Imagine That: Clarke Frustrated by Union Rules

Gee. What a shock.

On June 24, 15-year-old Jared Kellner of Greenfield was killed and two others injured when a 13-ton concrete panel fell from the parking ramp near the Summerfest grounds. Initially, Clarke used deputies from the jail to help out at the park following the tragedy.

Graber said he and the union understood the reasons for doing this, but he said he called the captain in charge of highway patrol to emphasize that deputies should be selected from throughout the department under the contract. That captain, Graber said, later called back to ask if the union official would waive the contract provisions. Graber declined.

Graber then complained to a deputy inspector that some of the same deputies having to work overtime at O'Donnell Park were previously ordered to do daily OT at the lakefront. Graber acknowledged that he told the deputy inspector that he might be flooding the department with grievances if the brass didn't abide by the contract.

IOW, the Sheriff does not have discretion over who is pulled for extra duty, emergency or no.

According to Graber's verbal and written version of events, Clarke made it clear that he was upset with Graber for refusing to waive the terms of the deputies' contract.

"I don't give a (expletive) about your contract," the sheriff said, according to the union official. "I have a job to do, and I'm going to do it how I want."

Graber said Clarke called him a "sick (expletive)" for bringing up mandatory overtimes when someone had died at the structure.

Well, that's accurate.

Clarke asserted that deputies should expect to work more than eight hours a day, Graber quoted him as saying.

The term "public servant" actually means something, eh? Besides collecting a pension?

"The public loves me, and they hate public (employee) unions," Clarke supposedly said to Graber, according to the sergeant. "You just don't get it."

Personally, I don't "love Clarke." But if Deputy Dawg doesn't yet understand that AFSCME-types are lower than whale-poop on the "liking" scale, he is beyond stupid.