The muddy situation facing the city of Ellsworth, in which an employee is on leave as police chief but still in place as city manager, demonstrates why having one person serve in both roles may not be the best policy, according to a University of Maine professor.
In most cases, a city manager oversees the police chief and fields any complaints against the chief, whether the complaint comes from another city employee or a member of the public, said Mark Brewer, who chairs UMaine’s political science department. But when the city manager and police chief are the same person, it raises questions about how complaints about the chief should be handled.
“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with a list of potential concerns,” Brewer said. “It seems like a situation you’d want to avoid.”
Ellsworth officials have not commented on why Glenn Moshier is on leave as police chief, and only Moshier has said that the city is investigating a complaint against him. But everyone directly involved in Moshier taking leave from one role but still serving in the other agrees that the situation is complicated — and they have offered slightly different versions of how the arrangement came to pass.
Michelle Beal, chair of the elected City Council, said Monday that she does not have the authority to place Moshier on leave and, though the council as a whole might have that authority, it has not taken any action to do so. She said Moshier voluntarily took leave of his police chief duties in late December, but declined further comment.
Moshier said Tuesday that he would not describe his being on leave as police chief as voluntary, but that he supports taking leave from the role while the city is investigating a complaint against him, the details of which have not been made public. He said he is confident that when the investigation is complete, he will resume his duties as police chief and continue serving Ellsworth in that role.
“It’s a little complicated,” Moshier said. “I’m trying to do what is best for the city and to let the investigation run its course.”
What complicates the matter is that Ellsworth has no clear process for how to look into complaints about a police chief who also serves as city manager.
The city’s personnel ordinance says that it is up to department heads to determine discipline for employees who violate the ordinance, and it is the city manager’s responsibility to review unresolved employee grievances or, if warranted, to fire the employee.
The city charter gives the manager oversight of all departments and bars the council from interfering with the manager’s supervision of any employee. The charter also lays out the process by which the council can terminate a city manager or not renew the manager’s employment contract, but it says nothing about how the council can put a manager or any other employee on leave.
Also, Moshier’s contracts as city manager — both the one he signed three years ago and the 12-month extension the council approved on Monday — contain no provisions about how he is to be put on administrative leave if the city receives any complaints against him.
Moshier agreed last summer to step down as city manager after city officials got repeated feedback from citizens that one person should not hold both jobs. City councilors said Monday they hope to hire a new city manager within a couple of months.
Brewer said that there is nothing that prohibits a city or town manager from also serving as a police chief in the same municipality, but that such arrangements usually are intentionally temporary or occur in small towns of maybe a few hundred people where the demand for policing is relatively low.
Ellsworth, with a population of 8,400 residents, is not that small by Maine standards, and policing has come under greater scrutiny in recent years in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that gripped much of the country in 2020, Brewer said. Separating the two positions by assigning those roles to different people can prevent muddy situations when it comes to investigating a police chief’s conduct, he said.
“It’s probably not a great idea if you can avoid it,” Brewer said of having one person fill both jobs. “Ellsworth is probably finding this out right now.”
