I Pledge Allegiance…to My Posse

With the messy departure of the Sparks-Never-Pinned Fire Chief, Mark Lawson, and the informative, yet now pulled, video advising of his departure produced by Sparks City Manager Neil Krutz, we’ve been spending hours reviewing Sparks City Council meetings and other publicly available documents.

On Saturday, December 03, 2022, the city had their new fire chief at the parade. This image, found on Ed Lawsons Facebook page, shows the two quite chummy just days before he would be dismissed. Sources indicate Mayor Lawson was aware, at the parade, they would terminate the new fire chief two days later. Apparently the city found time to get him an embroidered jacket, but not to do a background check? That is a story for another day.

During the review of the meetings, we started to notice something about the Pledge of Allegiance in Sparks. The pledge is a daily order of business for the United States Senate and House of Representatives and hundreds of thousands of newly minted citizens who pledge allegiance each year during their United States naturalization ceremony. The snappy oath, written in 1892, was first printed in a 5-cent children’s magazine.

Unlike the City of Reno and Washoe County Commission, where often a random person attending the meeting, employee, or honoree, is asked to lead the pledge, in Sparks most times Sparks Mayor Ed Lawson has a city council member lead the pledge. This is where it gets weird.

You might say we are dedicatedly odd, being that we would spend this amount of time researching who was called upon for the pledge duties, however sometimes we just cannot believe what we are seeing. After reviewing some 45 Sparks City Council meetings, back to May 2021, we found a most interesting happenstance. Out of 45 meetings, Mayor Ed Lawson called upon Mayor Pro Tempore Charlene Bybee once, City Councilwoman Dian Vanderwell once, and Assistant City Manager Alyson McCormick once. This means ‘the boys’, Councilmen Donald Abbott, Kristopher Dahir, and Paul Anderson lead the pledge the other 42 times along with City Manager Neil Krutz, Assistant Manager John Martini, former City Attorney Chet Adams and City Attorney Wes Duncan.

According to Reuters in 2009, women presented only 24% of oral arguments heard by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Ten years later, according to a new study, things were a bit better with women making 28% of oral arguments in 2019. But really 4% in ten years? Is that truly better? In fact, Picon is unaware of any female who has ever been Mayor, City Attorney or Police Chief in the of the city of Sparks. To be fair, we found more than 30 years ago Sparks did have a female city manager. We also know that Washoe County has had a female County Manager, Reno has a female mayor and the Sheriff’s Office has twice had female Undersheriff’s.

Does Mayor Lawson just not think to ask one of the gals or is it his posse of male pals, the three city council members, and other high-ranking men that he thinks of first. Maybe this is implicit bias or maybe Sparks city government is holding onto the past, either way women elected officials and employees should be sought out for more leadership opportunities by the Sparks management team. Mayor Lawson previously named Councilwoman Charlene Bybee as Mayor Pro Tempore of Sparks, so we are thinking there is at least some vision in Sparks, but perhaps just not when it concerns the pledge.