Opinion ID: 2644933
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Managerial Problems

Text: By mid-August 2007, and not long after his promotion, DEQ staff began to complain about Onysko’s lack of management skills. In addition to personality conflicts, they offered comments about the untimeliness of his work and his failure to communicate effectively with customers. In mid-October 2007, Sinclair had two meetings with Bousfield in which they discussed these problems. The meetings were memorialized in two memoranda prepared by Sinclair. The October 12, 2007 memorandum noted that Onysko was a micro-manager who: (1) circumvented a district engineer’s decision-making authority; (2) damaged DEQ’s relationships with private engineers; and (3) insisted on gold-standard engineering, which made it difficult to meet deadlines and created the potential for -4- increased costs. The October 15 memorandum addressed Onysko’s failure to timely review plans and his insistence on following his interpretation of DEQ’s rules. The memorandum also mentioned an argument between Onysko and Wilde during a presentation to an outside agency. Sinclair noted two options, although he did not advocate for either outcome: (1) correcting Onysko’s behavior while allowing him to remain as a manager; or (2) returning Onysko to his previous job.