No one said it was unreasonable. It’s just people who work in these situations are saying that it would be highly unusual for people to be pressured and names released. Given that, I’d need to see real proof that it happened since it would be so beyond the norm.
They are public just like her salary information is public. Meaning, a person can put in a FOIA request and get the low-down for any particular individual employed by the government. A person would have to be pretty damn diligent to get the names of all employees who donated to Fulton.
I know you work for a university and I’m glad to know there’s nothing political about your job, but now we’re hair-splitting. I was commenting on the bold here:
There’s every reason to think the names were made public if county records show that Tom, Dick, and Harry donated. If the newspaper can get a hold of that info - rather easily, I assume - then it’s public.
No?
Am I missing something?
Being made public and being accessible by someone hunting down the info are two different things in my book. If it irrelevant to your point, thats fine, i just wanted to clear up that names dont get released or people pressured to give, which what it sounded like was being suggested earlier. And while I do work for a college, I work for the State. We’re subject to all the same rules about this stuff.
Yes. See my previous post. Public does not mean advertised in all media outlets and tacked onto every bulletin board. It just means it’s information that can be FOIA’ed. You can find out the salary information, leave history, and credentials of anyone from the town mayor down to the janitor. It’s great being a government employee!
How there could ever not be pressure in something as politically charged as Trayvon Martin is beyond me. The whole nation is at odds over it.
Again, it was their own time, they donated, whatever. It may leave a sour taste in one’s mouth, but those were the rules and the County Board voted on it. (It’s my understanding that the Board voting on such a thing made the news as well, so if I’m a county employee, I may have felt some indirect pressure. I don’t know. I’m not a county employee of Miami-Dade, nor am I a union head or anything else of importance.)
So we have different definitions of ‘public’. That’s clear.
I think it’s also reasonable to think that any public employee knows how public their information is. So if there’s a request for donated leave in regards to a case that’s made international headlines, any public employee with half a brain would assume that eventually gets made public. Especially if you are, say, a deputy mayor.
(:
What kind of pressure are you envisioning?
Really, your disclaimers aside, it sounds like you’re just dying to have a valid reason to find beef with this. How about you wait for someone to complain about being pressured before jumping to this conclusion?
So what?
Out of the 1000+ Dade county employee 192 donated. You think someone is hunting down the remaining and harassing them? In theory, some people may feel pressure to donate, some to not donate. So, what do you do about it? It’s a legal, and I believe an extremely ethical system of people helping people for a variety of worthy causes. This is a particularly public case, but I’d be stunned if all 192 were really public.
You’re missing the part where it makes a difference. Unless you can show that the fact that the paper likely FOIA’ed to get the info has had an impact on who did or didn’t give, all you’re doing is flailing around because you don’t like her cause.
Who, exactly, is being hurt by this situation? The taxpayers? They’re getting just as many hours of work, for the same total pay, as they were before. The other employees? They voluntarily chose to donate those hours-- That’s their business. Mrs. Martin herself? I can’t see how. Is there someone else I missed?
No bigger crybaby than a public employee who thinks some other public employee is getting away with something.
You know, when someone provides you with information that you’re clearly ignorant about, it’s considered proper form to reply with something like, “Hey, I didn’t know that. That’s good to know.” This shows that you are actually listening and absorbing what is being said from people who obviously know more than you.
It’s asshatish keep beating the same drum and making even more outlandish assumptions.
I’m still not getting this. As a public employee, I know that anyone can access my pay records. It doesn’t get published on the intranet or anything. Nobody grabs me by the collar and screams in my face because of my choice to donate or not donate.
This is my PTO. I earned it. I get to do what I want to with it. I can keep it all for myself, I can give anything over 40 hours away or I can take a couple of weeks off and drink and play Diablo 3. (which I’m not going to do this week. I’ll wait for things to settle down before spending my day online.)
