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10:41 p.m. - 2002-11-17
Office Politics
I can't believe it. Sometimes groups who have had power for a long time are just so arrogant.

I've written about the land department for our city and their under the table activities with respect to land issues, apparently with the full support of the City Manager. The latest out of city hall is that the manager has set up a media response center, hiring a huge number of people. Our duly elected aldermen are now being told that they may not respond to media inquiries because they are not competent to speak on public/political issues. Sometimes that is true, but we elect them to put their collective feet in their mouths, so that as citizens, someone tells us what is happening within the bureaucracy. We even pay them to do so. Their instructions were to say to media types "that the question being asked is better answered by an expert in that field" and then they were to refer them to one of the senior city bureaucrats or the new media response center that will, undoubtedly, issue very nicely worded press releases. What has also come out in the news is that the aldermen are now having to do fundraising to cover expenses for their offices. Between these two curbs to City Council's ability to fuunction independently of the bureaucracy, I guess the City Manager is saved the embarrassment of being brought to account at all.

During the last federal election, someone at Elections Canada tried to impose the same gag order on Returning Officers. Some issues need immediate response and can't wait to be filtered through several layers of bureaucracy first. Another problem was, the media expert didn't know anything about elections. She kept calling me, and several other Returning Officers, because she couldn't even respond to very simple questions. For example, I had an incident in my constituency where a male was impersonating our revising officers who go door to door to register eligible electors. Some of the people he approached said he was demanding they give him very sensitive information about their children - something that we would never ask, let alone record. It was imperative to get an advisory out to the public as soon as possible, so that this man could be caught, if at all possible. I called our police who asked me to call a specific TV station to do a public service/warning announcement. I let Elections Canada know and they agreed. The TV station was on the job in about half an hour and the service was free to the government to boot. A paid ad to do the same service would have been in the range of tens of thousands of dollars for the prime time airing it received. Next, one of the political parties released a letter I had written in response to a query they had about the legalities and legislation with respect to the nomination process. It simply cited several sections of the legislation with respect to their question and provided a chronology of our steps to satisfy those requirements. They had a right to ask and a right to a response based in the legislation itself. However, the head office blew a gasket and demanded to know why I hadn't used the media rep to deal with the press. Since I hadn't had anything to do with the political partys' release of the letter or the press coverage that followed that made no sense at all. In what way was a media expert helpful in either incident.

The next headline of note was to do with the Kyoto Protocol. Our Provincial Government has been fighting the Federal Government on its intent to sign the agreement for about six months - saying that it was bad science and would have a devastating effect on our province. They have spent millions of taxpayers' dollars advertising in all the media and have undertaken junkets across Canada and into the US to promote their position. Today, one of the senior Provincial Ministers admitted there was no scientific basis to the alternative treaty they were proposing and that they had no understanding of the science used to formulate the original accord. Words escape me.

Had contact with the Records management firm in a couple of ways. First I got an invitation to their Christmas Party a few weeks from now on Friday. I guess they still consider me as part of their team. Then my co-worker called to tell me about her trip. Seems she had an ok time but wasn't all that enthused. Partly, it sounds like she didn't explain to the woman she invited along what her expectations were. Her companion obviously was thinking they would do things together during the trip but I think all J wanted was someone to share the cost of the room with no further obligation beyond that - she wanted the rest of the trip without female company. She got a fairly nice bonus - like all permanent staff - just before she left so she had a great time shopping. She said she had brought back a bottle of vanilla for me for my baking. She's been back in the office since her return a week ago. She did some shopping during her trip for the Queen of Mean so they are going to lunch with one of the VPs of the company this week since they haven't spent time together for a while. She was trying to find out too, I think, what I was doing about being off work so long. I was honest and said I had started sending out resumes. She was quite insistent I tell her whom, but I just told her I was applying for both contract/consulting and permanent work. Right now I can't afford to be picky. I'd rather work consulting but I can't wait too long. I'm probably being oversensitive, but it seemed she was trying to help me out of the company as quickly as possible, suggesting a couple of actions that would make for a very permanent split from them such as getting an ROE - separation slip. When she asked if I would attend the party I just said it would depend on whether I was still an employee - it wouldn't be right if I had taken work with someone else. I think I'm getting mixed messages - an invitation to remain connected by the senior staff but pressure to move on from more junior people. Probably just the stress of not working talking.

One of the political parties supporters called tonight too. She has worked for me in two elections and does a good job registering voters. She has more children than I do, so we spent about an hour chewing over parenting issues. We talked about work, I think because she was hoping I might have some for her - I wish I did. She was asking some fairly probing questions about the Kyoto Protocol too. I can't take a position on a Federal issue publicly, because I am supposed to be neutral on policy issues that might be in dispute between political parties, but I did tell her what I had found out through the research I'd done so far. She'll have to make her own conclusions on that.

Sort of an office politics, community politics kind of day.

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