ROGERS : Mayor’s stepson on fifth city hire
Posted on Friday, June 6, 2008
Mayor Steve Womack’s stepson is working for the Rogers Municipal Airport again this summer despite a history of unexcused absences from city jobs that led to three abrupt resignations.
Will Owens, 25, was hired May 29 for a temporary job mowing the airport’s grounds for $ 8 an hour.
According to previous supervisors and his personnel file, Owens resigned from the animal shelter twice after supervisors questioned him for not returning to his job after a break. He also stopped coming to work while a landscaper for the city’s Street Department, said Frankie Guyll, the city’s street superintendent.
Owens also worked for the airport in 1999, though city records from that job don’t exist.
Human Resource Director Gina Kincy said she didn’t know of any other city workers who quit abruptly then were rehired.
The city doesn’t have a policy regulating the rehiring of workers who have repeatedly quit, she said.
Rogers policy stipulates that a person can’t be hired if he or she has a family member who has “supervisory authority” over that person.
City Attorney Ben Lipscomb said Owens’ hiring could violate the city’s nepotism policy, since the mayor supervises all employees. Lipscomb said he wasn’t consulted before the city hired Owens.
Womack, who is in Little Rock for military duty, said he didn’t consider his stepson’s employment a violation of the nepotism policy. Womack is a colonel in the Arkansas National Guard.
The mayor said he recommended Owens for the job only after Airport Manager David Krutsch said he needed help keeping grass cut.
“I didn’t instruct David Krutsch to employ him,” Womack said. “I recommended to Krutsch that if he needed someone to cut the grass, then I knew someone who could do it.” Krutsch said he did not in- vestigate Owens’ employment background before offering him the job last week, and was unaware of Owens’ work history with the city.
“He’s been doing a great job on this out here,” he said. “We’ve had no issues. He’s been enthusiastic and done work we’ve asked him to do. He’s working hard.” He said he didn’t feel pressured by Womack to hire Owens. Guyll also said he wasn’t pressured by the mayor to hire Owens.
Owens’ employment history with the city began in 1999 at the airport. Records for that position aren’t in his personnel file and Kincy didn’t know why or when Owens left.
Owens was hired as a caretaker for the animal shelter in September 2004. He resigned from that position in March 2005 after he failed to return after a lunch break and a supervisor called him. The shelter rehired Owens in September 2006 and he resigned again in July 2007 in lieu of being fired after he walked off the job after lunch.
Before leaving the shelter in 2007 he was reprimanded twice in a six-day period for absences and tardies, and he was suspended for an eight-hour shift.
Messages for Owens left with Krutsch and Terri Womack, Owens’ mother, weren’t returned Thursday.
Womack said he didn’t want to get involved with the details of Owens’ employment with the city, but the mayor said Owens ’ 2005 resignation followed an arrest.
“He was placed under arrest,” he said. “I suppose you could say he didn’t return to work.” Washington County Circuit Court records show Owens was arrested in November 2005 for drug possession and in 2006 for failure to appear. He was arrested in March 2005 on conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine charges in Benton County, newspaper archives show. His employment paperwork included a certificate for completing the Washington County Drug Court program in March 2007 and a record of the court’s dismissal of drug charges. Owens’ former supervisors, Guyll and Rhonda DiBasilio, manager of animal services, said Owens did a good job when he was at work.
To contact this reporter: aotoole@arkansasonline. com
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