Damascus Needs Lessons In Hiring

By Bristol Herald Courier Editorial Board

Published: August 27, 2008

Damascus needs a lesson in hiring protocol after recently trying to lure another town’s clerk away to work, then rescinding the job offer while claiming a conflict of interest.

Gayle Karriker had been working as town clerk in nearby Glade Spring, Va. Earlier this month, she said she got a call from Damascus Mayor Creed Jones verbally offering her the same job in Damascus. She told a reporter that she was urged to quickly start the new job in Damascus, so she resigned her position in Glade Spring without giving standard notice.

But after she resigned, she learned there wasn’t agreement by the Damascus Town Council, and she didn’t have a written offer. Earlier this week, the Herald Courier reported Jones’ comments that Karriker lost the job because her ex-husband is a town police officer.

Town Treasurer Bill Pafford said if Karriker were to work as clerk, she would have access to the personnel file of her ex-husband, Patrolman Chris Shumate, and that the situation would create an unworkable conflict of interest.

Shumate had no comment to a reporter last week, except to say that he didn’t know Karriker had applied for the job. Karriker previously said she didn’t know her ex-husband was a Damascus police officer.

“Only in Damascus could it happen,” Pafford told the Herald Courier last week. “She didn’t know that he worked here. He didn’t know that she’d been interviewed. We didn’t know they’d been married.”

But this conflict was far from unmanageable and far from unique. It is commonplace for husbands and wives, and ex-husbands and ex-wives, to be employed by the same school division, municipal government or private company.

Clerks are tasked with managing confidential information, regardless of personal relationship. If proper controls are in place, this should never be an issue.

What was really wrong about this situation was Jones’ hurried telephone offer, apparently without full council approval, and Karriker’s willingness to jump without something in writing. Jones’ phone call, and Karriker’s overzealous reaction, combined to cost her both her existing job and the future prospect.

And for what? The $10-per-hour job was rejected as too low-paying the first time it was offered to another woman, Tuesday Pope. She has allegedly accepted the position now at $10.75 per hour.

Meanwhile, town records show that when former Clerk Tonya Triplett left to work for the town of Abingdon, she was earning $13.46 an hour after being employed by Damascus for seven years.