The Little Rock Board of Directors decided to forgo giving City Attorney Tom Carpenter a raise after his evaluation this week, instead opting to continue his review for 30 days so he could respond to a list of items.
The move is uncommon but not unprecedented.
In contrast, City Manager Bruce Moore was given a 1.5 percent raise and high praise after his evaluation Tuesday night. The increase brings his pay to $189,240.
Carpenter currently makes $146,798. The city attorney and the city manager also receive a car stipend and other benefits.
After more than three hours of meeting individually with Moore and Carpenter, and then among themselves, the city directors came out of a closed executive session about 11 p.m. Tuesday night to announce the decisions.
"We had a variety of issues we discussed [with Carpenter,]" Mayor Mark Stodola said. "The decision of the board is to continue that review for 30 days to ask that a plan be developed for the items that were discussed, and we will meet again in executive session in 30 days to discuss those items."
Stodola declined to provide more details on what the board wanted Carpenter to follow up on, but Carpenter said there were three items.
"I thought it was a fruitful discussion that we had," he said Wednesday. "There were some questions that they wanted me to address and show what had been done or has not been done on them.
"There were three things about equipment in the office and litigation options that they wanted a report on, and they wanted to make sure it was done fairly quickly, and so the evaluation was continued," he said.
The city attorney and the city manager are the only two city employees who answer directly to the board.
The two are evaluated once a year. They are asked to give a self-review of their work, and the officials are then questioned and instructed by the board on what direction they should take on particular matters.
Usually, both receive pay increases each year, except for years when regular city employees aren't given raises.
Board members historically don't publicly discuss personnel conversations that are had in closed session, other than a general overview and announcement of any official action taken.
Stodola said the board had high praise for Moore after his review Tuesday. When announcing the decision in public session that night, Stodola indicated that city directors talked about the issues of retaining police officers.
"We certainly want to say to the community that, in addition to all the hard work, Bruce obviously understands the challenges we have to try to keep our community safe and is moving forward with a variety of those projects that we are going to be hearing about toward the end of the month," Stodola said. "So a good report was given and granted and received by the board. ... The motion was to give him a 1.5 percent raise like the other [city] employees."
The board is to hear a presentation Feb. 28 about an audit of Police Department recruiting practices.
Carpenter has been Little Rock's chief legal counsel since 1991. This isn't the first time his evaluation was postponed and not completed in one night as scheduled.
In 2001, he didn't get the "usual quick stamp of approval" after city directors complained he was late in giving legal advice before a vote on the merger of the Little Rock and North Little Rock water systems earlier in the year, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article.
"City directors have picked at Carpenter for months about waiting until the last minute to give his recommendations. Some department heads have recently said they were waiting for Carpenter to respond to requests made over the summer," the article said.
The mayor at the time, Jim Dailey, said the board's questions were "primarily organizational." They had asked for more information on Carpenter's plans for improving the operations of his office before continuing the evaluation at a later time.
In the following years, Carpenter received gold stars from the board.
In 2010, Stodola announced after the annual evaluations that Carpenter had listened to concerns raised by the board in the prior year and remedied them, such as providing a weekly activity report to board members.
More recently, questions have been raised about Carpenter's management of his staff and caseload.
In April, a circuit judge fined the city $10,000 for not being ready for a trial. The attorney involved was subsequently fired, and Carpenter was chastised after advising the city not to pay the fine on time and to instead wait for the judge's decision on the city's motion to reconsider.
In December 2015, the Arkansas Supreme Court dismissed the city's appeal of a circuit court decision over the city's failing to follow rules. That resulted in the city having to pay a $510,675 judgment to landowners in an eminent domain case.
In that case, the state Supreme Court said the city didn't order and pay for a $1,500 trial transcript on time.
More recently, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox said in November that Carpenter regularly disregards court orders, and Fox required the mayor and city manager to attend mediation in a case. Carpenter has an ever-increasing track record of "flouting or avoiding" orders, the judge said.
At the time, Carpenter disagreed with Fox's interpretation of the matter and said he couldn't comment on the statements made about him, but he said the judge had never personally raised those matters with him.
Carpenter said Wednesday that Fox's comments weren't mentioned by the board in its evaluation of him.
Metro on 02/09/2017