Portsmouth’s city manager resigned Tuesday morning, hours before council members held a special meeting to discuss her performance.
Lydia Pettis Patton’s brief resignation letter gave no reason, but its contents, its timing and the simultaneous firing of City Attorney Solomon Ashby suggest she believed the council might fire her if she didn’t resign.
On Friday, just before the holiday weekend, Pettis Patton had temporarily removed Police Chief Angela Greene from her post amid controversy over criminal charges filed in the vandalism of a Confederate monument.
“Through prayer and reflection, I have decided that in the best interest of the city of Portsmouth, to step aside immediately as City Manager conditioned upon the city meeting (its) obligations owed to me under my contract,” Pettis Patton, 72, wrote in an email sent to council members about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. “I have served this city with honor and dedication and I want to leave the city as I came in 1986 with honor.”
Reached later at home, she declined to comment.
Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke said Mayor John Rowe had called for the special meeting earlier that morning — the city publicly shared details for the noon meeting with about three hours notice.
As they often do with hot-button issues, council members voted over both departures down racial lines. The white members, Rowe, Nathan Clark, Elizabeth Psimas and Bill Moody, voted to accept Pettis Patton’s resignation and to fire Ashby. The Black members, Lucas-Burke, Shannon Glover and Paul Battle, voted against both moves.
None explained their votes.
The council then unanimously appointed deputies for the ousted officials to temporarily fill their slots: LaVoris Pace as city manager and Burle Stromberg as city attorney. Both will get a 10% pay increase while serving in the interim posts.
Pettis Patton had announced last month that she would be retiring at the end of the year, having held the job since Sept. 1, 2015.
Her tenure has been marked with many controversies, the latest being over the police department’s handling of a June 10 protest at the city’s downtown Confederate monument. Police charged 19 people with crimes related to the event, including Democratic state Sen. Louise Lucas, despite Pettis Patton saying the police chief had been told not to investigate because of a conflict of interest.
As with many other political disputes in the majority-Black city, racial identity has been the dividing line. Lucas, who is Lucas-Burke’s mother, is one of the most powerful Black politicians in the state. A senator for 28 years, she is the chamber’s president pro tempore.
Crowds of mostly Black protesters have gathered in recent weeks by the hundreds to denounce the police department’s charges. Mostly white protesters — supported by a Virginia Beach attorney and gun shop owner, Tim Anderson, who is trying to oust Lucas from office and also facing a defamation lawsuit she filed — have gathered simultaneously in defense of Greene.
Hours after the ousters of two of the city’s top officials, the dueling protests continued Tuesday evening.
About 50 supporters of Greene — nearly all white — met inside the Commodore Theatre at 4:30 p.m. Anderson spoke, encouraging people to ask the new interim city manager to reinstate Greene immediately. He said he was happy Pettis Patton resigned because “no appointed official can give permission to people to break the law.”
Others there, including Commodore owner Fred Schoenfeld and 70-year-old Portsmouth resident Margaret Cotten, echoed the law-and-order message.
About an hour later, a group of 10 marched from City Hall to the Commodore to condemn racism and register people to vote.
Marquise Hunt, a social justice activist, led them down Crawford Street. He shouted into a megaphone that Rowe and Moody need to go. When they turned onto High Street, they chanted, “No justice, no peace.” Hunt said he does not think Greene should have ever been the chief to begin with.
When the activists arrived, Schoenfeld was outside. The group argued with Schoenfeld about Black Lives Matter and “all lives matter” until Schoenfeld went inside. The group continued to protest in front of the theater on the sidewalk underneath the marquee that said “Reinstate Greene” and “Patton Gone.”
A lightning rod
The city manager, who effectively serves as the CEO of city government, is often at the center of that division. Pettis Patton is the first Black woman appointed to the job and she joins a handful of other trailblazers to come into leadership here in the past five years. Ashby also is Black.
The Virginian-Pilot this year published a story in which nearly two dozen leaders from Hampton Roads to Richmond questioned how Pettis Patton is influenced by the city’s white council members. Some believe those white council members, who include Rowe, are quietly using the manager to promote their own interests.
At the time, Lucas told The Pilot that she wanted the mayor and city manager out. Both will be gone by next year. Rowe, 76, decided not to run for a second term.
Some of Pettis Patton’s most consequential decisions — including the forced resignation of former Police Chief Tonya Chapman — have drawn the ire of Black residents, activists and council members. She has routinely failed to explain her motivations, leading many to blame a deeply entrenched white power structure.
Now, the very council members who defended Pettis Patton’s performance after the ouster of Chapman — whose policing work has long focused on repairing law enforcement’s strained relationship with marginalized communities — are the ones who voted to accept Pettis Patton’s own sudden departure.
Council members gave no reason for backing Pettis Patton’s departure or firing Ashby. But Ashby had advised Chapman’s replacement, Greene, during a closed-door meeting not to pursue charges in the monument case because it would create a conflict of interest, Lucas-Burke has said. She and Pettis Patton did not specify what that conflict was, but Pettis Patton said she was surprised to find out police were filing charges.
Greene responded that she had an obligation to enforce the law. She said Portsmouth police had tried unsuccessfully to find an outside agency to investigate and that there turned out to be no actual conflict of interest.
Police announced the charges on Aug. 17, and Pettis Patton placed Greene on administrative leave 18 days later. Monday’s ousters came four days after that.
Staff writer Alissa Skelton contributed to this report.
Ana Ley, 757-446-2478, ana.ley@pilotonline.com
