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Kudos to WBJ’s Michael Neibauer for unearthing this hilarious account of a former DPW staffer who was unlikely to win an employee of the year award.
An engineering equipment operator with the D.C. Department of Public Works was fired for neglect of duty and malfeasance, after he allegedly swept up a co-worker while behind the controls of a front end loader, dropped her at least seven feet into a giant trash bin, threw her a piece of carpet to grab onto, offered her $1,000 to keep quiet, and then claimed the victim jumped into the bin herself.
You can read the whole Office of Employee Appeals’ decision here.
While browsing the OEA’s online decisions, LL noticed several DCPS custodians who had been laid off last summer had unsuccessfully tried to get their jobs back.
The custodians charged, among other things, that School Chancellor Michelle Rhee‘s used false budget constraints to fire them, a charge some 266 teachers would level at the outgoing schools boss a few months later when they were let go in October of 2000 (their legal challenge also went nowhere).
Senior Administrative Judge Joseph Kim, who heard the custodians cases, says the OEA “has no jurisdiction over the issue of an Agency’s claim of budgetary shortfall, nor can OEA entertain an employee claim regarding how an agency elects to use its monetary resources for personnel services.” In other words, if you’re a city employee who gets laid off for for bogus budget reasons, tough luck.