Fired Lexington Director Imhoff May Sue Board
The board of the Lexington (Ky.) Public Library fired Director Kathleen Imhoff July 15 after the five board members present (out of seven) voted unanimously to terminate her contract, which was set to run until June 2011. The action follows months of squabbling over the details of Imhoff’s expense accounts over the past five years.
News of the firing appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader the following morning. The dismissal came after a two-hour, closed-door meeting. Board Chairman Larry Smith declined to tell the newspaper why Imhoff was dismissed, citing a contract clause that allows her to be terminated without cause with 30 days notice. Imhoff was given one day to clear out of her office, and the board named LPL Director of Library Experiences Martha White as acting director July 16.
The newspaper also reported that Imhoff declined to comment but that her attorney, Richard Getty, said she has been treated wrongly and that “she will sue the library to get what’s owed her.” He said that amounted to her $137,035 annual salary and benefits for the remaining two years of her contract.
On the day of the firing, the Herald-Leader published an article in which Getty threatened to sue. “She has an enforceable contract, and I expect them to honor it,” he said. The article also contained anonymous comments taken from a 2005 evaluation of Imhoff’s work performance done by an outside consultant, which characterized her as “a difficult person to work both with and for.” Imhoff was told to work with the consultant “to learn about listening, building trust, respecting colleagues, and other skills.” Later that year the board gave Imhoff a 3% raise, and the next year her contract was renewed.
American Libraries talked with Imhoff July 21, and she explained that after six years as library director and “overwhelmingly positive performance appraisals,” she had been dismissed with no severance pay, leaving her little choice but to sue. “I am still more than willing to mediate this situation,” she stated, “and would prefer not to go to litigation.”
Getty said in the Herald-Leader that the board had held four closed-door meetings before firing Imhoff without explanation, allowing rumors to damage her reputation, and that board members had rushed her out the door in “an overreaction to escape critical newspaper stories and pressure from city leaders.” The library board is appointed by the mayor, who on July 10 replaced longtime chair Burgess Carey; early on, Carey had tried to diffuse the controversy and defend Imhoff.
Cautioning that the “complex story” of her firing was really one of “a newspaper struggling to survive” in a “political framework,” Imhoff told AL she was hired in 2003 to “implement fiscal controls concerning salaries, to curtail raises, and develop a board-initiated pay-for-performance plan.” From the beginning of the controversy, she has maintained that the Herald-Leader and the auditors never allowed her to account for the alleged expense abuses. “If you subtract supplies and equipment and travel expenses for other staff and board members from the $137,000 figure and divide by five and a half years, you have $12,578 of budgeted expenses,” she asserted, maintaining that no evidence of wrongdoing for personal gain has ever been produced.
Imhoff also told AL that she issued a “clarification” July 15 of that day’s Herald-Leader article for the staff, in which she stated that she had never been given an opportunity to answer questions. “When the auditors came and explained the purpose of the audit and its procedure, the Head auditor assured me that I and the library would have ample opportunity, before any report or preliminary findings were prepared, to give input and to answer any questions they may have,” she stated. “To date, I have not had that opportunity. I remain willing to answer any of their questions.”
Imhoff cited her positive evaluations and her relationship with the board. “Having to implement fiscal controls concerning salaries, curtail automatic raises and developing a board-initiated pay-for-performance plan with a staff unused to change was a challenge,” she e-mailed the staff. “Although the Board had approved redlining of salaries, the prior administration did not implement it. It is understandable that these financial changes were not popular with staff, but they were necessary to achieve economic stability for the library. Many changes have taken place in the six years since I became the executive director of this system, including two new libraries. Some of these changes have been easier than others. I am proud of our accomplishments and excellent service you provide. It is the outstanding staff that truly make this Library what it is today.”
Imhoff has produced a detailed account of all her expenses for the five-and-a-half year period in questions, but she told AL the board would not allow her to post it on the library’s website. With regard to the alleged credit-card abuses, her unposted statement explains, “It is important to note that this was not money spent on spurious charges—all of these expenses were part of the LPL operating budget for three years, covering six locations and all the departments within those locations. Again, there was no personal gain, and all expenses were within proscribed limits. The Library operates within budget every year.”
—Leonard Kniffel, American Libraries Online Posted on July 22, 2009.