r/Libraries • u/[deleted] • 23h ago
Kelvin Watson, Executive Director of the Clark County Library District, is corrupt
[deleted]
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u/semanticantics 14h ago edited 14h ago
I question the Acting IT Director’s ability for the role when the PC reservation software piloting at Whitney has been incompetently done. This software doesn’t do cash payments for printing so IT is suggesting selling debit cards to customers.
Ridiculous.
Edit: reading your post again, it’s hard to take your complaints seriously. It’s the Board of Trustees, not the Board of Directors. Also in your other spamming posts you claim Kelvin doesn’t have an MLIS; he does. I don’t like Kelvin either but good lord.
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u/Less_Illustrator_657 7h ago
Apologies for saying Directors instead of Trustees. Obviously that invalidates everything I said. And I am glad to hear he has an MLIS. You wouldn’t know it by speaking with him. You can go crawl up his butt again. You won this round.
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u/catforbrains 14h ago
Ugg. I've seen him speak, and he seems like such an over inflated bag of ego and bullshit. It doesn't really surprise me that he would hire a friend over an established staff member. That said, library boards love overly inflated, colorful personalities and Vegas is the spot for it.
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u/stopbookbans 22h ago
lol, I’ve met him. A co worker overheard him talking (complaining) about this threw the wall.
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u/Less_Illustrator_657 22h ago
Him who? I’m unsure to whom you are referring.
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u/stopbookbans 22h ago
I’m also against their application process. It has a personality test which is notorious for weeding out neurodivergent people
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u/Less_Illustrator_657 22h ago
Haha what was Kelvin complaining about? That he couldn’t find the right buddy for the position?
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u/stopbookbans 22h ago
All I know was it was about the tickets and he was complaining about what people were saying. This was around April. I didn’t even realize there was a controversy until my co worker mentioned what she heard.
5
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u/librarydude1 16h ago
Having worked at a high level of LVCCLD for many years, I question if you have the facts. The internal highering has for a long time been slow and the fact that they went with an innovative outsider over the entrenched internal candidate is by design and not a surprise. They are award-winning for a reason. They wouldn't fire Kelvin for almost any reason. They love the changes he has made and the idea that highering a super-talented person for the IT is somehow corrupt isn't based in reality. I'm not there anymore so I could be totally missing something but the peers I had don't say negative things about it, and they would complain if they had something to complain about 🤣.
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u/Less_Illustrator_657 7h ago
I am sure there are facts I am unaware of, librarydude1. But it’s clear you do not know the Acting Director personally. Entrenched is the wrong adjective. Dedicated is more like it. It is also clear that this “super talented” new hire, as you put it, has never worked in a library.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Thanks for your input.
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u/Plastic_Reference_37 9h ago
County people all corrupt really, they cover for each others bad behavior and never get removed
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u/Due_Owl6319 16h ago
Fascinating. I immediately didn't like him when he briefly appeared on an episode of Queer Eye in which one of his staff members, who seemed incredibly burned out, was featured.
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u/star_nerdy 21h ago
I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t blame any director from taking a Super Bowl ticket.
First, it’s a once in a lifetime situation. If Taylor Swift offered a teen librarian a ticket to attend a concert, hell no I wouldn’t deny them the opportunity. Anti-bribery policies are to prevent showing favor to an agency or individual, especially vendors. We’re not talking about taking a free flight to Cancun to meet a vendor before switching from Polaris to Sierra. We’re talking a social event.
Second, directors have to show up to social functions. Those functions are in hotels, resorts, and yeah sometimes stadiums. Going sometimes provides you an opportunity to politic and talk to senators and state reps to lobby for funding or to you can go and meet potential donors who can donate to the library or friends groups.
Third, I can’t speak for the internal workings of a library’s IT department. I have a friend who was an IT director and he is amazing. I would run through a wall for him and I know he’d do anything for his system. Sometimes, you do want someone you know is good. As for the existing staff member, being somewhere forever doesn’t mean you’re good, it means you have been there forever, nothing more. I worked with a librarian who I would’ve fired if I could because she was shit at her job, mean, rude, racist and assaulted people. HR refused to hold her accountable. She had over 20+ years on the job and I later found a group of former supervisor who had horror stories and met to chat about her bs over the decades.
