Workers at the Kootenai County assessor's office continue to petition those in charge of the county for help, saying their boss gaslights and belittles them, blames others when things go wrong, and keeps tabs on conversations he worries could be about him.
The staff say they value their jobs and find their work assessing property important — after all, it's used to calculate taxes that help pay for things such as firefighters, water districts, schools, ambulances, highways and more.
But employees say things soured in the office after Béla Kovacs was appointed assessor in May 2020 following the death of the previous elected official. Newly released public documents show that Kovacs was a difficult manager during his tenure at Spokane County, years before he started working at Kootenai.
The same issues investigated in Spokane appear to have followed Kovacs east. Since his appointment, several staff have quit, citing Kovacs as the cause.
"You have created a toxic work environment, the constant belittlement and disrespect you give to me and other employee's [sic] is something I will no longer stand for," wrote Kathleen Clancy, a residential appraisal technician, in a Feb. 10 resignation letter to Kovacs, which was shared with the county commissioners.
Fellow residential appraisal technician Aubrey Hollenbeck also submitted her resignation on Feb. 10, saying Kovacs is the sole reason she's leaving a job she loves.
"Béla lacks the ability to support and lead staff, he causes frustration to the educated and experienced employees with his incompetence of the job, and he manipulates situations to deflect blame or responsibility," Hollenbeck wrote, later urging Kovacs to "do what's best for all involved and step down."
The recently voiced concerns follow a letter signed last spring by more than 30 of the office's 60-plus employees asking Kovacs not to run for reelection. After the office missed deadlines, the county's three commissioners also asked Kovacs to step down. He refused, and in August they slashed his annual pay from $90,000 to $45,000.
Similar complaints led to Kovacs losing his job as Spokane County's purchasing director in January 2018, according to an internal investigation that resulted in Kovacs resigning in lieu of termination.
Kovacs hired a lawyer to block the release of that investigation after the Inlander requested it and other documents from Spokane County with a seemingly simple question in September: Why did Kovacs leave his job? Even though he didn't win in court, Kovacs was successful in delaying the release of the documents until this month, three months after the November election that affirmed Kovacs would remain the assessor. (He ran unopposed on the ballot and won 75.9 percent of the vote, while a write-in candidate got more than 24 percent.)
Kovacs' current staff also requested the documents.
"Doubt and aspersions have been made to our collective character, our integrity has been questioned, false political motivations have been attributed, even Human Resources has suggested we get therapy," assessor's office employees wrote in a Feb. 14 letter to the commissioners. "We can relate to the sentiment Spokane County employees gave, 'the beatings will continue until morale improves!' Please assist us in any way you can."
When reached by phone, Kovacs initially agreed to an interview, but instead sent a letter on Monday, which was also emailed to county and state officials.
"The few unhappy [appraisers] claim that they work for the People. If that is true, then they need to start listening to the People who voted to elect me," Kovacs wrote in his letter. "The allegations made by these few unhappy appraisers are all without basis or substantiation."
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
The Spokane County human resources investigation started in December 2017, after Kovacs' superiors received complaints about his work leading the purchasing department, which handles millions of dollars of contracts each year. Kovacs started as director in 1999.
In one of several interviews summarized in a 22-page investigative report, senior buyer Bruce Price told HR that "there is little to no trust between staff and Kovacs," and said that employees feared retaliation if they were to speak freely with him. Price said Kovacs would lecture and talk down to people.
In one instance, after a Friday HR meeting between Kovacs and purchasing employee Melissa Parker, Kovacs went to her home over the weekend and demanded she turn over her keys and county identification card. Kovacs wasn't aware she had already taken a job in a different county department, and the HR employee familiar with the situation told him he acted inappropriately.
The investigation also describes how Kovacs held meetings where people would get handed a poker chip if they interrupted anyone.
"At the end of the meeting, whoever had the most poker chips would get an offensive emoticon posted outside your office for a week," according to the investigation.
