Down Home: Listen to Dalton Roberts’ podcast on Frances Wyatt, one of his unsung heroes.
Red Bank City Manager Chris Dorsey’s decision to fire Police Chief Larry Sneed has now landed the city a lawsuit. The tragedy is that it could have been avoided by simple openness with the people.
No politician should fire a person without a full disclosure of the facts. It matters not that they have the power. It is a horrible thing to take away a man’s livelihood and reputation.
It happened to me in the 1970s when I was a victim of a political firing. I couldn’t get a job for a year and wound up in a one-room apartment. I had 30 years of solid recommendations from bosses all the way back to being an A&P sack boy. The job-performance endorsements came from people like Dr. Bennie Carmichael and Dr. J. Earl Williams, one of the top labor economists in the country.
I was accused of “insubordination and inefficiency.” Since when is an employee supposed to subordinate himself to a politician making bad administrative and political judgments? I had honestly discussed face-to-face with him every disagreement I had. He was the only county judge in Tennessee not allowed to serve out his term as county executive under the new executive-commission form of government.