Burien Divorce Court: City Manager Fight Could Cost More Than Severance | Perspectives

Burien Divorce Court: That Got Ugly
[Repost from Burien Voice Facebook Page May 4, 2026]

Burien is Strong Manager/Weak Mayor city, one of 53 across Washington. This model generally works well for small and mid-sized cities that have part-time councils and budgets that can be managed more efficiently by a full-time individual with broad authority and managerial experience..

When Adolfo Bailon hired on as city manager in Burien in the fall of 2022, he asked for (and got) a six months' severance pay package written into his contract. Such deals are not unusual in the world of strong-manager cities. You can think of them like prenuptial agreements. A prenup agreement is predicated on the idea that divorce happens and, should it come to that, it doesn't need to waste time and drain bank accounts. Instead of fighting it out in court – complete with drama – the divorcing parties can just go their separate ways, with a payout to one spouse and/or distribution of assets according to the terms of the prenup.

Had Burien simply terminated Mr. Bailon's "prenup" contract, they'd have had to pay him some $120K, and that would be the end of it. But for some reason, the Burien City Council, led by Mayor Sarah Moore, has decided to do an investigation of Mr. Bailon's job performance. This process will likely takes weeks and burn up considerable time and money that could be devoted instead to official city business. The purpose of the investigation is not clear, but I assume the idea is to let Bailon go with something less than his full six months' worth of salary and to have it on record that he was fired for cause, which will naturally impact his ability to find similar work in the future.

According to the Mr. Bailon's contract, he is eligible for severance unless he's been terminated "for willful misconduct, including but not limited to commission of any criminal." Willful misconduct is a high bar to meet, requiring that a person KNOWS that what he did was against the rules or otherwise not in the best interests of his employer.

I've been following Mr. Bailon's career in Burien since he started, and while he's done some impolitic things and has at times demonstrated rudeness and even incompetence, nothing he's done would rise to the level of "willful misconduct." If the Council tries to push the "willful misconduct" claim without strong and irrefutable evidence, we're likely to see Mr. Bailon digging in his heels and lawyering up, not just to get his full severance payout but to protect his future employability as a city manager.

Even if Burien gets to keep the full amount of Bailon's severance, that amount will likely be eclipsed by the money Burien will have to pay to lawyers to investigate Bailon and then defend their position in court. But perhaps Mayor Moore and the hardline anti-Bailon majority on the Council don't care how much of the taxpayers' money they spend, because it's not their money anyway. They're out to teach Bailon a lesson and that's the most important thing to them now.

Talk about "willful misconduct"....

How much the City pays to its contracted lawyers over this affair is a matter of public record, and we'll be reporting on just how much this Council-initiated quagmire costs and whether it produces a net benefit to the people of Burien.