Letter(s) to the File?

Yesterday afternoon it was discovered that there were apparently "2nd" personnel files maintained on select fire department personnel, in contravention to board policy and bargaining agreements, separate and apart from the 1 and only official personnel files kept downtown.  This was discovered as some disciplinary letters to file, apparently, "never made it" to either of these files--as they should have.  So this will get a thorough discussion later this morning....

As I begin the gathering of documents necessary to fulfill a public records request of me made by the paid firefighters union--a question percolates about whether or not "letters to the file" on three battalion chiefs that I have acquired are actually public records.  (these are in relation to some serious law, ordinance, and policy violations that apparently occured last summer in a fire house and for which nobody accepted responsibility or gave a cogent explanation).  As I have said multiple times, there is a massive, stunning, and unacceptable lack of leadership in the county's fire department right now, and sadly these documents appear to show more illustrations of this.  Like a rudderless ship without a chief for going on TWO YEARS!

According to the county attorney, these particular documents are public records.  But while I was ascertaining the "whether or not" determination about these documents in particular--it was brought to my attention that these documents were not actually ever even put in the official files of these three employess.

What?

Where were they, if not in the employee's official file, was my first and natural response?

"Uh, we're not sure--we thought these were put in the file.  But apparently they were not, they were instead given to the interim fire chief and he put them in his separate file and they never made it downtown."  Was the answer I got yesterday afternoon in my conference call.  What?

Here is the thing:  There should be, by law, ordinance, statutes, and under bargaining agreements---1

and only 1 official personnel file on each employee. The "we don't know what happened" answer isn't going to cut it here.

So later this morning during our agenda review I am going to bring this up for discussion.  This simply cannot be allowed to occur, this apparent system of 1 employee file with a supervisor or a department--separate and apart from the 1 and ONLY file that matters, the official employee personnel file kept in the HR office downtown.

So at the agenda review this will be discussed.  I will not release nor will I publish these three discipline letters to file on these three battalion chiefs if they are not offical disciplinary records/public records--so I have to discuss this and get answers first.

If they are, then I will publish them and also turn them over to the fire union's lawyer on behalf of the fire union president and secretary locally.  These would have more than likely sat in an unknown, unacknowledged "second" file had it not been for this union's self-directed public records request--so maybe this and the release of ALL the public records they have requested will be a good thing for our discipline processes going forward?

We shall see.  Hopefully the other board members will be as surprised and concerned as I am about this once they find out.