San Francisco Chronicle, November 16, 1998
Disruptive Management Style Lands Legislator in Trouble
Speaker of Assembly says be professional, courteous, respectful
By: Robert b. Gunnison
By his own admission, Assembly Democratic leader Kevin Shelley of San Francisco has been a terrible boss.
Shelley's temper terrified employees in both his Capitol and district offices. Former staff members speak of Shelley’s mercurial moods, angry door slamming and rages over their spelling mistakes.
"I would actually hide from him" one fired staff member recalled. "I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown."
Now after an Assembly Rules Committee report on his behavior and a warning from the speaker of the Assembly, Shelley is promising to change his ways.
"I'm talking to people who are helping me with both my demeanor and my anger and to the extent that it gets misdirected," he said in an interview last week. "I've always been a hothead and had a temper, and I'm trying to better control that."
Shelley, who was married on Saturday in New York, said he is seeking outside help, although he would not say what kind.
Demanding bosses in the high-pressure world of the state Capitol are not new. Long hours, complex legislation and high political stakes do not create an atmosphere for the faint of heart.
But the number of informal complaints from Shelley’s employees and the high turnover of his staff prompted the Assembly rules Committee to hire a private $160-an-hour lawyer in August to evaluate the lawmaker’s performance.
Some of Shelley's employees fled his office before they were sacked.
As his reputation has spread, it has become more difficult for Shelley to find new employees, diminishing the effectiveness of his office.
As a legislator, Shelley has been a consistent supporter of organized labor, voting to improve working conditions. The incongruity, Shelley said, is not lost on him.
It runs counter to not only my whole approach as a policymaker, but also to my interactions with my friends, my family and my loved ones,” he said.
"I'm intense. It is the very thing that achieves great success for me, but I'm so myopically focused on it that the downside of it is it creates an unpleasant environment," he said.
The Rules Committee report, which has not been made public, prompted Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, D-Los Angeles, to talk to Shelley about his problem.
"You have to improve your performance," Shelley said the speaker told him. "I can't continue to have you lose staff because of an uncomfortable environment in your office."
Villaraigosa would not talk specifically about his conversation with Shelly, calling him "an invaluable ally." Shelley raised about $400,000 for Assembly Democrats in the recent election.
Shelley, who easily won re-election to a second two-year term earlier this month, has a reputation as an office tyrant going back to his six years on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
And despite critical newspaper stories and the urgings of colleagues and friends, the 42-year old lawmaker said he refused to change his ways until he fired one employee in August and another left his Capitol office the next day.
Moments after Shelley fired the worker, he pursued her into the third-floor corridor of the Capitol and stood in front of her as she tried three times to get on an elevator. The incident was recorded by a California Highway Patrol security camera, and the tape was viewed by The Chronicle.
Shelley will not talk about the details of the incident, except to say he way trying to persuade the fired employee to come back. "But I had just fired her," he said. "And that's the kind of behavior that's clearly unacceptable. I have to take full responsibility for it."
He said that the next day, another employee quit. "The combination of those two incidents really shocked my system and were the ultimate wake-up call to me," he said. "And that's when I took additional steps to try to improve my performance."
About the same time, the Rules Committee, which is responsible for operation of the Assembly, signed a contract with the Sarcramento law firm Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedmann & Girard, which specializes in employment issues. Emily Vasquez, a lawyer with the firm, interviewed some but not all Shelley employees, current and former. Her findings have not been released by the Rules Committee. Chairman Bob Hertzberg, D-Sherman Oaks, says he cannot do so because it is a personnel matter.
Records at the Rules Committee show that eight employees assigned to Shelley's district office and seven assigned to his Capitol office left during his first two-year term.
He has four employees assigned to his Capitol office and two in the district office.
In addition, Rules Committee records show that Shelley has seven more employees assigned to his office because of his status as Democratic leader of the 80-member Assembly. There has been little turnover among the majority leader's staff.
Former Shelley employees paint a picture of offices beset by an angry, irrational and intimidating boss who frequently warned that he could fire them at any time.
"I was a nervous wreck," said one fired employee who worked in Shelley's Sacramento office. "I didn't know if he was going to come in the office and explode."
Misspellings on letters or mistakes on the assemblyman's schedule could send him into a rage, several said.
"I can fire you. I can fire you at any time," the former staffer recalled Shelley telling her. "I took whatever I could seize and put it in my purse and got out of there as fast as I could."
Another worker said Shelley's habits worsened after he was elected majority leader this year. "He really went off the edge," she said. "He was under more stress and pressure."
She said there was competition among Shelley's employees to see who could leave first. "There was the May poster child, or the June poster child," she said. "Most people had resumes out. Occasionally, there was more than one a month leaving."
Now, as he enters his second term, having risen quickly to Assembly leadership posts, Shelley says he knows he must change his ways.
"I've done very, very well, but I cannot continue to perform well if I don't improve this," he said. "Without a sustainable staff, I cannot perform. And I haven't had a sustainable staff because of me and my performance as a boss."