If your boss demands the truth from you, and later concludes you have distorted or withheld pertinent information, what are the odds you’ll keep your job?
Pretty low, it’s safe to say. And if the information the boss needed to know involves legal and contractual matters and six-figure sums, then the odds against your further employment get prohibitively long.
Such is the situation in which the Columbus Consolidated Government found itself with regard to now-former Parks and Recreation Director Tony Adams, fired in a 6-3 vote at Tuesday night’s Columbus Council meeting.
The firing — and this should be, but apparently isn’t, a self-evident point — is a separate issue from the legal proceedings.
In the criminal case, Adams is absolutely entitled to the presumption of innocence. This, on the other hand, is an administrative matter in which City Manager Isaiah Hugley says he asked Adams direct questions about city involvement in contracts for city-sponsored sports teams, and Adams’ answers did not jibe with paperwork on record.
Adams’ dismissal came in a long, contentious meeting in which Georgia NAACP leader Edward DuBose of Columbus called the firing a “public lynching,” an image echoed later by Councilor Mimi Woodson. Mayor Jim Wetherington responded angrily that this is “not a black and white issue,” but “about right and wrong.” Adams’ attorney, Shevon Sutcliffe Thomas, lectured the city manager, mayor and council for more than 10 minutes on the unfairness of how Adams has been treated.
Councilor Mimi Woodson, who said she felt she was the one being lynched, called it “a sad day in Columbus when we have to try this in public.”
This was neither a lynching nor a trial. The latter will take place in its own due time under due process. The former is so horrific a comparison that its application to this situation trivializes the reality of what that word really means.
(Maybe this is an appropriate occasion for a new ground rule: Just as some have suggested that, except for obviously satirical contexts, it’s time to declare Hitler and Nazis beyond the pale of civil discourse, might we humbly suggest that references to lynching be treated with similar reserve?)
This was a firing. It happens all the time, in private businesses and in city governments.
As for the “in public” part, we would remind Councilor Woodson, and anybody else who might be forgetful on this point: Columbus Council, Columbus Parks and Recreation and the entire Columbus Consolidated Government are public.
This is the public’s business, and the day such business is conducted in any fashion other than in public truly will be a sad day in Columbus.
