Well, that went well.

Eight months ago, Sheila Hill-Christian was hired as Richmond's chief administrative officer amid smiles and plaudits. If she wasn't a savior in a power suit and pumps, she loomed as the best hope to bring a cease-fire between the Richmond City Council and Mayor L. Douglas Wilder.

"It is the right time, and you are the right person for the job," said Council Vice President Delores L. McQuinn.

But the gushing seemed over the top, the optimism forced. You could liken it to the wedding reception of a clearly incompatible couple. Imagine plastic champagne flutes held aloft in toast as everyone grins and thinks, "It'll never work."

It didn't.

It was the wrong time, and Hill-Christian was the wrong person. Which helps explain why she fled City Hall late Wednesday with a plant and her personal items.

"Gosh, who knows?" replied Councilwoman Ellen F. Robertson when asked what might have led to the sudden resignation. Robertson said there had been little conversation between the City Council and Hill-Christian.

Even City Hall, a place accustomed to political intrigue, seemed taken aback at the turn of events. But the real mystery isn't that Hill-Christian would leave, but why she would take the job in the first place.

Why would someone even as peripatetic as Hill-Christian leave her leadership post at the relatively stable Virginia Lottery for the barbed environment of City Hall? She had a greater chance of winning a $25 million Mega Millions jackpot than finding happiness in her new job, where she would be subject to the whims of Wilder.

And indeed, the 6-foot-tall CAO became the Incredible Shrinking Woman. A bureaucrat accustomed to being in charge became subordinate and invisible.

Despite her obvious attempts to keep a low profile, Hill-Christian could not avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

Speaking in late winter to a reporter on the tension between the council and the Wilder administration over whether money had been legally spent according to council-enacted ordinances, Robertson, speaking of Hill-Christian, said: "We shouldn't be hiring criminals to run this city." She later retracted the remark and apologized.

The CAO was also in the unfortunate position of having to defend Wilder after the mayor received an unjustified car allowance -- a transgression that cost Emergency Management Director Benjamin Johnson his job.

"I have the utmost respect for Sheila Hill-Christian," Robertson said Thursday. "I think [she] has tremendous talents, skills and leadership."

As for the abrupt departure, "If there is more to that story, then it's something that she will reveal," or choose not to, Robertson said.

In beating a path out of City Hall, Hill-Christian added to its surfeit of drama. After sending out a cryptic e-mail saying her ability to do her job had been compromised, she left a trail of silence.

In a somewhat wistful statement, she said leadership "directs a team or organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent." She looked forward to working collaboratively with nonprofits and the private sector.

Collaboration? Cohesive, coherent leadership? If that's what she wants, leaving City Hall was the right choice at the right time.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.