By Erica C. Barnett

Note: This post has been expanded and updated since its publication.

Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon filed a human-resources complaint against Burien City Councilmember Hugo Garcia earlier this year over a series of tweets Garcia wrote expressing concern about the number of high-level employees who had left the city.

Garcia’s initial tweet quoted a story in the B-Town Blog about then-Burien police chief Ted Boe’s testimony in a lawsuit challenging the city’s near-total ban on unsheltered homelessness, or “camping.” In his testimony, Boe said Bailon had demanded a new police chief after Boe refused to direct King County sheriff’s deputies, who provide Burien’s police service, to enforce the ban.

“🚩I’m concerned with continual departure of long time city employees since the arrival of our city manager and the interactions detailed in this article on how personnel [are] treated is a RED FLAG,” Garcia began, then listed four high-level employees who had left over the past 12 months.

“There is a good chance that our Chief of Police may too decide to leave sooner than later now too,” Garcia wrote. “Lawsuits, staff turnover, and deteriorating relationships [with] regional partners is bad.”

In his complaint, Bailon said Garcia had “made statements online that infer nefarious reasons for the departure of city personnel.” The city of Burien completely redacted the complaint, citing an exemption for “personal” information that would violate someone’s “privacy.”

UPDATE DECEMBER 16, 2024: After PubliCola appealed the redaction, the city provided an unredacted copy of Bailon’s complaint.

“I have submitted prior complaints against Councilmember Garcia due to prior statements made that were unsubstantiated, including a statement that work performed by the City ‘reeked of white supremacy,'” Bailon wrote.

“This is in addition to a verbal threat made by Councilmember Garcia in Fall of 2022 through telephone when he stated to me ‘if you start performing sweeps then you and I are going to have a problem.”

In 2023, Garcia commented that a proposal by other city council members to site a temporary homeless shelter in a low-income Latino neighborhood in order to keep it out of downtown Burien “reeked of white supremacy,” prompting Bailon to call Garcia’s statements  “baseless and slanderous in nature” in an email forwarding his complaint to Garcia. In the same email, Bailon suggested Garcia could be subject to “personal liability” in a potential lawsuit.

Garcia said Bailon claimed he was unaware of any concerns about high turnover at the city or the likely departure of then-chief Ted Boe. “He was like, ‘This is news to me. I’ve not heard that there’s an issue.'” Less than a month later, Bailon formally asked for Boe’s removal; Boe resigned to become the police chief of Des Moines in June.

After PubliCola posted this story on December 9, Bailon—who did not respond to our questions—ranted about PubliCola in response to a Burien resident’s letter to the editor of the B-Town Blog. After calling the resident a “a well-known and extreme political activist,”  Bailon accused me, by name, of supporting “the creation of a hostile work environment against subordinate public employees” and of failing to report on Garcia’s “slanderous statements” (which are quoted in this piece, although we do not agree they are slanderous.)

Bailon is apparently also still fixated on PubliCola’s reporting about his performance evaluation, which the city has refused to release. As we reported, the firm that performed the evaluation resigned its contract because, they said, the city wasn’t taking their recommendations seriously.

In his letter to the B-Town Blog, Bailon demanded to know why PubliCola hasn’t asked that “Councilmember Garcia release all documents related to any performance evaluations performed of him or his work while employed by King County.” (Garcia has not worked for King County since 2023). Bailon concluded by saying the lesson he learned from the Burien resident’s letter was that “I should exercise my right as a member of the public and submit my own request for public records to King County for all documents related to performance evaluations of Councilmember Garcia and his work.”

City councilmembers receive a “salary” of $750 but are essentially volunteers. Bailon makes more than $200,000 a year.

Garcia said he doesn’t know what, if anything, ever came of Bailon’s complaint against him. (The city of Burien has not responded to questions, but we’ll update if they do.) But he said he’s tired of being just one of two progressive council members, and the only one who is routinely shut out of internal meetings on city policy (sound familiar?)

Bailon told Burien staff and the rest of the city council that he would no longer meet with Garcia last September, despite the fact that Garcia—along with the rest of the council—is one of Bailon’s seven bosses.

“I have no support from the rest of the council or the mayor to get [Bailon] to act right,” Garcia said. “They’ve basically all shut me out.” He said he’s waiting until after the February election, when voters will decide whether to raise Burien’s minimum wage to about $20 an hour, before deciding whether to run again. But he said he’s come to believe he may be able to “do more good outside of the council, like I’ve been doing organizing and [working to pass] the minimum wage ordinance,” than on it.

The council has significant work ahead of it, including a planned levy to help address a growing budget gap and an ongoing debate over whether to slash the city’s human services budget in order to refill the city manager’s discretionary reserve fund.