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Will he stay or will he go?
That's the question in Ogden a day after a Nov. 30 federal board ruling became public, ordering the city to remove Police Chief Jon Greiner for violating the 1939 Hatch Act.
The law bars government employees who oversee federal funds or are paid with them from seeking or holding partisan elected offices. Greiner served one term in the Utah State Senate from 2006 to 2010 while he was Ogden's top cop.
But the ruling by the federal Merit Systems Protection Board may not be a slam-dunk guarantee of Greiner's departure. Ogden appears to have several options.
Mayor-elect Mike Caldwell, who will take office in January, said he's weighing those options.
"We'll look at all the information and lay out everything and then make the best decision," he said. "We're not going to rush into anything."
If the municipality refuses to obey the order of the Merit Systems Protection Board, it could lose out on federal funds equivalent to two years of Greiner's salary.
That would be about $215,000. The city has 60 days from the Nov. 30 order to make that determination.
Ogden could also appeal the board's ruling to the U.S. District Court for Utah by Dec. 30. The case would then have to be adjudicated through the court system before any action would be taken.
Caldwell plans to meet with outgoing Mayor Matthew Godfrey on Thursday at 2 p.m. to discuss the issue, along with other transition items.
Godfrey and others have maintained that the Hatch Act is arcane and nonsensical.
"Many people I've talked to say it's tremendously unfair and ridiculous," Caldwell said.
Neither Godfrey nor Greiner has made an official statement since the ruling was made public Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Godfrey said Wednesday that the mayor continues to review the issue and will leave the final decision to Caldwell.
Greiner did not return phone calls Tuesday or Wednesday.
But his lawyer, Salt Lake City-based attorney James Bradshaw, said the law was "archaic" and the board's ruling "absurd."
"The Hatch Act has long outlived its purpose," he said. "To believe that Chief Greiner could affect an election through payoffs through federal grants is nonsensical."
Further, Bradshaw said, the merit board presented no evidence that Greiner did anything wrong. "There is no suggestion that he did anything unethical or that would call into question his fitness as a police officer."
The argument that the law does not apply to the chief's case is bolstered by the fact that the ruling by the three-person Merit Systems Protection Board was not unanimous.
In its ruling, the merit board said "it appears undisputed that, as Ogden Police Department chief of police, [Greiner] performed grant-related duties as a normal and foreseeable incident to his employment." The critical fact is that the grants "created a substantial relationship between Greiner and the Department of Justice," the ruling said.
But in a written dissent, Anne M. Wagner argued that Greiner does not fall under the Hatch Act because his "duties in connection with federally financed activity are minimal in comparison with other duties of his position. … Even if Greiner underestimated the time spent on grant-related tasks by a factor of 100, the percentage of his overall time devoted to these tasks would still be less than 1.76 percent."
That is far below the threshold of the law, she said.
Ogden relies on relatively small amounts of federal funding for its police department budget. In the department's $50.2 million budget for fiscal year 2012, only $501,225 is from federal grants.
Federal investigators told Greiner 21/2 weeks before the Nov. 7, 2006 election that he must either quit his job as police chief or withdraw from the state Senate race for District 18 in Ogden and northern Davis County. After consulting with his attorney and the Utah Attorney General's Office, Greiner decided he would still run, Bradshaw said.
What's next
P Mayor-elect Mike Caldwell will meet with outgoing Mayor Matthew Godfrey at 2 p.m Thursday to discuss whether Police Chief Jon Greiner should be removed from office.