Top Groningen official urged councilors to leak about official who wanted to dump municipality

The approach and questions caused “discomfort” among council members. They raised the alarm with Mayor Schuiling, who then whistled back at the top official. This is evident from WhatsApp conversations and emails that were requested by DvhN via the Open Government Act.

At least three council members were approached by a director of the municipality of Groningen on September 29, 2021 to leak information. According to the municipality, the council members received an audio fragment from an official with whom Groningen was in conflict at the time. This civil servant of Moroccan origin was sick at home during this period.

‘Share screenshots’

In the audio fragment in question, another director of the municipality of Groningen can be heard paraphrasing the municipal secretary. According to that fragment, the municipal secretary is said to have said that “there is always trouble with Moroccans” and that Moroccan and Surinamese employees should have a manager who “tells them: shut up, shut up”. The municipality of Groningen states that the recording has been manipulated. The city manager denies ever having said this.

Mayor Schuiling and the municipal secretary did not have the audio file and tried to obtain it in a roundabout way. They suspected that their sick employee had secretly shared the audio recording with various council members.

Groningen also tried to obtain screenshots of the alleged messages that this official allegedly sent to representatives. The top official responsible for personnel affairs was then instructed to bring this to light. This could possibly show that the man had shared the recording with council members, something he has denied.

Rapprochement ‘highly remarkable’

Councilor Yaneth Menger of the 100% Groningen party is one of the councilors who was approached by the top official. It didn’t give her “a good feeling,” she says when asked. That she, as a councilor, was approached with such a request, “I found and find it highly remarkable,” says Menger, who denies having received the audio fragment from the man.

Menger sounded the alarm that as far as she was concerned, this course of events was unacceptable. Menger soon received a message from the top official that “in consultation with the mayor and municipal secretary” the request was withdrawn.

The municipality of Groningen confirms this. A spokesperson said that the approach was not intended to make council members feel uncomfortable. The municipality wanted to collect information from the council members because it was “the only way to get here at that time.”

The spokesperson says that (actively) approaching councilors by civil servants does not happen often. There are no rules for that. Director Henk Boumans of the Dutch Association for Councilors says, just like Groningen, that there is no legal obstacle to contact between councilors and civil servants.

Councilor Menger, in turn, says she is an “independent representative” who does not want to be put in the driver’s seat of Groningen. She calls the request from the civil service remarkable: “As a council member, I have never experienced this before.”

Dismissed official: ‘Anxious feeling’

The civil servant of Moroccan descent involved worked for the municipality of Groningen from the beginning of 2017, but has since been fired. He claims to have been discriminated against and bullied within the municipality. At the end of last year, the court in Leeuwarden ruled that the municipality of Groningen was within its right to dismiss him. The municipality had made some mistakes, the court ruled.

The dismissed official said in a response that he was “anxious” that council members had been approached to find out information about him.

According to the man, there are “double standards”, because he was forbidden to approach council members. According to the dismissed official, the requested documents prove to him that Groningen was mainly concerned with “damaging him and then dismissing him”. Especially because the parties were still discussing with each other at the time about finding another place for the man within the organization. “They were apparently not interested in that, but they were interested in building a file against me.”