McNeilly Source Material

I saw FOP President Malloy on NightTalk last night (guest hosted by Mike Pintek) spin and spin again on the McNeilly settlement. The spin was so bad I thought it might be a good idea to bring everyone back to some primary source material, namely Judge Donetta Ambrose's preliminary injuction. The Judge begins (page 1, line 8-15):

Why are we here? We are here because the Plaintiff, Catherine McNeilly, on October 9th, 2006, sent e-mails to City Council, the Fire and Medic Bureau chiefs, she blind copied the same to her husband and her brother; and in these e-mails and attachment she questioned the appointment of Dennis Regan as Public Safety Director and Dennis Regan's interference with her attempts to discipline a police officer under her command, who was the brother of Regan's housemate.

The Plaintiff attached to her e-mails a disciplinary action report she had filed on this police officer which contained personnel information. She was subsequently demoted for having sent the e-mail -- the attached disciplinary action report to the e-mail.

Malloy last night accused (or at least implied) McNeilly of leaking confidential information to the public. Not so, wrote Judge Ambrose (page 9, line 10-16):

As to the confidentiality matters, Plaintiff made every effort to keep the e-mail and attached DAR confidential. Indeed, she marked the e-mail confidential and disclosed the information only to those individuals who themselves had a duty to keep it confidential. It was someone to whom Plaintiff disclosed the information, not the Plaintiff herself, who revealed the information to the public.

Judge Ambrose wrote that McNeilly had two claims in the case, a 1st Amendment claim and a claim under the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Act (showing his own spinning self, Pintek oddly referred to this as a "so-called Whistleblower" case). The Judge found that if McNielly was acting as a private citizen, and if the issue was and issue of public concern, and if she was acting in good faith, then she had 1st Amendment protections. Judge Ambrose (page 10, line 6-17):

As I said earlier, this is a balancing test. Plaintiff's allegations and evidence of wrongdoing and governmental misconduct and concerns that wrongdoers would be placed in high government positions outweigh the city's concerns the Plaintiff's actions would disrupt the Police Department, which they apparently did not; and that the confidentiality of a disciplinary report was compromised, especially in light of the fact that the e-mail which the Defendants are not complaining about contained the same information as the disciplinary action report, which the Defendants are complaining about. Therefore, the Plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits of her First Amendment claim.

And now onto Pintek's "so-called" Whistleblower protection (page 10, line 18-23):

She also has a claim under the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law which prohibits public employers from retaliating against an employee who makes a good faith report of wrongdoing to appropriate authorities. For the reasons already stated, I find that the Plaintiff made a good faith report of wrongdoing.

Judge Ambrose finishes up (page 11, line 21 to page 12, line 4):

Finally, I must consider whether the public interest will be served by granting the injunction. The public interest is always served by disclosure of wrongdoing and undue and/or inappropriate influence by public officials in Police Department matters. The chilling effect of discipline and demotion to a police officer who makes a good faith report of what she believes in good faith to be wrongdoing and inappropriate influence in Government never serves the public interest.

There was even a little something about that 120-day rule from Ambrose (page 5, line 10-14):

She consulted the Assistant City Solicitor for assistance in preparing a disciplinary action report. He told her about the 120-day rule and subsequently told her that what she described to him as her approach sounded like a good approach to him.

She consulted the Assistant City Solicitor on this? That I didn't know. I also didn't know that that ACS told her her approach sounded like a good idea.

Something else Pintek and Malloy left out of their collective spins.

Malloy also stated that because the Police Department was so short of funds (for instance, the cars are old, he said) this settlement is a bad bad idea.

Uh, sorry. That's not McNeilly's problem. If the financial situation of the city is such a concern, then perhaps they should have thought of that before retaliating against McNeilly.