Mar 26, 2008

Children's Theatre probe ham-fisted

Guest Opinion

By McCord Clayton

The surreal images are seared in our minds by now. Four beloved staff members of the Palo Alto Children's Theatre being perp-walked out past bewildered children for unspecified financial crimes. The assistant director dying of stomach cancer a week later with this terrible cloud over his life's work. All of them told not to talk to one another on pain of being fired. Forced into isolation.

The community marching with placards declaring their love for the theater staff, appearing en masse before the city council to plead for mercy. Council members listening mutely and then, without comment, as if they had not even heard the entreaties, moving on to other business.

The police chief giving no hint of how long the investigation might drag on. The former city department head responsible for the theater coming out of retirement to say he would stake his life on the honesty of the suspended staff members. The press uncovering a U-Haul strewn with travelers checks, just the manner in which we imagine the staff would have made their getaway. The city manager saying he cannot interfere, even though it was he, not the police, who closed the theater and suspended the staff, even though he is already knee-deep in this, far too involved to play Pilate.

Here in Palo Alto, we have a system of municipal government that I think is typically referred to as having a strong city manager. I looked at the city charter and the municipal code, and it is pretty clear to me that the city manager may be strong, but he is not a monarch, he is accountable to the city council, which is charged with the responsibility of supervising him. The charter does prohibit the council from interfering in personnel matters, but it seems to me that this has gone far beyond the bounds of a simple personnel matter. I believe the treatment of the theater staff raises basic questions of fairness and reasonableness in the discharge of their duties by the city manager and the police department. The mayor has told me there is nothing he can do. He said he could lose his job on the council if he tried.

So that's it? Nothing anyone can do while four lives are ruined and a community treasure is endangered? I feel a bit like I'm looking out of a high-rise office window and seeing a woman being raped and people on the sidewalk doing nothing to stop the attack. I'm pounding on the glass, I'm calling 911, but there seems to be nothing I can do to stop the tragedy unfolding before me.

Of course, it must be acknowledged that it is possible that serious financial crimes have been committed at the theater, although if you know the director and her staff, you undoubtedly have trouble believing so. Still, it is certainly proper to hold our trusted employees to a high standard. So what am I so upset about? Here's what: The ham-fisted process. The innuendo. The whiff of improper motive that emanates from any scandalous charge that is dramatically announced and then left too long unsubstantiated. The secrecy. The hiding behind, "We have information that you do not." The isolation and humiliation of people who have given their lives to our children. The callous and careless lack of regard for the emotional health of those involved with the theater, especially the children. The abdication by our elected representatives of their duty to question the executive in charge, to hold him accountable for his actions.

The right to due process is a basic freedom guaranteed to all Americans. Most of us think it so essential to our character as a nation that we believe it should be afforded even to noncitizen enemy combatants: even terrorists should know the charges against them. And yet our Children's Theatre staff has languished without charges for over eight weeks now, essentially under house arrest. One has died in the process. I fear for the emotional health of the others.

It is not just George Bush and Dick Cheney who would trample our rights as citizens. There are stubborn men and women everywhere, so sure of the correctness of their actions that they will not be checked. It is up to each one of us, citizen or official, to act when we see something happening that is so obviously abusive. Every day that we stand by silently while these wrongs continue is a day we not only lessen our grip on our rights and freedoms, but lessen our legitimate claim to them.



McCord Clayton is a founder and president of a legal defense fund for the Children's Theatre. The defense fund is raising money to help pay the legal fees for the three suspended staff members, but the views expressed are solely his own and are not offered on behalf of the fund or any of its other directors.