In his 2018 response to the investigation, Kovacs wrote that he had spoken with his supervisor, John Dickson, then the county's chief operating officer, and learned of a similar tactic that had been used when Dickson worked at Boeing. There, the employee with the dirtiest work space would be given a "pink pig" award.
"It was never actually implemented — nobody was ever given an emoticon," Kovacs wrote in his response. "In hindsight, the idea to do some sort of award (like the pink pig or any version of it) was a bad idea and the idea to use poker chips was only done once."
Dickson says now that he never meant for the pink pig to be used as a tactic in the county office. It was an example from a very different time period and work culture in the private sector, he says.
Despite the fact he was the manager who put Kovacs on administrative leave during the investigation, Dickson says he really likes Kovacs and would hire him again. Just not for a management role.
"I would honestly say that I would hire Béla in a second as an individual contributor. He's a very detail-oriented person," Dickson says. "Sometimes, individuals like that are challenged, as I was initially, with the 'people' side of leadership."
Others interviewed for the 2017 investigation said that Kovacs insisted on keeping office doors open and would regularly hover near people to listen to their conversations. They said he struggled to make decisions, and asked his assistant to keep track of what other people talked about in the office, particularly if it was about him.
Kovacs later worked as a purchasing manager for the Community Colleges of Spokane, where he started in August 2019. As documented in public records, on March 27, 2020, Kovacs appealed "a dismissal notice" from that job to the state Personnel Resources Board. On May 29, 2020, the board dismissed his appeal because his position was exempt from civil service protections, the board's jurisdiction. By this time, he was already Kootenai's assessor.
Kootenai County's commissioners weren't aware of issues with either job when they chose Kovacs to fill the assessor role in 2020, and say they likely wouldn't have appointed him had they known.
NEXT STEPS
But now as an elected official, Kovacs is not subject to the same types of disciplinary action and termination if things aren't working out. It's up to Kootenai County voters to decide whether to keep electing him as the assessor.
Kovacs has sued Kootenai County to fight his pay cut, and started an online fundraiser seeking $45,000 for his legal fees — the same amount his salary was cut by.
"When I became the Assessor, problems were revealed and discovered in the way that the work was getting done (and not getting done)," Kovacs wrote in his GiveSendGo appeal for donations. "As I began talking about the issues and working to address them, my efforts were met with strong resistance and attacks on my character."
The site shows he raised $0.
Kootenai County Commissioner Bill Brooks says he has plans for if and when a judge finds the commissioners were within their legal right to cut Kovacs' pay.
"I hope the judge says we can, and the day they rule that, I'm going to make a motion to cut it in half again," Brooks says.
Former Commissioner Chris Fillios, who was on the board last year and voted for the pay cut, says they consulted with their legal team before making that call.
"We did make him an offer to depart but he chose not to take it," Fillios says. "We felt the only remedy available to us was that [pay cut]."
Brooks says he's sorry to see that Kovacs has struggled in the role, but with statutory deadlines missed and an exodus of experienced staff, the risk to the county outweighs how bad he feels.
"I wish he'd understand that nobody's out to get him. ... I want him to go get some help," Brooks says. "It's sad, but he's hurting people's lives."
The two technicians who recently resigned played a key role in gathering data used for assessments. New assessment letters are due to homeowners at the end of May, and some staff still in the office — who asked not to be named for fear they'll be fired — worry the county could again be looking at missed tax deadlines as resignations and firings have created a knowledge gap.
Fillios says that a recall is another option for voters. Alternatively, he says the issues could also be avoided in the future if voters were to change the county's form of government by adding more commissioners to the board and hiring a county executive. If the voters approve that setup (which they rejected in 2012), the assessor and other elected roles could be converted to staff.
If that doesn't happen, it's up to voters and the powerful Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, which hands out cards recommending who to vote for each election, Fillios says. He knows from experience how strong their influence is: he was not the KCRCC's chosen candidate last year and lost his reelection. The committee endorsed Kovacs in his race.
"It would seem to me that's the path they should take," Fillios says of the current board of commissioners. "Go back to the KCRCC saying, 'Look, you endorsed him, this is not working out, you should go public and demand he resign.'" ♦
