Unalaska’s city manager fired the island’s director of ports and harbors Wednesday, despite threats of a forthcoming lawsuit.
Peggy McLaughlin had held her director’s role with the city for over a decade. Her attorney, James Davis, said the city is making a mistake.
“They're going to regret it. It's inevitable,” Davis said.
Davis is an attorney with the Northern Justice Project, LLC, an Anchorage civil rights firm that represents Alaskans in lawsuits against governments and corporations. They’ve taken up various cases against the City of Unalaska, all of which Davis said they’ve won or received substantial settlements for. Some of those include suits brought on by a group of former Unalaska Department of Public Safety officers who claimed they were either wrongfully fired or forced to quit due to a hostile work environment.
Davis said the city can expect a lawsuit early next week.
“We already have enough evidence in our possession right now that we know we have a solid case,” he said. “So if you said, ‘Hey, Jim, are you worried about some of these facts?’ I'd say, ‘Well, I've done hundreds of these cases. Sometimes I'm worried about some of the facts. Sometimes, I already have enough evidence that I know I could win the case. And this one of these cases.’”
City Manager Bil Homka presented McLaughlin with a notice of termination on July 9. He said that despite McLaughlin’s 13 years as director, he had lost confidence in her ability to fulfill the role.
He said she had neglected port facility maintenance, failed to provide effective communication and public relations, and showed a counterproductive attitude and a lack of leadership.
McLaughlin declined the resignation, requested a public discussion and responded to the city manager’s notice with a 17-page letter from her attorneys refuting claims about her poor performance.
The letter argues that Homka “directly contributed to operational challenges in Ms. McLaughlin’s department.”
Among those claims, McLaughlin’s attorneys also made several allegations in the letter about Homka’s misconduct. Her attorneys claim that McLaughlin had “been subjected to a pattern of racially biased, sexually charged, or belittling commentary about other employees, council members, and community members.”
The city council held a closed-door discussion about McLaughlin’s termination Tuesday evening. And on Wednesday, Homka fired her. Ultimately, the city manager is the only one with the power to fire the ports director. Still, the council can advise them on the decision.
In an email shared by McLaughlin’s attorney, Homka said he was terminating her employment without cause, as a courtesy and in recognition of her many years of service to the city.
Davis said it was a cowardly decision.
“We're going to conduct depositions of all the available people, including Mr. Homka, other people that are eyewitnesses or ear witnesses to some of the misconduct,” he said.
The city did not say whether or not they would be looking into the claims against Homka made by McLaughlin and her attorneys, but Davis said the city should take those seriously.
“There has to be some reckoning,” he said. “There has to be some serious evaluation of the concerns in order for the borough to move forward, because otherwise it's putting a bandage on an obviously problematic situation.”
Homka declined to comment on the situation.
