April 29, 2002 – Both the Water and Power Authority's executive director, Joseph R. Thomas Jr., and its board chair, Carol Burke, circled around rumors aired on a local radio station Monday morning that Thomas is about to resign his post.
"I have not resigned, I've not been asked to resign, and I'm not aware of any official change in my employment contract," Joseph said later Monday morning.
Burke said she had heard rumors concerning Thomas while she was on St. Thomas over the weekend, but "I have no notice that he has resigned," she said. "I don't know where these rumors are coming from."
However, Burke did say that Thomas's tenure will be discussed at Tuesday's regular WAPA board meeting on St. Croix. "This will be the first time we will be speaking to him about his tenure here at the authority," she said. "We are at the point of opening up a discussion. I have no notion how the board is going to go on this."
The radio report said that unidentified sources had confirmed "that Thomas wants to break contract with WAPA, strike a compromise, and depart." It continued, "other sources within the public utility say that the compromise negotiations may face tough sledding, primarily because Thomas wants to remain on as a consultant to the governing board."
Thomas said Monday he has no knowledge of any such compromise or contract. "I have no idea where that came from," he said. The report also said "it is anticipated that there will be widespread resistance among the seven board members to maintain any relationship with Thomas at WAPA once he resigns."
Thomas, who has been on the job as WAPA's chief executive since mid-May of last year, said he would not comment on the rumors. A WAPA employee contacted the Source last week, stating that the executive director was quitting. Asked for a response, Thomas at that time stated, "I am not resigning."
After successfully collecting between 90 and 95 percent of the $40 million in delinquent V.I. government accounts over the last nine months, Thomas has said the utility is financially stronger and better positioned for the future than at any other time in recent history.
That, coupled with what Thomas terms "substantive progress" in operating activities, including WAPA's first comprehensive 10-year capital improvement plan and finally getting Unit No. 22 on line on St. Thomas, have signaled that the authority is heading in the right direction, he has said.
However, the utility recently has been plagued with internal problems — which Thomas and Burke agree should have been kept within the authority.
First, on March 26, during a WAPA board meeting on St. Thomas, a group of employees staged a demonstration mainly protesting Thomas's management style. Soon thereafter, a senator circulated to the news media documents concerning expenditures for a condominium unit rented on St. Croix to accommodate traveling St. Thomas WAPA personnel and moving expenses from the mainland for the utility's new chief financial officer.
Thomas said on Monday that he has submitted expenses for the condo with his executive director's report at each board meeting since January. "They were neither surprised, nor was any expense deemed 'inappropriate,' with the exception of $3.31 for a cat treat, which was inadvertently included in the receipts," he said. And he repaid that amount.
Burke and Thomas disagreed initially on the $32,000 paid to Bob Lynch Moving and Shipping for Robert Vodzack's relocation from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, an issue aired along with the condo expenses by Sen. Norma Pickard-Samuel in Senate sessions and cited on Monday morning's broadcast.
Burke said board policy is a $6,500 cap on moving expenses. Thomas at first argued that the expenses were based on a negotiated contract, which would supersede policy. But in his April 17 "Executive Director Newsletter" to employees, he said he had "mistakenly concluded" that shipping provisions of his own agreement could be extended to Vodzack's agreement, which was modeled after his own. "I now know that conclusion was incorrect," he wrote.
He noted that the charges appeared excessive to him, but after he did some research, he found they were in line with what most major carriers would have charged. He said Monday that about 15 percent of the cost could have saved if the shipped items had been packaged differently, but "that information was presented after the fact." Further, he said in the newsletter, "we are seeking additional moving estimates." WAPA paid the bill under protest, he noted, stating that "if we discover that our payment was out of line, that we might seek redress."
Burke said issues to be addressed at Tuesday's board meeting have "nothing to do with Thomas's capabilities. We have no regrets about that; we went through the hiring process and he was chosen." She said the board needs to know if the needs of the employees are being addressed on a "day to day" basis. "We don't want to see that exacerbated," she said. "Having the right person at the helm is very important to us."
In a small irony, Thomas had earlier scheduled a public town meeting on St. Thomas for a week after the employees' demonstration. He invited all employees to the meeting to air their complaints before a panel the employees had believed would consist of board members. When board members failed to appear, saying they felt it was not their place to do so, many of the employees left the meeting. (See "WAPA parties have different takes on meeting".)
Thomas said in the recent employee letter that "ongoing employee issues are the matters of greatest concern to me … Although, after repeated attempts, I have yet to convince representatives of our largest union to sit down and work through out differences, I will continue to seek such a meeting" with the WAPA Employees Association and the other unions. "Neither management nor the unions can be permitted to dominate the other."
Previously, Thomas has stated that WAPA's "grievance process needs to be overhauled. Too many cases end up clogging the system, and it ends up being too slow. Many of these issues should be resolved before they get to the grievance process stage. I need to give the labor-management committee more power, maybe sit in on it myself. These things are causing unrest. We need to take a deep breath and start over."
Thomas said he was preparing testimony Monday for a Senate Government Operations Committee meeting Thursday on St. Croix where he has been invited to testify on WAPA's recent takeover of the territory's street lighting from the Public Works Department. Thomas has been seeking funding for the project. The committee chair, Sen. Emmett Hansen II, wants to establish four separate "District Street Lighting Funds" that would be funded from property tax revenues on the respective islands under his proposed Infrastructure Maintenance Act of 2001.
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