I've been so caught up with the Sultana saga that I'm unable to bring you up to date about what has been going on in Northampton County over the past several days After Jeff Corpora was appointed by President Judge Craig Dally to fill the Council vacancy created by Tara Zrinski's resignation, it appeared the acrimony might dissipate. Wrong! Tensions were still bubbling under the surface, and there've been several minor earthquakes in Council chambers this past week. I'll be filling you in far more detail next week. For now, I want to tell you about the Council Clerk vacancy, which involved several ugly exchanges about a story from this very blog.
On Monday, I told you that 22 people have applied for the $107,482 a year Council Clerk position. I noted that only two people who actually work for the county applied. The rest are outsiders. Aside from Deputy Clerk Aline Shafnisky, I did not identify any of these people. But I could have because the public has every right to know who seeks public employment. Those are our tax dollars and we have a right to know how they are spent.
If I wanted to do so, I could file a Right-to-Know request today, seeking the names of every person who has sought county employment this year. There is nothing privileged or confidential about that information. The application itself is confidential unless the applicant is eventually hired, but the names of people seeking employment would have to be divulged.
My story apparently threw some Council members for a loop. That's because Council President Lori Vargo Heffner refused to share the information with anyone, even the members of the committee tasked with going through the applications. She claims to be concerned with protecting the privacy of applicants, but that concern betrays a complete misunderstanding of the Open Records law and the need to be as transparent as possible in government.
As Judge Damon J. Keith once warned, “[d]emocracies die behind closed doors….When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation.”
Vargo-Heffner should certainly have disclosed the identity of all 22 applicants to her fellow Council members and was wrong to keep this to herself or get worked up in a lather because a member of the public had it.
Ron Heckman seemed to also think that the identity of public job applicants is some sort of state secret. "It's a personnel issue," he protests. The identity of an applicant or proposed salary is no personnel issue. It is a matter of public record.
They're both simply wrong, which is kind of scary because they both should know the importance of transparency in government, even when it comes to the hiring process.
Knowing who is in the running for one of the highest paid positions in the county might trigger some red flags.
Council member Ken Kraft was bothered that Vargo-Heffner decided how to seek applicants without getting Council members to vote on it. He was especially irate that she unilaterally changed the job description without the approval of five members of Council. Kraft said he probably would have voted for the procedure used or the change in job description, but Vargo Heffner never gave Council the opportunity.
"Last I looked, we didn't elect a Queen," he snarked. She insisted that the Clerk position is a "private personnel matter," but there is nothing private about a Council Clerk. Her disciplinary record might be confidential, but who her identity is absolutely public.
At one point, the duo began talking over each other and Vargo-Heffner began to silence Kraft.
"I have the floor, I took the floor, thank you.
"Oh you took it. Ok,
"I did.
"Because you're the Queen and we're just your servants. Is that what it is?"
At that point, two Swiss guards removed Kraft and beheaded him.