Ex-Topeka city official fired from Shawnee city manager's job after masturbation scandal
Former interim Topeka city manager Doug Gerber was fired Monday as city manager of Shawnee in Johnson County, where a video of him masturbating had been sent anonymously to city staff.
Shawnee City Council members met for an hour behind closed doors in executive session before voting 7-0 to terminate Gerber's employment, said Doug Donahoo, the city of Shawnee's communications director, in a summary of the meeting posted on the city's website.
Interim city manager Doug Whitacre will continue to hold that position, Donahoo said.
Why did Doug Gerber become a focus of controversy?
Gerber, became city manager of Shawnee in March.
An anonymous third party in late September sent a video of Gerber masturbating on a couch to various employees in Shawnee's city government, the Kansas City Star reported.
That was not disclosed to the Shawnee City Council, however, until The Star filed open records requests with the city government in late October.
Per The Star's reporting, several employees received an email on Sept. 29 with a video attachment showing what appears to be Gerber filming himself masturbating on a couch.
The sender was then blocked by the city's information technology department, which later sent employees a message warning them that it had come from "a disturbed individual trying to cause issues with the city."
The Star made contact with the anonymous email sender, who declined to identify themselves.
"We don’t hesitate to expose people involved in these dubious and un-Catholic practices,” the sender wrote the newspaper.
What's Doug Gerber's Topeka connection?
After serving from 2003 to 2009 as city administrator for Beloit in north-central Kansas and from 2009 to 2014 as city manager for Goodland in southwest Kansas, Gerber in 2014 became Topeka's director of administrative and financial services.
He was promoted to deputy city manager in 2015.
Gerber became interim city manager after city manager Jim Colson resigned in October 2016.
He held that position until the mayor and council in August 2017 unanimously chose Brent Trout as city manager over other candidates who included Gerber.
Gerber returned at that point to being deputy city manager, a position he held until it was cut in 2020.
Trout left Topeka's city government at the end of 2021 to become county manager for Harnett County, North Carolina.
Contact Tim Hrenchir at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Former Topeka city official Doug Gerber fired from Johnson County job