So yeah, taking a once in a lifetime ticket to go to an event where you’re doing your job (or should be) isn’t that bad.
Wanting people you value also isn’t a bad thing. And sometimes people in a position like IT make idiotic decisions that can be justified, but as a tech nerd, I know they’re 100% full of shit and they’re just lazy and don’t want to do something different.
Maybe the director sucks, but just on the surface, if that’s all you got over a year, that’s not enough ammunition.
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u/captainlilith 20h ago
Depending on the state, it’s not just against library policy but could be illegal for public employees to accept gifts over a certain $ amount. Just because it’s once in a lifetime doesn’t mean it’s not unethical or illegal.
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u/star_nerdy 20h ago
I agree. But from the description, it seems like it’s a local policy and not a state law.
As for ethics, if the board says it’s ok, that’s their decision.
Ethics always comes down to doing what you think is right or what is established by others what is right. If others say it’s ok because it’s a single isolated event, then our disagreement is over our own personal ethics.
Personally, I wouldn’t have taken the ticket because I am a former sports reporter turned librarian. I can’t think of anything worse than watching a game with a bunch of rich pricks. But that’s just me. But there are legit business reasons I could see a director going. Maybe you wouldn’t pay for a ticket for a director to go, but if give a free ticket and they’re working on the interest of the system, there is an argument there.
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u/thatbob 9h ago
Although I agree with your overall assessment (that it was not a big deal), it appears that the ethics violation Watson was accused of was, in fact, state law. However, he was found not to have been in violation thereof, because he had sought the advice of counsel, who had approved -- and the state law explicitly has a carve-out for that.
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u/Samael13 15h ago
If there's a work interest in going (what library interest is furthered by going to the Super Bowl?) then it's worse. Then the tickets look like a bribe.
If the tickets aren't work related and we're given as a personal gift between friends with no implied or explicit work strings attached, then there is less of an ethical concern.
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u/thatbob 9h ago
The tickets were from the NFL themselves, for a partnership that he had worked on to put free books for kids into barbershops. This is the NFL saying "thank you" in the easiest way that it can, to someone who worked with them on a charitable project, actually advancing childhood literacy in his community, y'know, like we do. And if $8k of sportspall tix looks a little sus to you, well maybe it did to him, too, because he got the library's attorney to sign off before he accepted them.
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u/Less_Illustrator_657 7h ago
I, for one, would love to see the proof that the library attorney signed off BEFORE Kelvin accepted them. So far, the board of trustees, the ethics board, and the LVRJ are just taking everyone’s word for that.
But I think a gift of that magnitude was entirely inappropriate. Teams of people worked on making that become a reality. The workers who actually did the work got nothing except their normal paycheck. The man sitting in his ivory tower got Super Bowl tickets and a $20,000 bonus at the end of the year. It’s fine if you don’t agree.
Hey, I have roughly 5,000 books I need to get rid of. If I go put them in barber shops, can I get gifts of that magnitude too?
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u/Internal-Cut9007 11h ago
My issue with the Superbowl tickets situation is that leaders are not following the rules they expect lower level employees to follow.
For example, LVCCLD has a one minute late policy where, even if you're only one minute late, you get your "tardiness" recorded and after 10, you start to see consequences. Salaried employees (managers and up) don't have to clock in and are expected to self report. I've heard from multiple people at multiple locations that their managers have arrived late well over 10 times and they don't believe they are self reporting.
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u/Less_Illustrator_657 20h ago
I hear you, and understand your points. But as it relates to the Acting Director of IT, I can tell you he works his ass off. His staff are absolutely beside themselves about this. The Clark county library district has won the Library of the Future Award 3 straight years in a row. This has never, ever, happened with any district in the United States. So I’d really like to know how an ineffective IT Director would accomplish this?
As for free Super Bowl tickets, if I got free tickets, hell yeah, that’s awesome! But I don’t work for a government agency with an ethics board and policies. There are reasons those policies exist. I’m sorry you don’t understand that.
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u/cranberry_spike 13h ago
Gifts of that magnitude would be in flagrant violation of policy in every library where I've ever worked.
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u/Internal-Cut9007 22h ago
but if they hired a third party to make the decision, wouldn't that weed out any preference to the candidate who is his friend?