ST. FRANCISVILLE—A mid-month-December situation with a city of St. Francisville employee has many residents riled up to the point of fury and sounding off on social media.
But overall, it appears that the biggest problem the city has is that their elected representatives lack couth and tact…and that their actions taken at that time aren’t exactly illegal, as it’s been alleged.
The situation emerged as a sad one: a 17-year employee of the city, Debbie Harrington, working at the toll booth of the Cannonball Bridge over the Wabash River in St. F, lost her mother, Ola Mae Breen, on November 28. Prior to Mrs. Breen’s death, she had been gravely ill and for four days, Harrington took care of her mom.
During those four days, Harrington, who is a widow of two years, had to take off work from her duties at the toll booth, not only the four days prior to Mrs. Breen’s death, but also a subsequent four, as she had to plan and help conduct a funeral.
During a regularly-scheduled meeting of the St. F city council December 10, an executive session was held, whereupon Harrington learned that her hours at the toll booth had been cut to 10 per week, and she was no longer considered full-time, but was instead now considered a “fill-in” at the booth due to the fact that “she had missed too many days” of work in November, ostensibly because of her mother’s death.
Questions arose about the executive session and its propriety, specifically, the notation by those present that the council didn’t properly vote to go out of open session/into closed session/back into open session.
Disclosure is checking into that specific claim.
But other than a potentially illegal closed session, the public sentiment surrounding Harrington’s loss of full-time hours in mid-December created an uproar in St. F, in particular on social networking, where in the court of public opinion, one of St. F’s long-time council members, Francis “Speed” Moody, one of the more disagreeable characters ever to hold a public office in downstate Illinois, was taken to task.
The matter only heated up when a St. F resident, Amy Jo Madden, was reportedly verbally accosted by Moody in a not-so-rare show of his true character on Dec. 17, this at St. F’s post office, when the two encountered each other and had heated words about Harrington’s reduction in hours.
Madden, as well as other St. F residents, took offense at the posting of a note at the toll booth about Harrington, this, apparently, in response to one Harrington herself posted, dated Dec. 13, which outlined what had occurred, and how she felt about the matter (that the council’s decision was “very cruel and unfair,” especially given that St. F’s mayor, Don Ravellette, had been the one to whom Harrington had spoken about taking the time off; she believed that the council had gone against what Ravellette had agreed with Harrington about the time off and her returning to the job.)
That, too, is a matter Disclosure is looking into.
Many opined that the city had done something illegal by not giving Harrington the time off under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a federal law that states have adopted over the years.
However, under the circumstances, FMLA doesn’t apply. The “employer,” being the city of St. F, has to have at least 50 employees within 75 miles of the employer, and that simply doesn’t count the city in…so they’re not “covered,” and neither, subsequently, is Harrington. No coverage, no violation.
Unfortunately for Harrington and her supporters, other than a potentially improperly-called closed session at the Dec. 10 meeting, everything about Harrington’s reduction in hours was completely legal. The city doesn’t need to give any reason for such a thing; if they discovered that it was less expensive to employ someone who has worked for them for a lower number of years (as an example), that’s their purview.
Calls for ouster of Moody in the April Consolidated Election came after the situation was somewhat rectified and some of Harrington’s hours were “restored.” However, as is usually always the case in St. F, someone has to RUN against an incumbent before the incumbent is voted out.
Whether this will happen remains to be seen, as well as what the voter turnout will be when the outrage dies down.