When the Public Feels Betrayed

A City Manager’s Way Back

Public professionals have the know-how to solve almost any engineering problem.

One thing that can't be engineered is public trust.

We're seeing this play out as data center proposals draw some of the fiercest opposition from people of every political stripe. Some of the reasons are easy to see: the strain on water and power, the constant hum, giant windowless buildings no one will ever live in.

But one of the most combustible reasons has nothing to do with the data centers themselves...

It's the sense, voiced again and again at public meetings, that residents feel “betrayed” by their own officials, especially those who signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with developers. And those agreements aren't uncommon. According to Bloomberg Law, one review found NDAs in 25 of 31 proposed data center projects.

When the proposal's details finally surface, residents don't just learn about a project. They learn that the people they trusted agreed (or were pressured) to keep the public in the dark.

Transparency is a hallmark of Consent-Building...

So we take a particular interest in learning when a sense of trust turns into betrayal, and what, if anything, can earn it back. The ruptured sense of trust reminds us of Mike, a student of ours and the retired City Manager of Golden, Colorado.

His story isn't about a data center, but it could be...

After learning the basics, Mike adopted Consent-Building as his public engagement strategy. It wasn't long before he saw the payoff, as he and Council worked through some of Golden's backlogged projects. Council and the community alike came to see Mike as a competent, responsible, dedicated steward of their city.

Before long, Mike earned so much trust it seemed he “could do no wrong”.

Trust isn't like money.

You can't store up a surplus and make inexplicable withdrawals.

Paradoxically, having a high level of trust doesn't protect anyone from a backlash. It only raises the stakes of such a backlash.

Buoyed by the success of implementing long-overdue projects, Mike turned his attention to future threats to Golden's quality of life.

At that time, Coors Brewing was the backbone of Golden's economy. Mike became painfully aware that if Coors was ever lured elsewhere, the town could face the same hardship it had when the area's mines closed decades before. He quietly shared this nightmare scenario with the City Council. But he veered from Consent-Building by not openly discussing it with the public at large (if memory serves us right, he did so because he didn't want to alarm the community).

So when Mike heard that the athletic company Nike, Inc. was scouting locations for its worldwide headquarters, he took a bold step and offered Golden as a candidate. As part of the negotiations, he signed an NDA and agreed not to tell the people of Golden about the prospect of having Nike come to town.

As often happens with secrets, word of the talks leaked.

Residents were dismayed not only that Mike had kept the negotiations secret, but also by some of what he'd been willing to offer Nike.

The reaction was swift and severe. Feeling betrayed by their City Manager, the public called for his resignation. Mike believed if people understood his reasoning, they'd want him to keep pursuing ways to strengthen Golden's economy and continue talks with other corporations, even if not with Nike. When Mike didn’t resign, residents demanded that Council fire him. But Council knew the backstory to Mike's reasoning and agreed he had to bolster the city's economic backbone, so they refused to fire him (without explanation of the reasoning behind the talks). That caused the community to feel equally betrayed by Council, leading to a petition to recall its members.

That's when Mike returned for advanced training and to understand what went wrong and how to use Consent-Building to earn back the public’s trust.

What we helped Mike do wasn't slick, it wasn’t PR, and it definitely wasn't easy.

Mike had to backtrack by sharing his thinking with the public, including the scary scenario he'd become somewhat obsessed with preventing: Golden's economic health continuing to be totally dependent upon Coors. He also had to openly acknowledge the damage he'd done to his credibility by signing Nike's NDA, without making excuses or blaming Nike.

Here are some excerpts from an email Mike sent us following the Nike debacle:

"I thought Nike's proposal was a good idea because of all the amenities such a company would bring, but many citizens felt I betrayed their vision of Golden. In retrospect, they were probably right; but at the time, I thought it was a good project for the economic health and quality of life of this community. I and City Council lost credibility during the time that Nike was an active issue, so we had to work overtime to regain lost ground."

"The year started very stressful and ended very successfully, thanks in large measure to your [Consent-Building approach]."

Mike’s missteps in communicating about his talks with Nike almost had a storybook ending.

Once he talked openly and honestly about what life in Golden would be like if Coors packed up their plant, the public appreciated why he’d been willing to keep the talks with Nike secret. 

Not only did the recall effort on Council come to a halt, but the residents reversed their sentiments about Mike and instead implored him to “never leave”! Instead of being ousted, Mike retired from his role as City Manager many years later. 

Mike did that by appreciating that the public’s trust can’t be engineered. It’s never a given. The public's trust has to be earned and re-earned every day. 

If your team finds itself in the position of feeling the need to keep things secret, whether through pressure to sign an NDA or in other ways, take a note from the hard lesson Mike and his Council members learned by considering how much that could cost you in terms of public trust and if you can really afford to let anyone feel “betrayed” by you and your team.