Mayor Ravenstahl was all over the news yesterday saying that his administration settled the Catherine McNeilly case because they didn’t want to pay more money to lawyers. That’s probably true, but the whole truth is more like “we didn’t want to pay more money to lawyers and lose anyway“. The plain fact is that Commander McNeilly blew the whistle on shady dealings by a friend of the mayor’s, and someone decided to try to punish her for it. That’s illegal, it’s bad government, and it’s costing the taxpayers. The administration said they didn’t want to pay more money to lawyers, but they said that after they’d already wasted a pile of our money. There’s the $85,000 they’re paying to McNeilly herself, and then there’s the city’s lawyers’ time, but there’s another cost we don’t know yet: McNeilly’s attorney fees and court costs. Depending on what they ask for and what gets approved, we the taxpayers could find this case costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s a pretty hefty price for City Hall’s pride. Mayor Ravenstahl also said yesterday that “in my opinion [it] goes without saying” that city employees still have free speech rights. Let’s hope he’s learned to really believe that, for all our wallets’ sakes.

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