Now Open
Follow the money.
As the
cost rises, the questions remain.
Why is the county paying money to people the county fired?
What was done to these people that warranted payouts of $67,500 to date?
How much more will the county pay to others it has wronged and will the county take steps to make sure these wrongs do not happen again?
How much has the county paid to others in the past?
What was so bad that the county did not want to risk it coming out in court that it decided to spend the peoples money to keep it out of court?
Could it be some form of “Hush Money”?
In the Brown Act is the following.
4) Disposition reached as to claims discussed in closed session pursuant to Section 54956.95 shall be reported as soon as reached in a manner that identifies the name of the claimant, the name of the local agency claimed against, the substance of the claim, and any monetary amount approved for payment and agreed upon by the claimant.
The key words here are, “ the substance of the claim”. Another way to put that might be “What happened”? That’s all the people want to know.
Another part of the Brown Act states the following.
54959. Each member of a legislative body who attends a meeting of that legislative body where action is taken in violation of any provision of this chapter, and where the member intends to deprive the public of information to which the member knows or has reason to know the public is entitled under this chapter, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
The following opinions are a matter of record.
Public interest in monitoring how public funds are spent outweighs county's interest in keeping settlements confidential to discourage unmeritorious claims. Register Division of Freedom Newspapers v. County of Orange, 158 Cal. App. 3d 893 (4th Dist. 1984).
Public interest in monitoring government's supervision of public employees outweighs government's interests in protecting employee privacy, where employee misconduct is substantial rather than trivial and is confirmed, not merely alleged. American Federation of State, Municipal and County Employees v. Regents, 80 Cal.App.3d 913 (1st Dist. 1978).
The Redmond article can be read in part here. $30,000 paid to ex-county plan checker For the full story you will need to buy a copy of The Calaveras Enterprise.
A telling statement in the article is “the payment is not an admission of liability but a means of avoiding litigation”.
Are they serious? Companies do that sort of stuff all the time. It’s a way of keeping damaging information from getting out in the open. Governments should not do that. If they did it could lead to all kinds of nefarious behavior.
This is the bottom line.
Two employees were placed on administrative leave and were then fired.
They filed a grievance about something.
Closed sessions were held and it was determined that they should be paid compensation for these grievances.
That would indicate that the grievances were valid. Meaning that the county or an employee of the county harmed them in some way and they are entitled to just compensation. That is information that should be made public.
If on the other hand the grievances were found to be not valid the county should not pay anything and the information about the grievance should be held as private because it was not a valid grievance. ( Of course you would not pay someone for a grievance that was not valid.)
Is it possible the grievances were not valid but in presenting the case in a court of law other information that the county did not want disclosed would come out?
If that is the case then just tell the people the grievances were not valid and then explain what the payout was for. Not a hard thing. Just a truthful thing.
It might be time to go through the minutes of past meetings and look at all of those closed sessions concerning litigation and find out just who was paid what and for what reason.
After all, it is the peoples money they are giving away.
This will not be easy as it is clear that the county is going to operate under the "Law of Obfuscation".
Mike