Delavan gets his job back

COEUR d'ALENE - On a 2-1 vote Thursday morning, Kootenai County Commissioners reinstated previously fired Coeur d'Alene Airport Manager Greg Delavan.

He also got an employment contract.

"To me it's not coming back" to the job, Delavan told The Press after the vote. "To me, I never left."

He said while he was off the job he went to all the important meetings on the airport and stayed current on the issues. He was fired in late October.

"I obviously haven't been at every meeting, but I've been at a majority of them," he said. "I would have done that whether I was coming back or not, because I'm committed to that airport and Kootenai County."

Delavan said the contract is a simple working agreement, and it doesn't lay out a term of his employment and can't tie the hands of a future board of commissioners.

"I'm not going to talk about the details," he said. "It's a couple of pages. It's a chance for me to look my new employers in eye and come to terms."

"I've looked at a lot of privileged information, and within that privileged information I found no cause for termination," Commissioner Marc Eberlein said after the vote. "I think Greg has done a good job. Our airport is very well-respected across the country. It's a model airport in many ways."

Eberlein said Delavan is a good fit for Kootenai County.

"We've got new personalities here at the board," Eberlein said. "There's probably been personality conflicts in the past that I'm not privy to."

Commissioner Dan Green voted "no."

"I think having an employee contract for anybody, whether it's Greg or anybody else at the county, flies in the face of our current Kootenai County personnel policy of 'at-will' (employment)," Green said just before the vote.

The at-will policy allows the county to fire anyone at any time without cause.

"I would not support having a contract for anybody, because that's setting a precedent for one individual which could be brought forward by others," Green said. "We may as well mend our personnel policy manual to revamp what we adopted a couple years ago," when the county moved to the at-will policy.

Only the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office uses a "for-cause" termination policy, which means a deputy would be given a reason for being fired. A deputy would have to violate a policy or commit an act the sheriff's office determined warranted discharge to be fired "for-cause."

Commission Chairman David Stewart said he found nothing to "substantiate the previous board's decision to fire him."

Since Delavan's firing by Green and former Commissioner Todd Tondee, Stewart said he met with numerous people to discuss the issue.

He said he spoke with county airport advisory board members, real estate developers, property owners, tenants of the airport, owners of aircraft at the airport and elected officials who have worked with Delavan.

He also reviewed Delavan's employee file.

"My decision to reinstate Greg Delavan became fairly easy," Stewart said.

Delavan was first hired 20 years ago.

"It's my belief that this is a unique situation," Stewart said prior to the vote. "Such an agreement (to reinstate Delavan) would have to be in writing."

Stewart said the threat of litigation makes this case unique.

He doesn't like the county's at-will policy, saying he would like to see it changed to for-cause.

"Happy employees make a happy company," Stewart said. "You're only as good as your worst employee."

Green said the county moved to an at-will policy to reduce liability.

Having a for-cause policy would create a process that would need to be followed to terminate someone.

"You set all these processes, and then if you don't follow the process you violate the due process - that's where you're going to write the (settlement) check," Green said. "If you don't have the process, you can't get called out on it."

John Adams, the president of Coeur d'Alene Tractor Co. and an airport advisory board member, said he supported reinstating Delavan.