Secrets of the City

Being a 40 yr old and a woman, it’s a “protected” status, on par with people of color and the disabled. Plus, she’s a lesbian. It’s not about what she did, it’s about how many lawsuits the city would have to fend off should they fire her. Same with Peebles. These people are f’ing ridiculous in ethics, morals and behavior, yet even more ridiculous are their lawyers.

Dammit, I want my city back.

I just received this letter from Mayor Rybak’s Communications Director, Jeremy Hanson:

The City of Minneapolis demands the highest standards of conduct for our employees, standards which are even higher for our supervisors and our leadership. When those standards are violated, it is essential that the City of Minneapolis send a clear and powerful message that we will not tolerate behavior that puts our city or our employees at risk. If you dont meet the expectations the citizens deserve, you will be held accountable and you will be severely punished. We are sending that exact message today by removing Bonnie Bleskachek as Fire Chief.

- Mayor R.T. Rybak

Whatever. Maybe Rybank & Friends can knit her a dadgum sweater, too.

If what she did was so reprehensible, then she shouldn’t just be demoted, but fired, i.e., removed from the city payroll. And her pension, if any, certainly shouldn’t be based on a chief’s pay. Let’s face it, if she was a guy, she would have fired with lawsuits over her head, months ago.

That letter is a complete joke, CYA at its best. I don’t believe in firing people until they are proven guilty. But this situation has been a cluster f*** from the beginning. A real mayor would have the skills and spine to end it immediately. I can’t believe I voted for that incompetent clown.

Anybody looking for money to keep a few libraries open?

“But hey, even though the mayor “will not risk having her return as a manager in this city” she’ll still be on call the next time your house starts on fire!”

And what does one have to do with the other? Lots of front line people make shitty managers, and lots of managers make shitty front line people.

Don’t think for a minute that these kinds of deals don’t go on all the time in even the most successful “private” businesses. Just that there, they usually invovle large 7 figure settlements, and non-disclosure agreements.

Sure wish our mayor would apologize for appointing her in the first place.

You know, for making us pay for his making a “point” instead of appointing someone who could do the job. If the allegations are true the pattern of harassment goes back 10 years. Who is vetting these candidates?

Or is he going to duck responsibility for this too?

I just received this note from Jeremy Hanson of the mayor’s office:

Your recent post is not correct; Bleskachek will not be on call the next time your house starts on fire as you say. The position to which she has been substantially demoted is administrative only and not related to fighting fires. She will supervise no one and will not work with fire fighters at all. She will not ever be promoted and will receive no severance payout.

Either I missed it or that was not clarified in the Tribune story.

Apologies either way.

please, this is a great solution for the city – she’s completely and utterly embarrassed, stripped of all authority, losing $40K per year… …”She will assume an administrative position in the city without any supervisory function or chance of promotion”, so i’m assuming she won’t even get to fight fires anymore (right?)…christ, can ANYTHING make you people happy? yeah it would be great to fire her, but what if they tried and failed? she’ll be gone in 6 months anyway, fighting fires in some dink-ass town in montana. way to go, RT.

So they can’t fire her today.

They put her behind a desk, assign her a PHB for a supervisor, bury her in toilet-scrubbing duty and eventually she gets pissed off and quits.

Big ups for to the Mayor for not letting her have a golden parachute. Or even a turn-out suit.

Was it a perfect solution? No. Was it even elegant? No. But Bonnie will be paying off her lawyer for a very.long.time on a very.reduced.paycheck.

from the PP:

The investigation substantiated several of the allegations leveled against Bleskachek.

Among them: the chief was seen “making out” with an employee on the floor of a fire station workout room, that she was naked in a hot tub on three separate occasions when Fire Department employees were present…

bonnie naked in a hot tub. yuck.

kwatt, I’m having trouble reconciling these two things you wrote:

1) “A real mayor would have the skills and spine to end it immediately.”

2) “Anybody looking for money to keep a few libraries open?”

If they’d fired her immediately, they’d have to litigate her termination, using money that could presumably be spent on other things. Like libraries.

Say what you will about the Mpls City Attorney’s Office, but they seem to make very rational decisions about settling cases when it will cost less than to go to trial. Obviously this is a compromise, but it limits the city’s exposure to claims from the Chief and, hopefully, future litigation from those who might have worked under her, if she’d been allowed to return to a supervisory role.

While this is unsatisfying in many ways, it’s probably the best thing that could have happened (other than never hiring or promoting her in the first place).

Sadly…

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

She’ll still take home $50k. For a severe demotion, I’d expect $29.5. Just *barely* enough to live on. Enough to have to eat ramen twice a week. Enough to make her go get another job elsewhere.

I think she AND Rybak should get jobs as shot girls at Town House.

RT = Jellyfish

It’s easy to blame Rybak & the Council, but did they negotiate the civil service contracts?

Their hands are effectively tied. Ever tried to fire a city employee?

This has been a mess from the get go! Lots of blame to share, but mostly with Bonnie “hunka hunka lesbian love” Bleskachek for the totally out of line way she handled her position….what an embarrassment she was to the MPD and the city! I don’t think she’ll last more than 6 months in her new position, as she has made enemies by the numbers and they won’t be so forgiving of her when they have to work side by side with her. It sure seems the city rushed to appoint her just so they could claim some good press about the city’s promoting a lesbian to the position of chief instead of maybe looking for the best possible candidate, regardless of who the person was?

