On behalf of observers of Pensacola city government concerned about transparency, I worry that the repercussions of Tamara Fountain’s departure from city hall will have the opposite of the desired effect.

Let me explain.

One of the criticisms commonly leveled against Mayor Ashton Hayward’s administration is that it has become increasingly insular and dependent on a coterie of press handlers to manage perception.

Gone are the days of “Mornings with the Mayor,” when Hayward sat down with reporters to answer questions. There hasn’t been a “Taking City Hall to the Citizens” town hall meeting since 2013. Department heads are instructed not to talk to the media without prior approval from the public information officer, and often the word from the PIO is “no one will be speaking to you.”

Call it the “big politics” model. Candidates for higher offices know the importance of staying on message — and the risk of speaking extemporaneously. Off-the-cuff remarks lead to gaffes, which lead to viral videos, which lead to a much tougher re-election campaign. It’s easier to maintain a sanitized image if all communication is drafted and approved by committee before release.

Tamara Fountain helped cement that strategy when she joined the Hayward administration as a communication services contractor in November 2012, on the heels of a successful campaign for Judge Terry Ketchel.

One key difference, however, is that a mayor does not have the same resources as a governor or president, and we citizens naïvely expect our local politicians to put away their candidate hats after they’re elected.

With barely 50,000 citizens, the City of Pensacola already pays Hayward more than four times per capita what Mobile pays its mayor.

Add to that a full-time public information officer, speechwriter, social media consultant and several other staff positions that did not exist before 2011 (like the $115,000 a year chief operations officer position created for Fountain), and we’re talking some real money being spent to carry the mayor's message.

To many, this style of communication is not only expensive, but phony. If city leaders are in constant campaign mode, they’re not governing. (Editor Shannon Nickinson had some thoughts on this as well.)

Much has been written about the collapse of the Community Maritime Park leases, and the fact that the city’s negotiation-by-press-release tactics were what ultimately persuaded Quint and Rishy Studer to abandon their development plans.

“Leases are based on relationships,” Studer told City Council President Andy Terhaar in an email. “In a lease how the process is handled is a good indication of how a relationship would go after a lease is completed.”

More than that, for all the money being spent on communications, I would argue that citizens are actually less informed under this system.

Why? Because good news is heralded with great fanfare by the communications apparatus, while bad news is buried. Every new economic development prospect is touted via press release and photo ops, but if that prospect fizzles out, it's radio silence and a hope that no one notices.

Remember Majestic Candies? The Hixardt expansion? DeepFlex?

If the apparatus does acknowledge bad news, it's usually to tamp it down or spin it as a positive. When Goldring Distributing, a major employer located inside Pensacola city limits, decided to shutter its Pensacola facility and build a new, $18 million headquarters in Santa Rosa County, you might chalk that up as a loss to the City of Pensacola.

Yet Hayward spoke at the ribbon cutting and trumpeted it as a victory on his Facebook page. That's some Pravda-level doublethink.

In the months before the 2014 election, the line between Mayor Hayward and Candidate Hayward was especially blurry.

All the press releases sent from city hall started tacking on variations of the mayor's campaign slogan, "Moving upward." Photos taken by the city-contracted photographer were used in re-election materials.

The city website featured a document titled "City Scorecard: Promises Made, Promises Kept" that was thinly-veiled campaign literature, but was produced by city staff on the taxpayers' dime. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Fast-forward to “Résumégate.” While speaking to WEAR about Fountain’s new title and responsibilities, Hayward misspoke about her educational credentials.

“She's very qualified, having an undergrad from Florida State and an MBA from the University of West Florida, so she understands government,” Hayward told reporter Amber Southard.

Fountain didn’t actually have a master’s degree, but then, she didn’t need one. Ever since Hayward dissolved the city’s civil service department, many key staff members have been appointed to unadvertised positions with their job descriptions written retroactively to suit the individual.

So when Fountain told the media that she “met all of the requirements of the position,” and Hayward said that a master’s degree “wasn’t in the job description,” that’s a bit disingenuous, yes, but it’s accurate.

By most accounts, Fountain was an extremely dedicated worker who was very good at carrying out the mayor’s agenda. (To the administration’s critics, perhaps too good.)

But Hayward’s misstatement led to media attention, shining a bright light on hiring practices that had been obscured and largely unquestioned for more than four years. Fountain never lied on her résumé, but it’s the fact that she apparently never submitted a résumé that surprised people.

Citing “personal attacks” stemming from the scrutiny into her education and qualifications, Fountain resigned Monday.

What do we think will be the result of these events? Will the Hayward administration start dismantling its campaign-style communications apparatus?

Don’t count on it. This whole mess was triggered by an increasingly rare moment of extemporaneous speaking. If anything, the lesson learned is probably “let’s not do that again,” and we can expect a doubling down on press releases and ghost-written statements in the future.

But I hope not. I’d like to see a city government that communicates openly, without guile, and can be trusted to correct misstatements if and when they occur.