I Can't Believe Someone would Sign Their Name to this Garbage

Someone has to clean up the disgusting mess of spilled jars of sauce on aisle 6 when they are dumped all over the place -----and the ones that dumped them and made the mess have left the store......

We had a tremendously disappointing issue in our EMS department a few years back.

A bad apple employee was running roughshot over subordinate employee due process rights. Vindictive, jealous, caustic, and tribal.

Folks were accused of things they didn't do, and the county has been playing "clean up on aisle 6" ever since.  To the tune of $Hundreds of thousands of dollars and counting.

All because the supervisors who were supposed to be in charge of the rogue bull in the china shop bad apple employee--------to prevent garbage like this from continuing-------- did not do their collective jobs.  Those now former employees who did not do their jobs then have all moved on, and we are holding the bag trying to fix the lives that were broken.

6 subordinate employees were targeted with a host of ridiculous assertions, accusations, and complaints to the state by one bad actor.  Lives were ruined, and of the 6 employees accused and deprived of due process and run out of the county--5 were never even prosecuted, never convicted of anything.  

We're fixing these past wrongs, just as we did for a former paramedic who was put through hell,  one by one.   Tonight on the agenda we will have another one we will make right.  

This one to the tune of $90 Grand.

I'm going to support it because I know what happened, how it happened, and how employees of the county in leadership, HR, and public safety FAILED MISERABLY to do right by the employees here in question at that time.  Glad those former supervisors are gone.  They stood watching a slow motion train wreck and did nothing.  

Now come ill-informed citizens in the peanut gallery sending garbage emails out telling us not to pay tonight to make this employee whole.

It is so ridiculous, I cannot believe someone would actually send it and sign their name to it.  

It is rank ignorance, arrogance and a lack of compassion for the "little guy" employees who had NOBODY standing up for them when they were having their careers ruined by a rogue employee supervised by a bunch of feckless do-nothings in HR, public safety, and the administrators office at the time.

Now it is up to us, those of us still around who know what really happened, to clean up the mess these former supervisory HR, Administrative, and Public Safety employees should have owned--regardless of a few voices of dissent piping up out of the woodwork today.  

Folks bloviating today just don't have a clue about what happened in the first place a few years back.

We'll clean up their mess and move on.

My Stolen Text Messages Are Irrelevant in Rayme Edler's Case

Even though the PNJ, with another ominous sounding headline on their front page edition this morning, wants my stolen text messages to be the center of their "story" on a former employee's qui-tam, harassment case against the county--the fact of the matter is that my text messages are irrelevant to this case.  

The PNJ's article conspicuously neglects to mention the fact that I am not an operational employee of the county, I am a member of the legislative.  I have no day to day management oversight of staff that bill for EMS services, nor do I have any power to direct, discipline, or control county employees.  Commissioners are legislative employees.  We only supervise, as a body, our attorney and administrator and individually our office assistants and interns.  The administrator and his staff do the day to day supervision and management of employees.  So the idea that my private thoughts and those of other citizens to whom I may have spoken to on a raft of issues, to include this former employee (who was a disaster in the opinion of many), has any bearing on this case is laughable.  It's a joke. 

Of course, PNJ knows this but doesn't report it. That would make a boring article, that's why.

The other fatal flaw with their front page piece and this directed attack on me purported to be news is that somehow my text messages are a part of the former employee's case of "harassment."  This argument, too, fails.  It fails because this former employee also made herself a public figure with public appearances, statements, and assertions to the board over and over about  her perceived issues in the EMS department.  She made herself a public official when she sued a local private citizen for speaking out against her and cost that citizen hundreds of thousands in legal fees.  This former employee made herself a public figure with her statements in the press and other places with wild allegations--the vast majority of which were extreme exaggerations or outright lies.  When you are a public figure, you are succeptible to unflattering critique--someone should wake her up and tell her this.  Comes with the territory and if the kitchen is too hot, one should consider leaving. She didn't.  That said-- Being an elected official and member of the commission, I have the right to ask any questions I want and speak my mind on any topic  I want related to county business, including disagreening with an employee's mistreatment of other employees and her dangerous, reckless disregard for due-process rights for county employees which cost the county taxpayers more than $300,000.00 thus far, and counting.  I can say and do this  according to recent rulings that describe such speech by a sitting commissioner as enjoying absolute immunity under state law.  Absolute, unqualified immunity.  (Just look up Judge Pitre's ruling in the Underhill case which was also per-curium affirmed at the DCA) Someone should show these rulings to Ryan and Steven Andrews, too.....absolute, unqualified immunity is what we have in these sorts of discussions and comments.

PNJ knows this, too, but they don't bother mentioning it.  They want to lionize this former employee,