Urbana Admin and Transparency

The News-Gazette editorial board commended Urbana Mayor Diane Marlin for making good on her promise to bring back and fill the city Administrator position. They did have a couple grumbles however on the process:

An open process
Search processes like these too often are conducted

in secret, on the grounds that many job candidates don’t want to be publicly identified as being interested in leaving their jobs to go somewhere else.

That can certainly be true. But other government job searches have shown that identifying finalists doesn’t lessen the quality of the applicant pool.

In fact, openness can benefit the process because, after all, sunshine is the best disinfectant. Let the public see how the finalists interact with citizens and stakeholders. Spread the word about who they are and see what, if anything, develops.

There’s no question that making the right hire is difficult, no matter how much effort goes into the process. Just look how often the seemingly ideal applicants turn out to be disappointments.

So, in that context, the more information that’s gathered the better.

Just one thing, though. Urbana officials could have been more selective scheduling the public forum for the four candidates. They picked the evening of March 20, primary election night in Illinois.

It also mentions the meet-and-greets (more information here) scheduled March 19-20 in addition to the public forum on March 20th in the full opinion.

Public Forum information: 

The City of Urbana will hold a candidates’ forum for the City Administrator finalists on Tuesday, March 20 at 6:00 p.m. at the ILEAS Training Center, 1701 E. Main St, Urbana, IL. Members of the Urbana community are strongly encouraged to attend and participate. The meeting will also be broadcast on UPTV (Comcast Channel 6) and available on the City’s website. Additional updates will be provided on this page.