On July 24, Mayor Ashton Hayward is interviewed by WEAR TV reporter Amber Southard about his restructuring of his administration and the qualifications of his Chief Operations Officer. He misstates her salary and her degrees: “She’s very qualified, having an undergrad from Florida State and an MBA from the University of West Florida, so she understands government.†See interview.
COO Tamara Fountain that night sends Southard an email: “There is a bunch of stuff wrong in the story. I just watched story. I am not a CFO. My salary is wrong. My time with responsibilities is wrong. Schools.â€
When Inweekly called her about the segment, the reporter said that she called Fountain when she got the email. Southard told Fountain that she never said CFO in the interview. Fountain admitted that she personally hadn’t seen the interview but a friend had called her. Southard asked Fountain to tell her the corrections so that she should change the story. Fountain said she would email the reporter the corrections on Monday (July 28). No such email was received. Southard put in a record request for Fountain’s resume and personnel file.
At this point, Mayor Hayward should have gone back on WEAR TV and corrected the misstatement and defended his hiring of Fountain. If he had, it would have been a one-day story, no crisis.
Inweekly puts in a public record request for Fountain’s and Olson’s personnel folders. We have since learned that the PNJ had done the same. The city delays releasing the information for a week. Â Eventually, I asked the State Attorney’s Office to intervene on our behalf.
Delaying the release of the public information only brought more attention to the issue. By then, Hayward and Fountain should have been aware there was a problem with the WEAR TV interview. Still they remained silent.
On July 31, the daily newspaper publishes an editorial (Give Us True Transparency). The paper quotes the WEAR report about Fountain’s salary and degrees. It asks the mayor to publish Fountain’s resume on his “Transparency” page.
The mayor had another opportunity to correct his misstatements. If Fountain and Olson had hidden the public requests from the media for the COO’s resume, he now knew about it. Still he remained silent.
This week, the media began to get back information from FSU and UWF. Fountain attended Fall 1988 through Summer 1993 and Fall 2000 through Spring 2002, but no degree was awarded. She did not have a MBA from UWF. In 2008, she was awarded a Bachelors of Business Administration. The city finally released the personnel folders. The PNJ got the information first and published its story online before noon on Thursday. Fountain’s folder had no resume and showed a rapid rise to affluence and power (Living the Good Life).
The mayor refused to talk to the media. Letting his City Administrator Eric Olson and PIO Vernon Stewart awkwardly explain his misstatements and Fountain’s qualifications.
Fountain responds but her statement contains even more misstatements. She tries to say her email to Southard corrected the mayor’s misstatements. It did not. She says she met the qualifications for the job, but it is obvious that the job qualifications were written to fit her and aren’t consistent with those of a Chief Operations Officer.
Then she finally turns over her resume. It focuses on her “accomplishments” as Communications Administrator and COO, and only lists one job prior to working for the city. The resume misstates the time period she worked for that company, TWF LLC—which she owns.
Now Mayor Hayward has a crisis. Because the mayor hasn’t responded, people are wondering if he was surprised that his COO didn’t have a MBA. His weekly digital newsletter completely ignored the issue. On his Facebook page, he wrote about the Singapore Ambassador and:
Hey Pensacola! We’re featured in the August issue of Southwest: The Magazine, the inflight magazine of Southwest Airlines.
Head here-> http://bit.ly/1eVKbpb for the online edition!
This may become the case study on how not to deal with the media.