Employees have rights
But only on own time
Editorial: Vacaville Reporter
08/27/2008 07:29:42 AM PDT
What part of the First Amendment - "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" - does Vallejo City Manager Joe Tanner not understand?
Last week, as a bankruptcy court judge was finishing taking testimony about the city's financial state, Mr. Tanner issued an edict forbidding city employees from commenting publicly about the case. Instead, all media inquiries about bankruptcy proceedings are now to go through a public information officer who reports directly to Mr. Tanner.
"I want to make sure that what goes out is accurate and unbiased," Mr. Tanner said. "This is not to cut the press out, but to ensure accurate and unbiased information."
At this point, though, the only "accurate and unbiased" information will be coming directly from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento, which is deciding, among other things, whether the city could have used other means to pay its bills instead of declaring it is broke. It's a point that is being contested in court by city employees - the very people Mr. Tanner seeks to silence.
Mr. Tanner must think very little of the citizens of Vallejo if he believes they can't tell the difference between an official city position and the opinion of a city worker.
Certainly Mr. Tanner is within his rights to insist that Vallejo's city employees not spend work time responding to media inquiries about their opinions. Similarly, the city is right to tell workers they cannot make comments online via city computers or on city time, as Mr. Tanner instructed this week.
But that is as far as Mr. Tanner has a right to go. Public employees do not lose their First Amendment rights when they are on their own time. Indeed, it could be argued that they have a duty to keep the public informed of the situation as they see it, since ultimately that is who they work for. That is, after all, the reasoning behind "whistleblower" legislation that protects public employees who try to sound an alarm when their bosses would prefer to keep matters quiet.
There's no question that Vallejo's City Council and its city manager wish to control the flow of information. But they can't. Employees will still offer their opinions. They'll just do it anonymously, either asking reporters to protect their identities or posting their views, unsigned, on the Internet. When that happens, the city manager won't know who to set straight, should they truly be misinformed and not merely have an opinion with which city leaders disagree.
Until now, Vallejo's bankruptcy debate has been multi-sided, both from within and outside City Hall. Driving that debate underground, as Mr. Tanner's directive will do, is not only an assault on open government, but an unwarranted slap at the intelligence of Vallejo residents.
