued that separate standards existed for blacks and whites in Toledo.

Whites, such as former city manager David Boston, who were caught in illegalities still escaped with pensions, sick leave and severance pay, said Michael Frank, Culp’s attorney. Other whites faced disciplinary demotions but retained city jobs. Yet Culp was dismissed, and all his benefits denied.

When their arguments failed to move the council, Rose and 12 other black ministers staged a sit-in, refusing to budge from the City Council chairs and forcing their arrest.

“We started raising questions, and we were totally ignored, as if we were nothing and nobody,” Rose said, explaining the reason for the sit-in. “You can’t just ignore people; something’s got to happen.”

The sit-in and arrests prompted hearings that December in Toledo by the Ohio Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The committee issued a report saying there were racial problems in Toledo.

In addition, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, through which Culp had filed a racial discrimination claim, found last August there was probable cause that Culp had been discriminated against. A hearing on the matter is pending before the rights commission, and Culp’s suit against the city is pending in federal court.

Meanwhile, Bob Dolin, HUD regional office manager in Columbus, Ohio, said Hawkey’s administration had cleared up the problems with Toledo’s management of federal housing funds. A yearlong freeze was lifted two months ago, and Toledo got $500,000 in HUD money, Dolin said.

Nevertheless, the Culp incident polarized black sentiment about Hawkey, Councilman Ford said.

Although some blacks, such as the Rev. Lyman Liggins, former pastor of the Toledo A.M.E. Church and now a minister in Cleveland, back Hawkey, “a lot of the black community just gave up on City Hall,” Ford said. “The damage is still there, as far as I can tell.”

A third element to Hawkey’s troubled tenure in Toledo has been the role played by the Toledo Blade, the city’s 150,000-circulation daily newspaper.

Co-publisher and editor-in-chief John Robinson Block, 35, a newspaper heir who sports moussed long hair and pinstriped suits, acknowledges that his paper covered Hawkey more aggressively and personally than it usually would cover an unelected official. “Most of the past city managers were technocrats,” he said. “Phil Hawkey had a personality.”

Block insisted that the newspaper had been fair and said his reporters have a tradition of aggressive investigative stories on Toledo issues.

On its editorial pages, the Blade has pushed for the past 33 years for a strong-mayor form of government.

Hawkey supporter and Republican party member Michael Murray contends that the Blade’s editorial position has spilled over into its reporting, with an outpouring of negative press on Hawkey.

“We have always had to fight the newspaper over the strong-mayor issue,” Murray said. “Because of that treatment, the negativism and the way the Blade is treating the racial issue in Toledo--making a mountain out of a molehill--we have undertaken a campaign to bring another daily newspaper to the city of Toledo.”

With the help of attorney Jim Godbey and Susan Hauenstein, a former president of the Toledo League of Women Voters, Murray has circulated petitions and solicited donations to find a newspaper willing to take on the Blade.

Then, last November, Owens was defeated by Democrat John McHugh, who joined seven other Democrats on the nine-member council in telling Hawkey to begin looking for a new job.

“Despite political and media onslaughts, we have had dramatic reforms in Toledo city government,” Hawkey said. “If the test is to hire people with no controversy, then it’s possible you could have someone who never did anything.”