Until taxpayers started paying such people as town managers a good wage a few years ago, it may have been necessary to have such a tangle of who really works for whom, and who can fire whom, as we seem to have now to protect them but those wages were increased over the years to compensate these people for their success, providing they behaved themselves. Even drunk pilots aren't really fired anymore if anyone can possibly help doing it. I attribute it all to needing to drink excessively (more than one)in order to make it. We just can't have excessive alcohol drinkers or dope takers in some jobs just because they are doing like we often do, on or off the job. This case in PTC may be different in that it suspiciously appears just to be a set-up since no one has ever been arrested for the same thing before there, but there should be enough arrests to get the word out.

Do you realize that almost a third of Congressional representatives could be arrested for the laws that they have broken?

If you have the time and patients to do some digging you would find that the elected members of congress have committed crimes like tax evasion, mis-approbation of funds, speeding, DUI, failure to pay child support, you name it.

My point was that they can’t be fired from their positions for any of it.

Please correct me if I’m wrong but I think only airline pilots and ships captions can be dismissed from their jobs if they are convicted of a DUI and only after they have declined counseling.

The two geniuses that now sit in jail that were convicted for “attempting to operate a commercial aircraft while under the influnce” were not fired for the actual DUI, but for violations of their contracts with the carrier.

If Mr. McMullen is convicted of this DUI charge I can’t begin to see how the city could possibly fire him for it. That would be lawsuit in the making that I don’t think the city could win. And I would have to side with Mr. McMullen if that was the reason given.

Please don’t interpret my comments to suggest that I in any way condone anyone drinking and driving anything, even a lawnmower.

What I do object to is presumption of some that Mr. McMullen should loose his job for it.

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Of course he should be fired. You would be narrow minded to assume it directly for the DUI though. The arrest or conviction itself does not lead to his dismissal, but the fact that he could no longer adequately perform his job does warrant his dismissal. Any prudent person would agree that his future managing of the police department would be inherently questioned, and never without conflict. Further, a DUI conviction in Georgia carries a mandatory driver's license suspension. I guess he could get a ride to work everyday, but the required tasks of a City Manager require his on-the-job mobility to conduct basic functions of his position. So you see, its not JUST the DUI that should end his employment with our city, it's the inability to perform his job.

I simply find it difficult to understand why we don't want to punish people for overdrinking. Are there so many of them that we can't make it if we punish them all? It is not funny. A measure of a man's character and care for others is imbedded in this kind of behaviour, especially in public by officials. How on earth will the police chief ever work for such a supervisor? Maybe the answer is to can the whole bunch and start over. We don't need such bickering and don't have to put up with it. What is so horrible about losing a job?