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Time to move on.

That was the spirit of the Pima County Board of Supervisors majority Tuesday morning. They indulged the lone Republican member’s half-hour of questions about the last county administrator’s secret retirement, then were ready to put it behind them and hire a replacement.

It emerged April 4 that Chuck Huckelberry had quietly exercised his contractual option to retire, begin taking his pension and continue working as a contract county administrator — all of this nine months before on July 4. The fact that he retired and kept it quiet would be an explosive scandal now, except that Huckelberry was struck by a car while bicycling in October, seriously injured, and ultimately submitted his resignation, which was accepted April 5.

So, no more of this unpleasantness, right?

Not so fast. The supervisor, Steve Christy, who questioned the new county administrator, Jan Lesher, asked in part about a memo she wrote Friday, explaining how Huckelberry was able to keep his retirement quiet.

The key sentences from that memo: Huckelberry “instructed a limited number of staff to closely hold this information. Ms. (Monica) Perez did as she was instructed, as did the staff in Finance and Risk Management and Human Resources. The changes complied with all the rules and requirements of ASRS, county policies and Mr. Huckelberry’s employment contract.�

Supervisor Rex Scott emphasized the legality of Huckelberry’s move to retire July 4 and complimented the staff’s handling of the request.

“What I think is important is that the public knows that the employees who continue to work for Pima County comported themselves with the greatest amount of professionalism and integrity in dealing with this matter,� he said. “I don’t think I have any questions about how Ms. Lesher or anybody else currently in county government comported themselves throughout this matter.�

Scott is correct that the most pointed questions that remain unanswered should go to Huckelberry, who can decide not to answer them if he wishes, now that he’s no longer a public employee.

Supervisor Matt Heinz pointed to the obvious one when I spoke with him after the meeting.

“Anytime someone directs their staff to not tell anyone about something, I’m instantly suspicious,� Heinz said. “Why?�

But there’s still something wrong here, and it’s encapsulated in the phrase “closely hold� from Lesher’s memo. It’s not just the question of why Huckelberry wanted the information kept secret, but that he had the ability to issue such instructions about his own terms of employment and expect them to be followed.

The people in the chain of command were expected to keep Huckelberry’s secret, even, apparently, from the board that oversees him. He was the boss; they were the underlings.

Under questioning from Christy, Lesher said she had learned of Huckelberry’s formal retirement sometime after it happened on July 4. She told me later Tuesday that it was perhaps sometime around August.

“I believed that the board was aware,� she told me. “It didn’t occur to me to ask the board.�

That may be so. The signs point to Lesher being a good, competent county administrator going forward. But of course she, too, was in that chain of command, just below Huckelberry, whose instructions were like law.

And when Heinz proposed two measures that would ensure that nobody could retire quietly again, they didn’t get anywhere. One of the measures died for lack of a second from another board member, and the other morphed into a request to Lesher to bring back some ideas at the next meeting. She said she would.

Overall, there just isn’t much appetite to grapple with what happened at the end of Huckelberry’s reign.

Now, as that era fades, Lesher finds herself in his seat.

Later in the meeting Tuesday, the board considered a new contract for Lesher. It is based on the template that Huckelberry wrote for himself, but it removes some of the bells and whistles of Huckelberry’s compensation, cuts the salary and excludes the option Huckelberry had of retiring and resuming the administrator’s job as a contractor.

Perhaps the biggest sticking point was the reduction of total compensation, which Heinz put at a 30% cut, when deferred compensation and other benefits were included. Lesher’s base salary, $260,000 per year, is also $32,000 lower than Huckelberry’s last salary.

As Supervisor Adelita Grijalva said, there was a question of why Lesher isn’t getting equal pay for equal work. In fact, Heinz voted against the contract for that reason, as well as for the fact that the contract ends in January 2025, which is an awkward time for the board. It’s the first meeting after a new board enters office, which proved a difficult time to discuss a new contract when Heinz and others took office in January 2021.

Lesher said she is happy with the deal, though.

“I haven’t been county administrator for 29 years,� Lesher told me Tuesday. “I’m very fairly compensated for the work.�

It was refreshing to hear Lesher say that, and sound satisfied. It’s a sign that maybe there won’t be any new controversies about the administrator’s contract, adding to the old one that is still dogging us.