Thursday, June 17, 2010

County Administrator Deeply Insensitive to Worker's Rights to Free Speech, Freedom of Conscience?


The concerns about no-bid contracting, government waste and abuse raised in the quoted memo by Ryan Dettra to County Administrator Michael Wanchik are protected by the First Amendment. Retaliation is wrong.

Retaliators need to be disciplined/fired. Whistleblowers must be protected. The public has a Right to Know!

Unwritten policies not worth the paper they're not printed on! That's what posters from the Republican political machine on the St. Augustine Record website relied upon to say Dettra should be fired.

To whom does these St. Johns County government goobers think they're talkin'?

They leaked a damaging story, which the Record printed without giving Ryan Dettra a chance for fair comment. It turns out, they're attacking First Amendment and whistleblower protected activity. These gasbags raise a bunch of non sequiturs.

WHere's the beef? Unless there is more than protected activity, Ryan Dettra should be reinstated with a public apology.

Over on the Record's website, the hyenas, jackals and rattlesnakes attacking Ryan Dettra behind a cloak of anonymity, calling for his head, remind me of the people who burned the Declaration of Independence in the Slave Market Square here in 1776---they can't stand criticism. They have emotional problems with free speech. What insipid, mendacious mediocrities.

The County Administrator's salary is in the stratosphere. From what I've seen of the Amphitheatre, Ryan Dettra earns his pay. For the record, I have never met Mr. Dettra or been introduced to him. I have attended Amphitheatre concerts and am impressed.

The First Amendment is the controlling legal authority. So is Florida's whistleblower law. Not inchoate unconstitutional county policies. Not unAmerican uninformed notions of conformist and uncomplaining government workers. Not antiquated, unconstitutional, paternalistic patronizing expectations that public employes are somehow "gagged" and forbidden to speak on matters of public concern. Let freedom ring.

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