[Posted Nov. 16, 2007]

Norfolk City Manager
Undaunted By Recent Fray

Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter
New Journal & Guide
 
       Three months ago, Norfolk City Council asked its City Manager Regina V.K. Williams to create an agency to help coordinate the city’s effort to combat crime and other nuisances. The request came just days after a young sailor was beaten to death by a group of teens in Ocean View.
       Instead of concentrating on just one community, Mrs. Williams decided to spread the power of a new agency around to help them all. She knew who could do the job: Alphonso Albert. And she said she got the Norfolk City Council to sign off on the idea.

Alphonso Alberto recently recieved support from the 200 plus men of Hampton Roads.
    

       For eight years, Mr. Albert had successfully run a small city-sponsored organization called Second Chances which helped ex-cons get their bearing after leaving jail. Through Second Chances, they had access to controlled drugs, counseling, job training and other support services.
       Albert understood these men. A felon himself, Albert had been convicted of drug charges and even murder during a dark past in the 1970s and 80s. Also, he was charged in a shooting incident in the early 1990s but was later acquitted. City Manager Williams knew most, but not all, of Albert’s past.
       Initially, Williams’ choice of Albert  for the job as director of the newly created Office of Public and Criminal Justice (OPCJ) was greeted favorably by council. But a front page article  in the city’s daily newspaper spelling out  Albert’s past brought the issue to a public firestorm.
Williams found her decision to  hire Albert to run an agency with a $98,000 salary being derided on one front and supported on another. Supporters claimed that much of Albert’s past was known and that criticism of the City Manager was racially motivated. Both Williams and Albert are African Americans.
In an interview with New Journal and Guide, Mrs. Williams said public criticism is nothing new for her. Cries for her ouster have been vocalized from various  political leaders and civic groups for several years based on a litany of poor management decisions they say she has authored.
Mayor Paul Fraim and most members of the council have stood by her.
       In a move to weaken public outrage and perhaps give council some breathing room, Williams decided to restructure the Office of Public and Criminal Justice (OPCJ) and give it a new name, the Office of Community Empowerment. It has the same mission of coordinating crime fighting efforts with various city agencies. The city is now seeking to hire someone to run that agency.
       Not backing down from her support of Albert,   she hired him for a new post as Manager of  Volunteerism  and Special Services, working to expand the city’s use of volunteers and coordinate the city’s efforts with faith based organizations and churches.
       “I continue to have the utmost confidence in Mr. Albert’s ability to provide a vital contribution to this organization in helping bridge staff, individuals and  organizations to provide  essential  services to its community,” Williams wrote in a  news release November 8, explaining the realignment.
While Williams’ detractors may have gained ground against her on the original Albert appointment, she has fought back and claimed a portion of the public debate on her decision, reputation and future.

        For instance when the first newspaper article gave the impression that Albert, a felon, would be “in charge of a crime-fighting unit,” and overseeing law enforcement officials in the sheriffs’ and police departments, Williams spoke up for herself in a letter to the newspaper’s editorial board that she requested be printed in its entirety and not subjected to editing.

Norfolk City Manager Regina V. K. Williams has been in office for nine years.

      She defined Albert’s role as working “in partnerships with citizens, businesses and community based organizations to enable neighborhoods to reduce crime and drug related activity.”
       Williams emphasized the job called for Albert to coordinate and not oversee, law and code enforcements as the paper had suggested.
       “OPCJ works with the  Police….Department, it does not oversee the Police Department.”
       Williams said that she take full responsibility for a litany of other charges awarded by her detractors.
        They include charges that officials of the former Olde  Huntersville Development Corporations, a nonprofit housing group, received and misused federal funding and allowed old historic buildings to be torn down.
       Also, Williams has been charged with not adequately seeking officials for city sponsored adult and youth sports programs, and for lack of foresight in preparing for the eventual demolition of the downtown Kirn Library to make way for the city’s impending light rail system.
       The local daily newspaper  has said that Williams’ performance is so suspect that the city council has been forced to “micromanage her office,” to save the administrative reputation of the city.
       In her interview with the New Journal and Guide, Mrs. Williams said that the city paper’s use of the term “city’s administration”’ was a cryptic reference to her.
       The hyped and controversial media coverage of her decision to hire  Albert  was stirred by what she and her supporters call elements on council and out in the community who resent her unwillingness to bow to their every whim and those who want to  “take her out”  under a cloud to ensure that she is so tainted she would be unable to find employment elsewhere.
       Mrs. William says unless she loses overwhelming support from members of city council and the community, she does not  plan on resigning, despite the list of decisions which have drawn criticism.
       “No,  I am not going to leave because some on council want a more subservient City Manager,” said Mrs. Williams. “I do have the support of Mayor Fraim and most of the City Council who respect my work. They know I have  worked hard to do what is right.”
       City Councilwoman Daun Hester, a staunch ally of Williams, says that the City Manager would like to retire from her current post and end her career  here  in her native region, “on her own terms and not being pushed out,” by those who do not like her management  style.
       William said she does not regret seeking to hire Albert for the job as head of the Office of Public and Criminal Justice (OPCJ) and that the only mistake she may have made “was misjudging the city’s sense of fairness and compassion.”
       “I thought that we had more  human compassion in our community for a man who had sought to redeem himself and change his life around for the good of the city,” said Williams. “I was criticized for hiring a felon to help the city’s law enforcement officials to fight crime. State and federal governments hire ex-convicts or gangsters all the time and use their expertise, effectively,  to fight crime with higher compensation.”

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