The Mayor and Ethics

Comment Up
The public workshop meeting last night was discussion on an Ethics Policy for Lake Worth. It started a few minutes after 6pm and was over in a few hours.

We have a present whistleblower case of which most of you are familiar. When it got to the whistleblower section of the ethics policy, the Mayor called these fired employees liars and said that they only did what they did to get their boss fired. Later the Mayor made a challenge after I asked him whether he thought what he said was ethical—He said, "if the whistleblowers don’t like that I have called them liars, they can sue me." Now I wish that Elaine had stepped in before he shot himself in the foot.

All legal cases are kept in confidence in the City of Lake Worth. The public is not privy to any details nor can they attend any meeting on legal issues. I would guess that the Commission has been cautioned about making any statements on pending cases. The Commission should be representing all of the residents here as well as all of our employees, not just management. This is why it is important to have a whistleblower policy.

The Whistleblower case is going to court anyway but this is just one more nail. These employees deserve their day in Court without being tried in a public meeting with harmful comments uttered by the leader of Lake Worth. What he said could very well be proven to be false and thereby be judged libelous, slanderous and defaming.

In total, three employees were fired in this case and two are suing the City of Lake Worth. Employees don't go forward with an allegation, subjecting themselves and their families to this ordeal without believing in what they say has merit, unless, of course, they are crazy. One was the Director of Engineering and the other was the Device Manager who actually discovered the breach and the tampered SCADA computer. It is a fact that federal agencies (for example NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corp) agree that what happens in Lake Worth has the potential of affecting the bulk power system in Florida. So, these employees took this very seriously as they should.

The only defense that the Mayor has in this instance is truth and he doesn’t know what the truth is. He is totally relying on management's assessment giving no validity to the whistleblowers credibility and has made an assumption that is based on management’s hypothesis. It has not been determined who is telling the truth here. The very fact that these whistleblowers have filed suit, makes the Mayor's remarks prejudicial, inflammatory, inappropriate and may very well adjudicate or settle the case conclusively in favor of the former employees.

In either case, it was unethical of the Mayor to make any remark in this instance and this is why we need a set policy so that all of us can understand what is and is not proper conduct.

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