Crossing a Dangerous Line in the Desert Sand

Let’s pretend that an American citizen, a resident of a local community, has concerns about what he believes is an inflated salary for a local city manager, who receives in excess of $253,000 in annual salary, as well as a premier benefits package that provides him with a city car, free gas, and a credit card, as well as top tier insurance and retirement benefits. As a concerned citizen, the local resident attends a city council meeting and, during the 3 minutes allotted for him to express his concern and ask questions, is verbally accosted by the city manager who tells him, in effect, to mind his own business. The local citizen, a taxpayer/home-owner/white collar professional, argues that it is he and the other local citizens who pay the salary, so he is well within his Constitutional rights to question it. Thus, according to the tenets of this country, it is his business.

Here comes the turning point: let’s also pretend that a pissed-off city manager takes his anger out on the citizen not just at the time he is questioned publicly, but also in a series of emails that are copied to various city officials. Then, he follows up with direct phone calls to the citizen’s employer, phone calls that result in the firing of the local citizen from his job at a local bank. After his firing, the former employee questions, “Hey, wait a minute! Why did you fire me for asking questions of the city manager at an open public meeting? What does one have to do with other?”

And that’s the question creating a fire storm of protest in the desert sand these days. Imagine that anyone who attends a city council meeting and questions the processes, the procedures, the decision-making – is fired from his/her job for doing so. Isn’t that a direct violation of one’s Constitutional rights? And the city council members who were copied in on the city manager’s memos never raised the question of, “Say what?” And the bank manager never realized that there would be blow-back from firing the employee?

Are people really this stupid? Do all people in positions of authority act with impunity? Have the American people strayed so far from the founding principles of this country that it has become okay for a personal grudge to turn into coercion that results in the firing of a private citizen for exercising his Constitutional right to the freedom to ask any question s/he wants to ask of a public official?

Afraid so.

At last night’s city council meeting, a week after the firestorm hit the media, the offensive city manager apologized half-heartedly for his lapse in judgment, but somewhere during the 3-hour closed door city council session, he either resigned or was fired; hopefully, he loses his very generous termination benefits. But that action does not address the city council’s complicity, nor does it hold the employer to account for his firing of an employee for asking questions in a public forum, nor does it get the man his job back.

Local citizens are enraged, but so what? Who cares? If it isn’t my problem, it isn’t my problem – you know what I mean. And the city manager did toss off a "sorry" after he realized how deep a pile of excrement in which he is not just standing, but created all by his lonesome. Who knows? Perhaps the bank official will contact the fired employee today, also offer up a "sorry," and offer the man his job back because the goal now is let's move on, people, before any more of the fit hits the shan.

Of course, anyone with half a brain can see the lawsuit train leaving the station. It may take decades, but heads are going to roll or deals are going to be struck to avoid the courtroom because there are some criminal actions involved in this mess, too. Where does it begin? With the complicit city council members who could have said “oh, hell no” to the city manager after receiving the alarming emails – but didn’t. With the bank official who was blackmailed into firing a valued, long-term employee? With the city manager who obviously grew much too big to fit his publicly-provided britches?

Or with a corporate attitude that is pervasive in this country and destroying our fundamental rights from the inside out? The Constitution allows citizens the right of redress, but that only happens if the power brokers allow it to happen. If it’s in the best interests of the top tier to stonewall, then the legal walls are built high and tight: woe be unto the little guy upon whom the foundation is laid! It does not matter if the little guy is right because might makes right, and being right no longer matters. Meanwhile, the now unemployed banker has to come up with the means to fight not just to get his job back, but to pay for the lawsuits that will come with it.

The Great American Way we do business is seriously flawed.