As Shakespeare aptly foretold: There's something rotten in Denmark.

I broached this phenomenon in my post (How to Hire a City Manager Web Link

The framework of contracts needs to change. The interview, selection, employment agreement and performance reviews should reward exceptional returns, not incentivize poor performance. Our current employment agreements should not be an a-priori pathway to rewards for dubious management performance.

We should hold city councils and other elected oversight bodies accountable for poor decisions in hiring and sweeping under the rug those decisions.

I agree that this sort of secrecy, which seems to be becoming increasingly common, is problematic. Even if we say "let the private sector do what it wants", for officials serving the public there needs to be a higher standard of openness, especially in the case of severance payouts. Why should someone's good reputation be preserved if they aren't deserving of that reputation, and then their next employer has to find out the hard way why they were let go from their previous job? Indeed, there should be pride in openness, not a reflexive secrecy, on the part of those involved!

Always amazed at how often this quote by the late President Warren Harding makes sense.

“I am not fit for this office and never should have been here.”

It ain't their money so they don't care. And we keep electing them so shame on us.

The editors are being generous when they write that in a "cagily worded release . . . it's clear that her work with the state association was not the prompt for her exit from the district."

The trustees of the Portola Valley School District were evasive, dishonest, and lacking integrity.