POCATELLO — The Pocatello City Council could be at full capacity come Thursday evening.
Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad is expected to recommend the final two candidates for the Pocatello City Council during Thursday’s regular meeting at City Hall, according to the city’s posted agenda. The two candidates include Brent Nichols and Corey Mangum, both of whom will be sworn into office subject to approval from the current four council members.
Blad declined to comment on the two appointees ahead of Thursday’s decision, but City Council member Linda Leeuwrik told the Idaho State Journal during a Tuesday afternoon phone call that she approves of the vetting process and will cast her vote in favor of both new potential colleagues.
“I’m very much looking forward to having a full council again, I’m ready to move our city forward and get back to doing some good things for the city,” Leeuwrik said. “I know the mayor put in a lot of work and did his due diligence and the process was very thorough. There were a lot of applicants and he really looked hard at all of them and I just feel like he put a lot of effort into making the best choice that he could given the applicant pool. I know I’m confident in the process and therefore I’ll be supporting the people that he has selected.”
The Pocatello City Council was left without a quorum when half of its members — Roger Bray, Claudia Ortega and Christine Stevens — announced in August that they were resigning effective Sept. 1.
The mass resignation of half of the City Council followed months of divisiveness between the two council factions and weeks of ugliness following statements at two July council meetings by Bray regarding how the city’s lack of crime and diversity compared to some other communities should factor into the Pocatello Police Department’s staffing level.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Sept. 1 was then tasked with appointing one member to the council to restore the quorum. Retired Pocatello Police Chief Scott Marchand got the nod to fill one of the three vacancies.
Pocatello accepted applications for the remaining two seats between Sept. 1 and Sept. 9, garnering a total of 38 applicants, according to a city news release issued last month. On Sept. 26, the city announced that the list was shortened to 13 applicants.
Not much is known about the two most recent appointees in Mangum or Nichols, though the latter is the husband of Anne Nichols, the administrative services manager for the Pocatello Mayor’s Office and City Council.
Leeuwrik said she is unconcerned about Brent and Anne being related, telling the Journal that Brent has previously served on other Pocatello boards in the past and that both Anne and Brent were able to keep their city business separate.
“I don’t think that that is a conflict or that there will be a conflict,” she said. “I’ve worked with Anne very closely now for going-on five years and I can’t say I’ve ever worked with anyone more professional than her. Her husband’s been involved to my understanding on the planning and zoning board in the past and they have kept their business separate from each other.”
Pocatello City Council President Rick Cheatum provided the Journal via email with a written statement about the appointments on Tuesday evening.
“Making the decision Mayor Blad did in selecting Brent Nichols and Corey Mangum could not have been easy,” Cheatum said. “I know that he interviewed the names on the short list and made his decision based on those interviews. The Mayor understands the time, energy and dedication it takes to be a good member of the Council. I am sure the final choice out of all those candidates weighed heavily upon him.”
Cheatum continued, “I had several people talk to me about the position and most were surprised by the time commitment serving on the council requires. There are far more than three meetings a month at City Hall. It takes time away from family and work and requires sacrifice of personal time. For now, we need the Council to work together to continue to make our city the incredible place it is to live and raise our families.”
Cheatum said he believes there will undoubtedly be a perceived conflict of interest issue with the appointment of Brent, “whether it becomes true or not.” However he added that he doesn’t think there will be any actual conflict of interest.
“Anne has been in that position a very long time,” he said. “She has served with several mayors and is one of the most trustworthy people I have ever met.”
Heather Disselkoen, the co-founder of the local government watchdog group Pocatello for Accountable Government Entities, or P.A.G.E., provided the Journal on Tuesday evening with a written statement via email describing her thoughts on the appointment of Nichols.
“It is incredibly disturbing and troublesome that the mayor has selected a city council member (from a field of 38 candidates) with direct family ties to a current city employee,” she said. “Once again, this selection unnecessarily creates a situation in which ‘personal agendas’ or ‘private interests’ (financial or other) bring into question the impartiality of a council member during critical votes.”
She continued, “Votes with direct city employee impact such as wages, benefits, departmental budgeting and expenditures will be compromised by this conflict of interest. Citizens expect their City Council representatives to act for them and not for any select group, including city employees. Anyone with a direct familial relationship is subject to question and has, at a minimum, the appearance of bias potentially impacting their objectivity.”
James Stoutenborough, associate professor of American politics at Idaho State University, says he believes the optics of the appointment of Brent will inherently carry the possibility of a perceived conflict of interest simply based on the fact that the nature of his appointment was one that originated from the mayor.
Stoutenborough said it would only make sense for the mayor to appoint a person that would serve as an ally to him or other members of the council and that typically it’s rare for an elected official to appoint someone in which an adversarial relationship exists. To him, however, the idea that a conflict of interest exists or will exist is a moot point, considering it could have been avoided had Bray, Ortega and Stevens elected to complete the rest of the terms, which were set to expire in January 2024.
“To me, really, the larger story is that the three liberal City Council members put the city in this situation, right? Because ultimately, if they would never have stepped down, we’d never be in this situation,” Stoutenborough said. “So until January 2024 the city is going to have to deal with what should be a unified ideological government. For a good chunk of the population, they’re going to be very happy. For another chunk of the population, they’re going to be very mad and there’s nothing anyone can do about that. It’s the reality of the situation that was created by those three individuals leaving.”