Rybak has always struck me as a spineless man from my in person sightings and watching the city council meetings. I’m not saying he had the power to snap his fingers and make BB go away, but this thing dragged out far beyond what it should have and who knows what the actual total in dollars will be for resolving this. I would have thought that when this started hitting the fan, that he would have called her in to his office and had a serious chat with her about the allegations to let her know that she’s as good as done if this blew up (as it ultimately did).

I heard the vote was 8 – 5 in favor? Does anyone know who were the 5 council members who voted against the decision, I’d sure like to know who felt this was a raw deal for BB! I imagined it would be more like a 12 – 1 or 10 – 2 vote.

scoste, I would think the 5 nay votes were of the “this is TOO good a deal for BB” mindset.

God, I would hope so anyway.

Well, you never know……………

Other council members joining Schiff for the settlement were Council President Barbara Johnson, Cam Gordon, Elizabeth Glidden, Scott Benson, Sandy Colvin Roy, Betsy Hodges and Don Samuels. Those against were Lisa Goodman, Diane Hofstede, Robert Lilligren, Paul Ostrow and Ralph Remington.

Lilligren and Remington both said Friday they wanted harsher discipline for Bleskachek, including her termination. “I thought we didn’t go far enough,” Remington said. “Those of us who voted no were willing to roll the dice.”

strib

i forgot who said it here (Tom?) but MPLS has a weak mayor system, so RT is a perfect fit.
Bonnnie won’t be wielding her firehose in public any more.

Wow, nice to hear that both Lilligren & Remington felt the way they did!

cubbie, I’m pretty sure that what would make us happy is very clearly laid out here. She should not be gathering tax dollars as wages, as she is a pervert and a criminal. If your boss started sexually assaulting you, stripping naked at work, and engaged in sexual relationships with every underling who would let her, do you think she’d get a demotion?

Also, notice that her “apology” is anything but. She mentions the “appearance of impropriety,” and that the *allegations* have damaged the department, but makes no actual statement of wrongdoing. For the last time people, just like saying “I’m sorry you were offended”, it’s not an apology unless you admit to doing something wrong.

I don’t know if I understand how this could be anything but cut-and-dried. I’m pretty sure that when you fire someone for gross misconduct, sexual harassment (possibly assault), and many other offenses, that there would be no “golden parachute” anyways. Union contracts are ridiculous, but not that ridiculous, I hope.

If it weren’t for Civil Service these people would all be on welfare. They could not make it in the private sector. Either way we end up taking care of them.

From watching WCCO last night, I see Bonnie used Jerry Burg as her lawyer. He’s a gay lawyer who I’ve heard is quite a nasty guy to deal with in cases. A former neighbor of mine used him a few years back to settle a sexual discrimination lawsuit against an employer downtown….and he won the case!

The whole affectional-preference thingy is so loaded with danger in the legal world right now that Rybak’s decision to keep her on as an employee but demote her is easily the most cost-effective and risk-averse move he could have made. Sitting around with a bunch of lawyers a few weeks ago, all of whom regularly finance and supervise the defense of similar employment-context lawsuits, the consensus was that, if he could pull such a thing off and get Ms. B’s sign-off on “no future lawsuits by me against the City”, he’d be doing well.

There’s no guarantee that some whacko jury wouldn’t decide that the City, and the Department, failed to understand the proper ways to utilize and protect and nurture the new lesbian-firefighter class, and so bear the blame for, not only the other employees’ “damages”, but for wrecking Ms. B’s career and reputation. “Had these neanderthal City and firefighting employees not been such bigots in their degrading and unfair treatment of poor Ms. B, she would never have been so stressed and wearied as to have sought the comfort of emotional involvement with other workers!”, would go the closing argument, and I’ve seen lots of money change hands on weaker words.

Plus, if the City had to fight her in a public legal battle, just think how valuable the resulting deposition and court testimony transcripts would be for all of the firefighters who would be (will be anyway?) starting their own lawsuits against the City because of the “harm” they’ve been forced to suffer at Ms. B’s hands. (”Hands”? Oh, nevermind . . .) Their cases would be so much cheaper and easier to run, plus they’d have probably more evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the City and Ms. B if both of those two entities were duking it out than they could likely get just questioning them on their own.

Those employees are probably going to be suing the City anyway, but at least now the City won’t be paying bigbux lawyers to gather the information for the employees on the City’s legal-fee dime.

Fighting for principle is important, but not when it’s going to cost a ton of public money to do it, and the only benefit you might see out of it is the warm and fuzzy feeling that you got to fire someone. I could see this decision saving at least a few hundred thou (and, realistically, maybe a cool mil or so) of the City’s money, and, at least I’ve heard, they have other things they could spend it on.

No, I can think of many reasons why Rybak isn’t my choice of a leader, but this decision isn’t one of them.

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First, we kill all the lawyers.

We’d do better instituting an intelligence test for jury duty.

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I agree with that, as a former juror on a federal court trial, but in this case, there was no need for a jury becasue it never got that far.