Plumbing leaks

Henry Smith has accomplished a lot at the young age of 30. He’s the black subject of a successful racial discrimination ruling against New York’s whitest city. He had his entire unremarkable personnel file leaked to the press. And now, he’s the latest lynchpin the Keehniacs are using to support their mudslinging campaign against Public Works fixture Tom McTygue.

Through all of this, Smith has kept his mouth shut, likely under the advice of his attorney. It’s equally likely he wants nothing to do playing the role of the rope in a vicious game of political tug-of-war as next week’s election nears.

The crux of Smith’s 2006 complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is simple: he was a black, part-time day laborer who saw white co-workers getting a leg up into full-time positions over him. The result of this complaint was equally simple: the commission would have investigated the case in strict confidentiality and made a ruling on their findings.

But then the case gets muddy; real muddy. At some point, a governmental higher-up wielding a stamp, a white envelope and a penchant for royally screwing the city decided to mail Smith’s complaint and personnel file to the Post Star. This, folks, was a big no-no. In fact, the act of disclosing Smith’s records period would have probably been enough to sway the commission in his favor, as employment records are highly guarded under law.

Needless to say, the September ruling found the city had unlawfully withheld a full-time position from Smith and had also moved to retaliate against him for filing the case by releasing his records to the media. The ruling was conveniently buried until last week, when the Times Union printed a story about it two weeks before the election and more than a month after it was first handed down, as one blogger wryly pointed out.

In the days that have followed, McTygue has since been very vocal about the ruling and its implications. More importantly, he’s questioned how these confidential items keep ending up in the media.

“This is confidential information, and to leak it to the press is a criminal act,” he told The Spotlight News Tuesday.

The only thing clear behind the motives of mailing Smith’s records is that someone wanted to throw some egg; more specifically, several gallons of egg. Thus Smith, himself is probably not the source of the mailer. The obvious finger points to the brothers McTygue, as has been insinuated in the press and by their detractors. The complaint was filed, so one of the brothers shipped off the records in hope of publically embarrassing Smith or detracting from his claim.

Now, before going any further along this line of thinking, take into consideration the publicity Smith has already generated in the city. It’s not exactly endearing. He was busted for steeling and forging a $43 dollar check at the former Mama Gorilla’s restaurant in 1997. Last summer, he landed himself in the clink on a warrant after failing to answer and assault charge.

True, these charges don’t make him a career criminal; it’s entirely possible both charges were dropped on contemplation of dismissal. What they do suggest about Smith is that he wouldn’t necessarily feel embarrassed or even threatened by his quite abbreviated record as a part-time short-term city worker were leaked to a news agency.

McTygue has publically indicated his department wasn’t the source of the records being mailed. Even though the EEOC ruled otherwise, it’s a claim that is believable seeing as though it was the release of the records that lead to the story making the press in the first place. So who might have had access to the documents and would have either sent them to the Post Star or given them to someone prone to do such a thing?

Well, once the case is destined for litigation, the city was forced to hire an outside attorney. Because it was a personnel matter –and one the EEOC clearly would have kept private –the litigation would have been discussed only among the full council in executive session. Excluding McTygue for the aformentioned reason, this leaves sparsely few suspects in the case of the leaked documents.

“I would bet money on it that it came out of the mayor’s office,” McTygue opined to the Post Star last year.

The Mayor’s office? Now, why would they leak document to the press that would not only sabotage the city’s litigation efforts but also paint the DPW commissioner as an overt racist? Could it have anything to do with the 2007 election?

All these suppositions would seem somewhat fantastic, were it not for the fact that the obstructionist Keehn administration has quite clearly directed the majority of its efforts at wresting power from McTygue and the other “good old boy” Democrats. Hence, why after nearly two years of Keehn in office, the city is no different than it was the day she won the election.

The other damning bit of evidence against Keehn and her cronies is that Keehn herself hasn’t made a single peep about investigating how personnel records were leaked to a news agency. Sad, how the people’s mayor isn’t very interested in finding out how the people’s records were illegally disclosed to the public.

What is even sadder is that all the newspapers reporting on this story have conveniently stuck to the discrimination case rather than how the whole issue came into the press to begin with. Regardless of whether the leak came from the DPW or the mayor’s office, if the faucet continues to drip personnel records into the press, the city will have to deal with a lot more than an EEOC ruling.