City handbook now comes with a muzzle
McMinnville city employees who want to express their views better go to the closet and try to dig up a muzzle. According to a newly enforced policy, city workers are not allowed to say what they think by writing a letter to the editor or calling radio station talk shows.
Whether it’s legal to censor your employees under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a case which could probably be argued by lawyers for years in court. It’s a case which has the making to be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court if someone had the resources to push it so far.
Regardless of what one judge might say, and another might overturn, we’re smart enough right here in Warren County to make our own decision about the city’s new policy – it stinks.
The very backbone of this country is being able to express your own opinion without fear of negative consequences. And it certainly appears if city employees care to express their opinions in the newspaper or on the radio, they will be punished in some form or fashion.
This punishment won’t be to the extent people were punished centuries ago in Europe when giving your views about government resulted in a trip to the stocks on town square – or a trip to the guillotine. It’s not to that extreme, but the fact city employees can now be disciplined for simply giving their opinion is certainly disturbing. And several city employees who have talked to the Standard over the last week said they wouldn’t be surprised if writing a letter to the editor would cost them their job.
It’s not one of the better moves as far as improving city morale. It certainly doesn’t do wonders to improve the self-worth of city workers.
Next thing you know, they’ll be told where they can hang out after work. Let’s hope they can still hold on to freedom of religion. Sure such statements sound absurd. We would think an employer would never go so far as to try and restrict religion or after-work hobbies.
But it’s not much more of a stretch than telling employees they can’t write a letter expressing their thoughts. The thoughts of city employees, so the new policy indicates, have to come from the mayor.
The city’s new policy has done nothing but degrade and anger McMinnville employees. What’s the harm of letting people say how they feel?
In this country we often take freedom of speech for granted. But it zooms to the front row pretty fast when someone tries to snatch that privilege away.