If people want to give a grieving mother their PTO, how is it different than giving them cash? Why should it matter how we spend our money or PTO? We worked for it, we earned it, its ours.
One of my co-workers gave me a check for $1000.00 to help pay for a funeral. Should I have told her to take it back and only give me 250 because she needed to give the rest of the money to other deserving people?
BTW, welcome back Farmer Jane.
I see questions arising from this but from a different perspective. If an employee doesn’t work for 8 months is there a need for the job in the first place? If the job is needed then are others covering it at their personal expense? Is there overtime involved (a taxpayer issue)?
I’m sure these questions arise whenever workers take advantage of the Family and Medical Leave Act.
It would seem that the argument has been derailed here. I’m not even sure what my stake in this is, really, yet I’m feeling a pile-on. Really, monstro? I’m an asshat?
I said that information was public and was lambasted for even thinking that, even though we’ve all conceded it was a pretty logical conclusion.
To me, information that is made available by FOIA is public information. And I’ve never ever been an employee in county as huge as Miami-Dade , so I have no idea what the politics are like. I have been involved in local politics, though, and there isn’t much that isn’t political. I was also an active member of SEIU once. So I can see how some people would be pressured. It’s reasonable - if not outright obvious - to think that those in the public eye would feel pressured. I mean, come on. Does it mean that people were getting strong-armed? No. Am I really worried about it? No. Again, I think that the precedent itself is just a little off, but I’m a big fan of propriety and all that. I’m a teacher who votes Democrat and is pretty liberal, but I try to keep in mind that I’m still serving the public. Yet some of the things that I’ve done in class (discussing Lawrence v. Texas or same sex marriage in class, for example) have gotten a “<GASP> THE PARENTS ! ! ADMINISTRATION!! NoeZZ!” reaction from other teachers.
I don’t have beef with Trayvon Martin’s mom. I have no idea what happened with Zimmerman and Martin, though I see SDMB has blown up over it a few times. Something about his parents do ping my weirdness meter, but I’ve been honest about that. I also said that people deal with grief in their own way, and if this is his mom’s way of dealing with her grief, fine. I’ve never lost a kid. I can’t imagine what I’d do if something happened to my son. To each their own.
And on that note, if you donated or didn’t donate, that was your business. Hopefully no one cared either way. Again, I personally may have felt a bit of pressure had I been asked to - and not because it’s about the death of a boy and a mom suffering from grief, but because it’s a political case. What if I’m a single parent who needs all of her PTO? Do I get to put a little disclaimer on public records?
Again - I just think it’s bad policy in general to allow up to 8 months paid leave for a woman who’s goal right now is to form a political organization. ANY political organization. If someone wanted paid leave donated so they could go advocate for abortion rights, I’d have the same friggin discomfort.
Whatever people do with PTO is their own business, but I understood it that the Board had to vote to allow that much PTO to be donated to those specific people. I could be wrong, and feel free to correct me. I’m not privy to Miami-Dade’s HR regulations.
flatlined - hello. And…some public employees’ salary info* is* readily available on the Internet. 
Beauty of technology, I guess!
These are all legitimate questions. Were they asked in the previous cases in which workers donated leave time under the same arrangements as this particular incident? If not, should they have been? Are they asked when people use the FMLA?
You’re a little too close to personal insults here – please move back from that line.
And this has turned into a debate, so I’m moving it to GD.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
What I said in the OP was based on my state and my state employer’s policies. Taking that much leave for a personal issue would be a huge misuse of our leave policy. I thought Florida would be similar.
Someone posted an article that said they have something totally different in Florida. Some panel or board that granted this woman the use of all that leave time. It’s not something I agree with. But, it’s their state and they can do what they want.
I personally can’t imagine any employee disappearing from work for 8 months. Even our employees with cancer don’t leave for that long. They either return to work (maybe still getting treatment) after FMLA runs out or they apply for disability under our institution’s Disability insurance policy. But, that’s our state. We’re not Florida.