Performance Flaws Uncovered. But Whose?

When Carolee Mason decided to contest her April 1 firing as Newtown’s animal control officer in a public hearing before the Board of Selectmen, she probably knew she would be opening herself up to questioning and criticisms of her job performance in front of the whole town. What she may not have foreseen, however, is that the process would, in the end, prove equally embarrassing for the administration that fired her.

This week, the animal control officer was back on the job with a new portfolio of caveats — proscriptions and prescriptions she could have used all along since her initial appointment in 2006. The conditional reinstatement of Ms Mason and the enumeration of “clear, serious, and significant deficiencies in her performance” was a fair response by Selectmen Paul Mangiafico and Herb Rosenthal to the testimony presented at the hearing. Unfortunately, there was no public response, no list of remedial behaviors, and no admonitions for the clear and serious deficiencies in the town’s handling — or lack thereof — of what surely started as a low-level personnel issue long before it morphed into a very public, and quite unnecessary exercise in public humiliation and official hearsay.

That Ms Mason’s on-the-job training accelerated from zero to deep-six in no time; that she was asked to resign and then was fired on someone else’s say-so by her boss the first selectman without any independent investigation; that even in the end she never got to face or question her accusers — only people who spoke to people who spoke to her conspicuously-absent accusers — all point to sloppy personnel procedures that are at least as disconcerting as anything that may have gone awry in the animal control officer’s tenure at the dog pound. It is evidence of a systemic breakdown — not just one employee’s personal performance — and it warrants thorough examination and remedial action by the same selectmen who acquitted themselves so well in handling Ms Mason’s case.

We cannot help but wonder what would have happened to someone who was not as personally popular in the community as Carolee Mason. Her advocacy for and care of animals in distress in Newtown has been, by so many accounts, exceptional, winning her a small army of friends willing to support her every step of the way in her fight for reinstatement. We expect that someone taking on the town’s top brass without similar moral support might quickly acquiesce and accept the initial offer to resign no matter how aggrieved he or she might feel. A fair and just system of personnel management, however, needs to be calibrated not to the exceptional person but to the least empowered employee. The system we saw in action this spring clearly failed that test.