Bristol Virginia Utilities officials say sons of former and current councilman are good hires

BRISTOL, Va. – Mayor Jim Rector is not shy about wanting local jobs for local folks.

So in April 2006, Rector welcomed the news that his son had landed a job at the municipally owned Bristol Virginia Utilities, of which he was then chairman of the board.

Jamey Rector, it turns out, is in kindred company at BVU: Two of his co-workers, Freddy Bowman and Brian Weberling, are the sons of a current and a former City Council member, respectively.

The utility maintains that each employee was hired in a competitive process, but could not confirm that their positions were advertised outside the company.

"Sometimes if we’ve got a good batch of résumés, then we won’t put it external because we’ll go through what we’ve got," said Wes Rosenbalm, BVU’s president and chief executive officer. He added that he does not have a record of "a lot" of the typical hiring process, which is largely conducted by phone.

"I can’t tell you on these what we did each time. I just don’t know," he said.

BVU’s personnel handbook calls for vacancies to first be posted internally for five days, but does not require advertising outside the agency.

Rosenbalm, who took the utility’s reins in 2001, defended his hiring practices and said no external influence or political pressure was ever applied.

"I can tell you nobody has ever told me to hire anybody, and I wouldn’t let them do that if they did," he said. "I’ve got a business to run, and we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the best employees in the position."

Rosenbalm declined to release résumés for his employees, but offered this glimpse into his hiring calculus: "If I know people or if I have connections that know the people, and I know their work ethic, then that carries a lot of weight with me. That’s how Freddy came."

It is not clear whether the city or BVU is at odds with state law.

Though BVU is owned by the city of Bristol, the utility is largely autonomous and receives no city subsidies or taxpayer money. The City Council exercises indirect authority over the utility, approving rate hikes and appointing members to its board of directors. The city’s unwritten hiring policy, which calls for advertising vacancies "as a general rule," does not apply to BVU, said City Manager Bill Dennison.

But the father-son relationships between the two municipal entities raise some ethical questions, legal experts say.

The existence of a family bond does represent a conflict of interest, said Andrew Wicks, an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and co-director of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics.

"There is some kind of conflict here simply by virtue of this relationship," Wicks said in a telephone interview. "The question is, was that conflict managed appropriately?"

The family relationship, he noted, "in and of itself isn’t horrible, and doesn’t mean bad decisions are being made." But it is appropriate, he said, that people in the community would "have questions and raise concerns" and for a leader to "clarify what steps, if any, are taken to ensure that bad decisions are not made."

But that is not to say BVU is operating out of legal bounds, said Mark Flynn, legal services director for the Virginia Municipal League. Unless an employer receives a direct economic benefit from hiring an immediate family member, who is financially dependent, the action is "probably, almost undoubtedly" legal, he said.

Though the family ties might "raise eyebrows," a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Common Cause said an applicant’s qualifications should be the key hiring criteria.

"Families of elected officials have the right to pursue what they want," said Mary Boyle, although she said municipal employers should have "very clear, posted, standard hiring practices."

Freddy Bowman started working for BVU as a tree trimmer on Sept. 24 at $20,800 a year.

Previously, he worked in maintenance at The Olde Farm golf course. When the position at BVU opened up, Rosenbalm said some of his employees who went to high school with Freddy recommended him as a good worker.

"So that’s how he got the job – knowing people inside of BVU that would vouch for his work ethic," Rosenbalm said.

He added, "I never spoke to his dad [City Councilman Fred T. Bowman] about him or anything else."

The senior Bowman, an insurance representative who was elected to the council in May 2006, confirmed that his son knew people inside BVU, and said: "I didn’t have a thing to do with it."

Two current council members, Jim Rector and Farnham Jarrard, and one former member, Paul Hurley, sit on the seven-member BVU board, which advises and approves the utility’s annual operating budget. The board hires a CEO, but personnel decisions are otherwise made by BVU’s management.

As board chairman from 2004 through 2007, Jim Rector considered himself well removed from hiring decisions. He referred to himself as "a nobody" in the hiring process of his son in April 2006 – just weeks before he was re-elected to the City Council. Rector stepped down from the chairmanship last October when he was elected mayor – a decision he insists was to avoid the "perception of too much control," although he acknowledges that his role on the BVU board has changed little.

"The board has nothing to do with personnel, and never has," Rector said in a phone interview.

He added that any suggestion "that I might have tried to influence the hiring of my son, that’s an insult to me, to him [and] to the utility people. It really is. Because I would never do that."

But had he wanted to, Rector suggested, he could have.

In addition to his roles on the City Council and utility board dating back to 1982, Rector was director of personnel for Washington County, Va., schools.

"Certainly, I could have had him an excellent job in the school system, you know," Rector said.

Jamey Rector, however, did not go to work for Washington County. The younger Rector holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and design graphics from East Tennessee State University and has started work on a master’s program in technology. He taught sophomore classes in mechanical drafting for several years at Virginia Highlands Community College, and worked a range of jobs – from customer service representative to gauge and quality technician – at Dana Corp.

When Dana announced the closing of its Bristol plant in October 2005, "I started throwing out applications for here and there," Jamey Rector said.

He did not tell his father about applying to BVU, he said, until he was offered a job. Jamey Rector works in engineering, provisioning and sales, and makes $45,320 annually. He said he does not recall who hired him, and Rosenbalm said he doesn’t know, either.

Although Rosenbalm said he does not have a specific memory of interviewing Jamey Rector or Brian Weberling, he acknowledges that he was actively involved in the hiring process – from vice presidents to customer service representatives – soon after he arrived in 2001.

That year, Brian Weberling was angling for a job in his hometown. He was newly married and had been working as a network systems manager for a printing company in Richmond for a year.

"I talked to my dad to find out if he knew of anything in the [Bristol] area that was technical in nature," Weberling recalled.

Doug Weberling, an optometrist who was then mayor of Bristol Virginia, knew BVU would be hiring 10 people for its new Internet initiative, OptiNet, and asked Rosenbalm if his son could apply.

At the time, the younger Weberling had completed one year in college before going into freelance computer work, ranging from fixing residential PCs to setting up networks for businesses.

Rosenbalm interviewed him, Brian Weberling said, and he believes the CEO was the one who offered him the job as a network support specialist. Weberling, who earned a business administration degree from King College last May, now makes $31,708 a year.

Doug Weberling, who has never served on the BVU board, was pleased.

"I was glad that [Brian] had the ability, and they had the need," he said.

"I told Wes, ‘If he’s no good, you can fire him.’ "

Staff writer David McGee contributed to this report.

dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558