City Councilman Bernie Herpin reprimanded his City Council colleagues and three staffers today after The Gazette received a leaked email in which Herpin criticized Mayor Steve Bach.
“Lately, someone has been forwarding council emails to people in the media,” Herpin wrote in an email to City Council members, council Administrator Aimee Cox, council communications specialist Vicki Gomes and two council staffers.
“While I understand there is no expectation of privacy (even given the confidentiality statement at the bottom of my emails) when we send an email, professionalism would dictate that the person forwarding these emails would at least have the courtesy of letting us know so we are not “blindsided” when Chacon calls up and asks for a comment about what was said in an email or it appears in print the next day,” he wrote.
The subject line in the email was: “Really?”
And Herpin forwarded the email to The Gazette.
“PS: I’ll save you the trouble of forwarding this email to Chacon,” Herpin wrote.
The leaked email that sparked Herpin’s lecture involved the monthly Mayor’s Counsel meetings and discussions among council members about holding them on a quarterly basis. Read more about that story here.
“Recently, (the meetings) have mostly been a chance for the executive to try to get the legislative to do something in front of the media and civic leaders without having to come to council meeting,” Herpin in the leaked email.
Bet it was Bach that leaked the email. Either way who cares Bach should be criticized, he is a dictator want to be. Go get him Bernie, we need more people to stand up the bully mayor and his cronies.
With a Mayor and city council like this it makes me glad I live in the county and with our county commissioners that is not saying a lot.
Chacon LOVES receiving leaked correspondence of any type from anyone involved with the city. Helps him keep his job with a dying newspaper.
It was Bush’s fault.
AnnChovie, good one. This is mostly a failure of leadership, Hente/Martin style. Council appears to be coming apart at the seams. They are at each other about:
* not reading materials placed before them
* not attending meetings and leaving early
* not being qualified to as assigned to them, or even being able to learn
* violating professional courtesies
Yet, they want to triple their salaries, expand their staffs, hire their own lawyers, and claw back executive powers that the good people of this city were wise enough to strip them of.
But yes, it’s Bush’s fault.
Bernie Herpin needs to hit the gym and stop destroying people’s lives with higher taxes. He calls himself a republican but all he is is a feeble old bored man who passes every tax he can. It is time for you to go to the nursing home Bernie. These people never had any power in real life so they enter into politics and pass laws on the rest of us that completely screw up things, they have no business sense on how to manage people or money.
Dear Councilman Herpin;
It’s called the “Washington Post Test”: if you’re doing or saying something that would be embarassing if it was on the front page of the Washington Post, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
A corrollary to that is: “If your motives are pure, they should withstand scrutiny”. Meaning that we should define the problem, develop alternative solutions, discuss, with civility, the pros and cons, and come to a rational conclusion, devoid of any reference to one’s ancestry or political bent.
Sadly, that has become nearly impossible in our current political climate.
I love transparency!…..Go Bernie, keep forwarding your vile to the news paper.
In business and politics, never forget to construct all of your correspondences to be read by three sets of eyes:
* a jury
* the media
* the person to whom you originally sent the correspondence
If you don’t understand this common-sense rule, get a new job. You are not qualified to hold a responsible position.
As Lisa has said; F**K um.
Firstly, I’ve actually come to expect some level-headed posting.
Absent, today?
Again: Mr. Chacon probably could not have DREAMED about
his recent “Emails-Gone-Wild”/City Council-people jackpot – from a reporter’s stand-point.
This are stories that literally -yes literally- write themselves.
Finally, we must -again- ask: Are these emails news-worthy?
Well, are you reading these posts?
As far as I am concerned, every local media outlet should be included in the cc of every email discussing city business. It is our city and the council works for us. If you don’t want the community to know what is going on, don’t accept elected office.