And here I thought the Edge-Wilcox tale was a sorry mess back on June 21.
Today, calling this ridiculous display of professional incompetence a “sorry mess” is giving it too much credit.
Thanks to the Robertson Report, we now know all the mind-boggling details of both David Edge and Gail Wilcox’s bizarre, spare-no-details relationship and the extramarital shenanigans between Wilcox and union negotiator/self-professed family man Tony Perry that ultimately cost the county’s two top executives their jobs.
If you haven’t read the report, I highly recommend you download a copy, because it’s not often you get an inside look at respected, accomplished grown men and women behaving in such a juvenile and irresponsible manner.
Through a litany of e-mails, texts and live conversations, attorney Sarah Robertson paints a picture of Wilcox as a needy, sex-starved, man-trolling wreck who seemed to simultaneously cherish and resent Edge’s constant advice, alternating from one to the other depending on her mood.
For his part, Edge seemed to thrill at living vicariously through the dramas of Wilcox’s sex life, often always teetering on the brink of intrusive creepiness.
Was Wilcox harassed? Probably, but she was also often an instigator and more-than-willing party to the talk. Her dismay, outrage and professions of fear simply don’t ring true, as Roberston repeatedly indicated.
In the end, at least Edge focused most of his time on merely listening and chattering like a gossipy schoolgirl. And I’m sure he very much felt he was her close friend.
It was Wilcox, though, who turned the talk to action, overtly scoping out dudes at professional functions, orchestrating out-of-town sexual rendezvous and eventually rekindling the romance with Perry from a few years earlier.
By the conclusion of the report, we’re left feeling dirtied by the flippant immorality of this trio, not the one of whom has much semblance of ethical character.
Wilcox is sleeping and blabbing around, husband and father of four Perry is engaging in an on-again, off-again affair, and wise (or wise-cracking) adviser Edge watches it all, amused and entertained until eventually ferreting out of Wilcox the truth of her latest tryst as he realizes just how great a threat to her career its conflict of interest has become.
It would be a disgrace if all this behavior was isolated and unrelated.
The fact that it became intertwined, that Wilcox’s romance-seeking collided with her professional duties as a deal-maker, is what takes this to the proverbial whole ‘nother level.
You can’t help feeling disgusted and saddened by it all at the same time, for the talent gone astray, for the damage to spouses and children, for the scar left on county government as a whole and all the good people who manage their work and lives in honest, respectable ways.
David Edge, Gail Wilcox and Tony Perry, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You owe the citizens of this county an apology.
I don’t know how well you’ll do at ultimately piecing back together the shambles of your lives and professional reputations, but that would be a great place to start.
Bill Morem’s column today has a poignant final line: With Edge making over $270,000 and Wilcox making over $220,000, I imagine this whole thing will force people to re-examine whether the taxpayers should be paying such generous salaries to its top officials.
It doesn’t matter how much a person earns … people are people. Love and friendship. Comfort and companionship. These are things all people not only crave … humans actually need to survive. Unprofessional? You betcha. Top executives SHOULD know better. But they’re people. And people, especially those in positions of power, think a little different the farther they get away from the minimum wage. Still, I think they’ve been shamed enough. If you’re interested, you can read up on what they did. It sounds like what we used to talk about in the quad at lunch back at Crawford High School. She did WHAT?! Their bosses finally resolved the matter. Edge and Wilcox lost their jobs. Get over it. Let’s move on.
As the old saying goes: “Sex takes the least time and causes the most trouble”
It’s understandable why Jim Grant would feel like he woke up in bad high school movie and want out. Funniest — and saddest — moment of the whole unseemly narrative for me was the footnote on p17. Wilcox and Edge spent dozens of hours talking about private, not public, affairs, including the lead-up to and followup from Wilcox’s night of sex with her Sacramento lover. She shared that with Grant, among others, and Grant’s succinct response was “OK, good for you.” He was polite enough not to say, “Why, exactly, are you telling me this?” and got out w/o prolonging the conversation.
Final thought: The aptly named Wilcox still might find work as a consultant for Pubic Works.