Tarrant Regional Water District board revokes $300,000 payment to outgoing general manager
The Tarrant Regional Water District’s board of directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to revoke a $300,000 payment that had been planned for the water district’s outgoing general manager.
At a special meeting, board president Leah King said that the payment had been “unilaterally directed” by the former board president, Jack Stevens. King said that Stevens told the district’s human resources department to make an exception to the district’s paid time off policy and give more than 2,000 hours of extra paid time off to Jim Oliver, the outgoing general manager.
The directive would have allowed Oliver to cash in on an extra $300,000 after his retirement, King said.
“The compensation decision for Jim Oliver may be unlawful, the process may have been improper, and certainly, in my opinion, the decision was ill-advised and not reflective of the good and transparent governance that you should expect from this board,” King said.
The Tarrant Regional Water District provides raw water to a number of customers, including the cities of Arlington and Fort Worth. The district also oversees a number of other projects, including the years-long Panther Island/Central City project.
Oliver has led the water district for 35 years, and announced his retirement in March. That same month, according to King, the former board president issued the directive to allow Oliver to collect hundreds of thousands of extra dollars after he left.
At the time, Stevens had sat on the board for about 17 years, making him the longest-serving board member.
As the May 1 election neared, Stevens pushed for the board to hire a new general manager before the new board members could be elected or sworn in. And then Stevens lost his election, coming in last out of six candidates.
The soon-to-step-down board did not vote on the new general manager — but it made enough progress toward a hiring decision that the new board members made the vote the same day they were sworn in.
On that day, in mid-May, the board voted unanimously to hire Dan Buhman, the current deputy general manager. (Buhman will step into the top job on Thursday.)
Nearly a month later, on June 15, the board found out about the arrangement Stevens had made for Oliver. By then, Oliver had about two weeks left on the job.
At Tuesday’s meeting, King made a motion to revoke any exceptions to the paid time off policy that were made for Oliver, as well as any similar exceptions made by Stevens.
Stevens and Oliver did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 6:10 PM.
