Jeff Trigg picks up on an important DCFS Story, but doesn’t go far enough in blasting them…
The Trib is reporting that DCFS is muzzling contractors from talking to the media.
Not only that, but they are threatening to renege on contracts,
DCFS imposed this sudden new condition on two child welfare experts appointed to monitor the beleaguered Maryville Academy’s Des Plaines campus. Both signed a contract with DCFS seven months ago upon taking responsibility for keeping tabs on whether the residential treatment home for adolescents was making progress after a handful of troubling incidents last year. Both had expected to get paid.
But according to Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, both were informed late last week that if they didn’t sign a fresh new contract sent to them by the end of the fiscal year–Monday–they wouldn’t get paid for the work already done.
The can be done the easy way–a call from the Governor asking what the hell they are thinking–or it can be done the hard way in DCFS losing a lawsuit,
The courts and the U.S. Constitution are fairly clear on the issue of workers’ and contractors’ rights to free speech on issues of public concern.
In 2001, a federal judge in Rhode Island threw out the Providence police chief’s new policy preventing officers from talking to the media without his prior approval, declaring it unconstitutional.
In 2002, a state-funded hospital in West Virginia lifted a similar policy imposed on its employees after the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit.
I’m all for the ACLU, but I’d rather state government not pick up their court costs on lost causes–especially when the state goverment is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Circumventing the normal chain of information is essential in many child endangerment cases and this sort of crap only endangers children.
ArchPundit