Roles Overrule Reason
Daryl
DuPage began working for the Clay Township, a 9,000-resident community about
50 miles northeast of Detroit, around 1990.
He became Chief, the only full-time employee, of its Fire Department in
2002. In 2014, he obtained a two-year, $691,980 federal
grant from FEMA for additional fire fighter staffing in the Township.
In January 2016, the Township Clerk sent DuPage detailed expense
information to present to FEMA for reimbursement under the new grant. DuPage questioned the Clerk’s inclusion of $16/day/firefighter
ferry fees for the trip to nearby Hansens Island, which he believed were not
allowable under the terms of the grant. The
following quarter’s billing information did not include expense details, but in
July DuPage again saw that ferry fees were included in the charge, even for
firefighters who lived on the island and had not taken the ferry.
On November 28, 2016, DuPage had a long conversation with
the Clerk about how she had handled ferry charges and allocated health
benefits. He told her that her
accounting for the expenses was wrong. Then
he approached Township Trustees to complain about the matter. On December 12, he was fired because, he was
told, he didn’t get along with anybody. DuPage
filed his wrongful termination suit against the Township on February 2, 2017.
Whistleblowers are often associated with big events – mass
surveillance systems (Snowden),
government deceptions about wars (Ellsberg & Manning), Big Tobacco’s
efforts to make cigarettes even more addicting (Wigand), vast financial
deceptions (Watkins
at Enron). But most whistleblowers’
complaints involve smaller matters. Sometimes
so small that interest in them nearly defies explanation.
DuPage confronted no great moral issue in his complaint
about charging (maybe) a few thousand dollars a year of ferry fees to the
grant. He was no financial expert; he
had little experience with government grants; he could have simply excluded the
ferry fees from the reimbursement requests that he submitted to FEMA.
The relative insignificance of Dupage’s disclosure is not
unique. The majority of whistleblower
accounts that have been reported over the past year are ambiguous examples
of wrongdoing. My own claims of
HomeFirst’s misdeeds were disputed, and few were officially decided against
HomeFirst. Some were wrongs that I might
have corrected myself[1],
as DuPage could have done in his situation.
HomeFirst’s food
handler card violation was even less significant than the Clay Township
ferry fee misbilling.
On the other hand, DuPage’s complaint, each of mine, and
those of other whistleblowers were based on honestly formed opinions of organizational
violations of laws or contracts. The
organizations’ claims that they did not commit wrongs or that the actions were appropriate
should not surprise anyone.
History presents many cases of far more offensive actions
whose perpetrators considered them perfectly justified. Serbian Slobodan Milosevic,
who caused the deaths of more than 200,000
Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians in the 1990s, claimed repeatedly that he
only responded to past aggressions against innocent Serbs. In interviews, dictators – including Idi
Amin, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Mira Markovic, and Jean-Bedel Bokassa – claimed
that their crimes against their citizens were done for the good of their countries[2]. The narrative of the powerful – whether big- or
small-time – includes a denial of guilt and a reframing of its accuser’s
complaint.
After I admitted that I had disclosed two suspected
violations, HomeFirst’s attorney advised the Board that I was following the standard
steps for whistleblowers. Shortly
before firing me, the HomeFirst
CEO told the Board that I was only trying to protect my job by setting
myself up as a whistleblower. Later, in
its defense
against my claim of retaliation, the HomeFirst attorney claimed that I was
just crying whistleblower to escape the consequences of my own misbehavior.
It can be difficult to separate our “real” motivations from motivations
implicit in the increasingly popular whistleblower role we fill. Google searches of “whistleblower” have doubled
over the past ten years, attesting to the attraction of the whistleblower
narrative. Edward Snowden won awesome
fame just five months before I
decided to become a whistleblower myself.
The whistleblower-protagonist can be an attractive role, especially to
someone, like me at HomeFirst, who has become dissatisfied with the organization
for any of a multitude of reasons.
The organization’s managers, too, find a role to play. Within a few hours of my informing the
HomeFirst CEO that I had disclosed potential violations to government agencies,
the chair
of the Development Committee declared that my disclosures amounted to
insubordination, an argument that the CEO praised. The job of the CEO and Board was to protect
the company from enemies, and I was destructive
of it, their attorney advised.
In our respective narratives, we have our quests – to do the
right thing or to protect an indispensable organization; we encounter obstacles
along our way; we have second thoughts about our undertaking; and we
persist. In so doing, we create ourselves[3].
There was no good reason why DuPage should have been fired
for making much of the ferry fees. Not after
working for the Township for more than 25 years and recently obtaining a large grant
to expand its services. Nor was there good
reason why DuPage should have been made a big deal out of the expenses. They were no fodder for a splashy False Claims Act
lawsuit. They were trivial, and he might
have gotten it wrong anyway.
There was no good reason for HomeFirst to fire me. I was possibly months or at most a couple of
years from retirement anyway. I was
generally competent and efficient, even if not always lovable. HomeFirst came to no harm from my complaints,
and they broke the law with my termination.
Nor was there great reason for me to go as far as I did reporting
possible violations externally. I had
raised them often enough with the Board. I might have gone on doing so without the
public being injured.
Still, we fell into our roles – attracted by their popular
images and impelled by our discomfort for life as it was – we blew whistles and
were fired; they took offense and retaliated.
Reason and ethics had little to do with it.
[1] I could
have repaid the amount I overbilled
the County of Santa Clara, or I could have refused to bill ineligible
expenses on contracts
requiring master leases. Either action
could have caused the company’s financial collapse, and I could have reasonably
expected to be fired as a result. But I could
have done it.
[2] Tavris,
Carol and Elliott Aronson. Mistakes
Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and
Hurtful Acts. New York: Harcourt, Inc.
2007
[3] Bruner, Jerome. Making
Stories: Law, Literature, Life.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
2002
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