Not quite done with Bozeman yet

Just when the City of Bozeman thought it had the pri­vacy fiasco taken care of — and just when I thought the issue was set­tled and we could move on — some­thing new crops up.

Late last week, a city employee sent an e-mail to Bozeman city com­mis­sion­ers, claim­ing that the expla­na­tion of city hir­ing pro­ce­dures the com­mis­sion­ers got dur­ing their June 22 meet­ing was inac­cu­rate. That expla­na­tion had told the com­mis­sion­ers that pro­vid­ing Web pass­words on a back­ground check form was vol­un­tary. The e-mail’s author, whose name was not given, said this was not the case, that the pass­words were tac­itly required from job applicants.

Now the city has announced an offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion of its hir­ing prac­tices, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports. The com­mis­sion decided at a June 29 meet­ing that it will hire an out­side author­ity to con­duct the inves­ti­ga­tion, which will look into “how and when dur­ing the hir­ing process that city job can­di­dates were pre­sented with a waiver form ask­ing for their log-in codes, whether the can­di­date was told that pro­vid­ing the infor­ma­tion was vol­un­tary and how can­di­dates’ Web sites were reviewed,” the Chronicle said. The city will look into every new hire in the past three years, the alleged period dur­ing which the city asked for passwords.

Local CBS sta­tion KBZK quotes City Commissioner Eric Bryson:

“I want to know if there were dis­tinc­tions between the depart­ments. Were there stan­dards devel­oped for what was con­sid­ered appro­pri­ate con­tent on someone’s per­sonal page, how the appli­cants were told when the review of their sites would occur and for how long they could expect the city to access those sites,” Commissioner Eric Bryson said.

Seems like they’re more or less look­ing for the answers to the ques­tions I asked on day one, the ques­tions that remained mostly unan­swered even after the city closed the matter.

To me, though, this is the worst part. Again, from the Chronicle article:

In addi­tion, com­mis­sion­ers said they received another e-mail stat­ing that a city employee retal­i­ated against a cit­i­zen for crit­i­ciz­ing the hir­ing pol­icy. The employee told the citizen’s public-sector employer that the cit­i­zen was improp­erly using their offi­cial title on per­sonal correspondence.

Retaliation? Really? A city employee who felt threat­ened by crit­i­cism of a pol­icy goes ahead and ham­strings some­body who cared enough to point out the bad pol­icy? Come on.

Related posts:

1. Late after­noon Bozeman fiasco update
2. Bozeman approves hir­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, releases whistleblower’s e-mail
3. Bozeman back­tracks on pri­vacy matters
4. A let­ter to the Bozeman city attorney
5. Bozeman police offi­cer apol­o­gizes for his Facebook remarks