Guest column by Chuck Muth
If you have any sense of fairness and justice, you might want to take your blood pressure medicine before reading this week's column. Here's the Reader's Digest version.
A couple weeks ago, Citizen Outreach launched a telephone campaign urging taxpayers to contact Assemblyman Pete Goicoechea and voice opposition to his announcement that he was willing to negotiate with Democrats for higher taxes. And hundreds of Nevada citizens did just that.
On March 3rd, a public employee named Marge Griffin, who works for the Legislative Counsel Bureau (LCB), sent out an email advising legislative assistants on how to blow off such constituent calls by forwarding them to the LCB's main switchboard.
Well, a copy of Ms. Griffin's outrageous email made its way to me...and I, in turn, exposed to the public how this public employee was advising other public employees how to ignore phone calls from Nevada citizens. At which point Ms. Griffin reportedly blew a gasket, had a conniption and threw a major league hissy fit all at the same time.
She then launched an all-out witch hunt to find out who forwarded the email to me.
Griffin's investigation - conducted with Susan Furlong, Chief Clerk to Assembly Speaker John Oceguera - led to the conclusion that the "culprit" had to be GOP Assemblyman Ed Goedhart's legislative assistant who, for privacy reasons, we'll call Joan. And you're not going to believe what happened next.
Without warning...without explanation...without discussion...without even advising Assemblyman Goedhart in advance....Susan Furlong, LCB's Queen of Hearts, decreed: "Off with her head!" - and down came the ax. Adding insult to injury, Joan was "perp-walked" out of the building by two LCB staffers.
But the worst part? Joan didn't even do it.
Indeed, once I found out that Queen Furlong had canned Joan, I immediately swore out an affidavit attesting to the fact that Joan was not the person who forwarded the email to me and gave it to Assemblyman Goedhart, who in turn gave it to Ms. Furlong.
"I presented your notarized statement exonerating 'Joan' from any involvement in your article," Goedhart emailed me the next day. "She glanced at it for a minute and said that your statement didn't change anything and that her decision was final and not open for debate."
Not open for debate? You fire someone for something they didn't even do, and that's not open for debate? What kind of heavy-handed, iron-fisted banana republic gulag are they running at LCB anyway?
Even if Joan had been the one who forwarded the email in question, the public's business shouldn't be done in secret, even by the LCB. Joan's termination is outrageous - and it's time for Speaker Oceguera to right this wrong by rehiring Joan and extending to her an apology from Susan Furlong.
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Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. He may be reached at chuck@citizenoutreach.com.
2 comments:
Nice but sad article.
Are these employees at will employees?
I just can't picture this person who got fired having no employment rights.
I am certainly not for unions, but I have to admit that unless there is more to this story, that a union could have helped her.
Can someone explain why this is legal?
I believe she was an at-will employee. Theoretically, an at-will employee in Nevada can be fired for any reason, or for no reason.
In reality, that's not exactly how it works. There are a number of avenues provided for ex-employees to pursue action against their former employers. Unless, apparently, that employer is the Nevada state government.
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