Going round and round and round in the circle game

  Life seems to go in a circle — things that you did in the past somehow come back into your life again as time goes by.  I find that a lot — especially with this blog.  The issues I’ve written about in the past show up over and over and over, like that song in your head that goes round and round until you go crazy with the insanity of the tune.  Like in one city, where the city council holds a closed meeting under section 610.021 (3) — the exemption allowing closure for “hiring, firing, disciplining and promoting” of individual employees.  The law itself says exceptions are to be “strictly construed.”  That’s the part no one seems to read.

    Anyway, the council holds a closed meeting but the reason is to accept an employee’s resignation.  Huh?  That’s for sure not hiring or promoting.  It’s not disciplining and it’s sure not firing.  The council was voting whether or not to accept a resignation.  That in itself always puzzles me — what is a body thinking when it takes a vote to accept a resignation — last time I heard there was no forced employment in this country.  That’s pretty close to slavery, isn’t it? If they vote to NOT accept the resignation, what do they think will happen?  The employee will come back to work?

    But if it’s not hiring, firing, disciplining or promoting, the discussion had no place in a closed meeting.  The resignation should have been read in the open meeting, if it needed to be read.  And I see no reason to vote to accept a resignation — a resignation is a choice by the employee, not the employer.  And it certainly doesn’t belong behind closed doors.

    You heard it here first.  And second.  And again and again and again until we get some teeth in this law so that public bodies start paying attention to it.