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CITY INTENTIONALLY VIOLATES LAW?
A person knocked on my front door, and handed my wife a piece of paper. It was a legal paper. The title read: Complaint before the United States District Court, District of Oregon. Case number CV 02 940.
According to the document given me, Mayor Randy Peterson, City Administrator Brian Little, and Wastewater Superintendent Greg Zielinski are being sued by a former employee for allegedly violating State and Federal law, and then harassing and taking punitive action against this employee for refusing to participate in their illegal actions.
City Tort Liability covers all of these people, so if they lose, it will probably be City taxpayers who pick up the tab.
According to the brief, our City officials are being sued in the neighborhood of a million and a half dollars. I am sure that they are not panicked, since this is hardly the first suit the City has been hit with, and I suspect that it is hardly the last. A million and a half is pretty much pocket change for some of our players, but it does have the potential to make an impact on the pocket books of many of us who are City tax payers.
What exactly happened? Reading from the legal brief, it would appear that the City originally hired a person to serve as pre-treatment Coordinator. This person was to have the responsibility of implementing a pretreatment program. He was also required to enforce state and federal regulations regarding industrial wastewater discharge from some of the cities industrial customers.
His job was to make sure that the water was not toxic, diseased, or dangerous before the city discharged it into the Columbia. This was a very important responsibility, since the City's drinking water intakes in Columbia City are downstream from our City's sewer discharge.
According to the complaint, this employee stated that he was ordered to violate the law. He said that he was directed to take and use improper samples, and forbidden to disclose accurate information in his records. In other words, he was told to lie, and make sure that the records be "doctored" so that they would not show any actual
deficiencies.
Interestingly enough, our City employee (according to the complaint) refused to go along with them, and wanted to do things right. How did Peterson, Little and Zielinski react to this? According to the representation filed by the attorney for the former employee, they disciplined the man. The City suspended him without pay, gave him negative evaluations, and required him to attend counseling sessions. He (according to the complaint) was actually threatened with physical harm. One might say that our City officials went out of their way to create a hostile work environment for him. It is alleged in the legal document, that they did this only because he wanted the City to follow the law.
Mayor Randy Peterson, prior to this year, has always insisted on being given the responsibility of Public Works. For some reason, he has now given this responsibility to Keith Locke. Do you think that Mayor Randy knows something that the rest of us don't know?
One more parting shot: don't forget, this is not the only law suit that will be considered by the court this year against the City. Papers have been filed relating to the wrongful termination of Karen MacFarlane our former librarian. City residents may still have to pay, and pay and pay?.
My advice to all: it might be worth your while to invest in a good water filter. The water collectors that the city uses have enough sand and gravel to take out the big chunks. There may be more in our drinking water than what we bargain for.
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