She Said What?

Very few things will stop me in my tracks. When I got wind of what Janet Barek told a Citrus County government employee the other day... it did just that. I literally said the title of this post... "She said what?"

I did a public records request for the formal complaint from the staff member. Rather than ramble on, I will let you read it.

* this is a screen shot. I did not do the highlight*

Now, the difficult part. Outside of sharing the complaint, I am at a loss of what to do with the rest of this article. Its very rare that I am at a loss of words and not sure which direction to go. I wrote and re-wrote this several times. I spoke with friends and family about. I spoke with Janet about it. Each person had different thoughts and ideas. Some wanted me to blow this up into a major scandal and they might be right. Maybe this is just that. Others told me not to run it in the first place as its not the reason I created this and this stoops to mudslinging. Janet herself told me a story of her experience and where all this came from and why she said it.

None of these people are wrong. Each had a valid point on what their opinion was. So I am going to try to thread the needle and hope this lands. This will be long so bear with me.

I'm going to preface this by saying what she said was wrong. She should not have said it, especially in front of the employees. Even if she said it on her porch to a friend, still not right. As an elected official? HUGELY inappropriate. The complaint is warranted. Action by the board may be warranted as well (more on that later).

As a newly elected commissioner, I would expect Janet to make some mistakes. That is par for the course. It is a difficult job and I imagine it takes a bit of time to get into the groove of things. Maybe miss a process here or there. Maybe mess up a vote. I get it. There is a learning curve as I am often told by commissioners.

But this?

This is an unforced error. There are A LOT of people that want to see Janet fail. I have seen it online. I have been told this by people. To give those people a reason to say "See, she's bad" is a mistake. She needs to do all she can to avoid mistakes and to prove the naysayers wrong. Giving them stuff like this does not help.

I told Janet this morning that as a commissioner, she is held to a higher standard. Even if what she said was taken out of context or didn't mean anything negative by it, an employee was offended by it (rightfully so). She has to be aware that she is no longer citizen Janet. She is Commissioner Barek. That is a major difference. She has to be aware that what she says now carries more weight and in instances like this, the ability to cause more hurt/pain/etc.

You see, it's one thing for a citizen to rant about anything related to staff. We see it pretty often actually. Staff can largely ignore that. While it still may hurt a bit, its a citizen voicing their opinion. In the grand scheme of things, metaphorically speaking, that's a molehill and we are working in the mountains (although in Citrus, a molehill can be pretty significant depending on where you are, but I digress).

However, when the person saying something is your boss' boss... that carries a different weight. Now its more personal. Now its closer to home. Now you start to worry about your job. Suddenly workplace morale is thrown for a loop and people are on edge. As this goes on, maybe you start to wonder if this is a good place for you to continue to work. The only difference between these two people saying what they want is the title before their name. And that makes a HUGE difference.

I have heard for several weeks now that Janet has been ruffling feathers amongst the staff and that they were already walking on egg shells around her. She has been publicly targeting certain staff members for firing saying they are paid too much. She is very demanding of them. She can say mean things to them on occasion. They aren't sure what to expect from her at this point.

How is this incident going to help with that? It's not. Its going to create more animosity. It's going to make staff feel that they cant work with her. It might even drive away good employees. No one wants to work like that. To put it bluntly, it's going to hurt this county.

Imagine you are a Citrus County employee... how would you feel going into work after hearing what just happened in front of some of your co-workers and then watching her take aim at cutting others? Not sure that would make you feel great about your job or workplace, right?

That's not to say being a county employee should be easy or that you shouldn't be pushed to do better. There should be performance reviews and employees should be held to a certain standard. 100% behind that. But there is a process for that and that comes from their boss, the county administrator... NOT commissioners.

So back to the commissioners. What do the other four plan to do with this? They certainly have to know that this happened. I assume that they know of other issues that I have learned about over the past few weeks. How do they plan to address this?

In my opinion, at the very least, they need to go the Jimmie Smith route and publicly rebuke her and perhaps censure her. They did that to him back in 2017 I believe for saying things about a staff member. I would think this rises to that level at least. Could they do more? Perhaps. They have the option to use the county's non-interference ordinance to take it further, even perhaps as far as the governor. After the 491 issue, I have little faith of the board doing anything. But we will see.

Wrong is wrong in my eyes. There should be some type of reprimand/punishment for this. It would also discourage this from happening in the future, either by her or others... and as I explained to Janet, might make her a better commissioner because of it. People generally learn more from mistakes than their accomplishments, I know I certainly have. Let's hope the same is true with this and we get a better version of Commissioner Barek in the future.