John Klimm, Madison’s city manager since 2022, is facing allegations from city employees of bullying and ineffective leadership.
In an anonymous letter sent to the mayor and city council on July 16, city employees alleged they have been “subjugated to a toxic work environment.”
The employees cited multiple actions, including threats of physical violence, extreme micro-management, vulgar outbursts, bullying and sub-standard communication by Klimm and preferred staff, favoritism, and ineffective leadership.
They further claimed that Klimm is a “lightning rod for divisiveness” and that he has created a “culture of fear and intimidation” where employees feel they must walk on eggshells.
“John Klimm has developed a culture of fear within many of us,” the letter read. “We are recorded and monitored within a vast assortment of newly installed cameras. Our perception is this has been done to limit our interactions and conversations with each other or others regarding the current environment.”
“Employees do not feel safe working under John Klimm’s management, and not one of us would dare speak out publicly,” continued the allegations. “We know that our character would be assassinated, and our livelihoods, whether short-tenured or long-tenured, would be stolen from us.”
The letter claimed several employees, including the city attorney, city clerk, police chief, and utility distribution director, had resigned or retired early because of Klimm.
The Lake Oconee News reached out to employees who recently left, but no one wished to comment.
Jamie Campbell, the wife of a Madison police officer but not a city employee, also recently made surveillance allegations against Klimm. She filed a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center earlier this year.
Campbell said Verizon Fleet Management devices were installed in city vehicles, including takehome police cars that received the first devices on June 24.
According to the complaint, Campbell’s Norton 360 security system notified her that her home network was compromised that same week. The notifications continued for several weeks, even when her husband reset their home router and changed the password.
Campbell also cited strange notifications from Facebook, and for a time, she was even locked out. While she said she couldn’t prove Klimm was behind the alleged surveillance, she said the devices were installed at his request with city funds.
“I know that everything I have right now is coincidental,” Campbell said.
Allegations against Klimm date back even earlier to previous cities where he worked.
Two separate discrimination complaints were filed against Klimm by African-American employees in Aiken, S.C., where he was city manager from 2015-18.
According to the Aiken Standard, former human resources director Nola Grant accused Klimm in a 2017 claim of subjecting her to a “hostile work environment,” where she was harassed, yelled at, and bullied. Grant said her initial complaints were met with “further hostility” from Klimm. She also said she was treated “less favorably” than her white male colleagues and paid less than them, too.
In a federal lawsuit filed in 2019, former public works director Michelle Shepherd Jones said Klimm and his successor, Stuart Bedenbaugh, discriminated against her.
Jones said they targeted her by monitoring her emails and holding secret meetings concerning her job performance with other employees. She also said she was secretly evaluated, and her white male colleagues were given preferential treatment.
Referencing Klimm specifically, Jones said she noticed he treated her as if her presence was tolerated rather than valued. Based on her interactions with him, she felt he didn’t want her to succeed. Jones alleged Klimm excluded her from essential meetings she should have attended.
According to the Standard, Grant’s claim was dismissed due to insufficient evidence, and she was given a right-to-sue letter. The city paid a settlement in Jones' case, and a judge dismissed the charges.
Allegations were also present in Aiken’s anonymous employee survey, which was completed in late 2016.
According to the Standard, several respondents urged Klimm to quit and said he was fostering a “hostile work environment.” They argued he was taking the city in the wrong direction.
“I am a city taxpayer and am profoundly disgusted with what I have seen in the last two years,” one respondent said.
Jane Page Thompson, a realtor and engaged citizen during Klimm’s tenure in Aiken, also shared her story with the Lake Oconee News.
She said Klimm promoted the Aiken Renaissance plan, which would have revitalized downtown Aiken with apartments, retail space, a municipal building, a hotel, and a parking garage. Thompson believed the Renaissance would make Aiken look like Anywhere in the USA, destroying the city’s historic, quaint character.
Thompson said the plan, which ultimately failed, came about in closed-door meetings with developers in Klimm’s office. The group of developers, called Advance Aiken, eventually sent anonymous mailers to city residents asking for donations without properly identifying themselves.
According to Thompson, Advance Aiken also backed a grant application by the local Association of Realtors, which skewed data to show a “distorted, bleak picture” of downtown Aiken. When Thompson asked to see the numbers backing the data, the realtors wouldn’t provide them.
When she brought her questions about Advance Aiken and the data to the local broadcast news station, her broker fired her the next day. Thompson alleged she lost her job and thousands of dollars in real estate commissions because of Klimm.
“My broker told me I had an hour to pack my stuff up and leave,” Thompson said. “My broker said John Klimm told her that if I stayed working for her, the city wouldn’t give her a fair shake to get some of the benefits from all the economic development that the Renaissance would bring.”
Thompson also shared comments city employees told her.
“The one thing said about John Klimm is he’s recording things in his office,” she said. “He is monitoring what his staff is doing, whether having chips in their cars or GPS tracking on their city phones. He’s also very good at finding allies and henchmen to either help substantiate his position or to carry out things he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty doing, but they all get back to him.
“He puts [employees] between a rock and a hard place. People are afraid to stand up to him or speak out against him because they fear losing their paychecks. They’re afraid for their families.”
Thompson remembers hearing from a resident in a previous town managed by Klimm, who shared a similar story.
“This nice man from Barnstable, Massachusetts, called me up and started telling me what happened in Barnstable. It was eerily similar to [Aiken’s situation]. I remember that day; I was just driving, and I remember having to pull over to throw up.”
The allegations from Barnstable remain unclear, but the Cape Cod Times reported that Klimm was offered an early end to his contract in 2011 after serving as town manager since 1999. Klimm agreed to a buyout package of around $347,330, including vacation time and benefits.
According to the Times’ report of executive session minutes, multiple subcommittee members and Klimm pushed for language in the final contract that said there was “no cause” to remove him from the position. That language was included in the contract, along with a statement that anything said to the contrary would be acknowledged as false.
Then-town councilor James H. Crocker Jr. reportedly said the negotiations were the only way councilors concerned about Klimm could get him to leave. In public comments regarding the buyout offer, one Barnstable resident echoed other allegations, saying, “Mr. Klimm [is] a lightning rod for divisiveness.”
“I’ve prayed that nobody else who loves the town they live in ever has to go through what we went through,” Thompson added in her own reflections. “It just hurts my heart to know that another town is falling victim.”
Klimm responded by phone that he would not comment on what he called “fake allegations.”
Madison Mayor Fred Perriman declined to comment on the matter.