One of the things that really drives me nuts at Sierra College are what we call “separation agreements” that happen when an employee leaves for reasons other than retirement or resignation.

Over the last thirty years, the State of California has enshrined a peculiar principle into the law: that public employees have a “property interest” in their job. This concept doesn’t exist in the private sector…once I have a job, I can lose it if I fail to perform. Not so in the public sector – they “own” their jobs like they might own a house or a car.

The result is that if Sierra College needs to end its relationship with an employee for a less than routine reason, the employee has the right to engage in a tangled series of notices, appeals, grievances, cross-appeals, hearings, and appeal hearings. This is how we hear the horror stories of LA Unified spending $3.5 million dollars to fire only seven employees.

To avoid that mess, the college will at times enter into negotiations with an employee to achieve an amicable resolution where the employee agrees to resign and they are paid the remainder of their contract (or a smaller amount).

Such agreements are subject to a public records act request, as well they should be. Often the employees in question want to keep them quiet, but they gave that up the day they became a public employee. It’s public money, and the public has a right to know.

This particular issue came up again with several old agreements. They were decisions negotiated by the college leadership in place in prior years, under authority delegated to them by the Board of Trustees. As our new VP of Human Resources came aboard, he was reviewing processes and requested that the Board further note these agreements for the sake of transparency.

So we did, and it just reminded me of how ridiculous it is that the state forces us to even use these kinds of agreements. Over the last seven years that I’ve served, the Board has taken a number of steps to make these agreements less expensive when they must happen, and altogether rare.

We’ve asked managers to be extraordinarily careful in the hiring process and to choose wisely. We would rather hire slowly than hire badly, given the state’s onerous laws and regulations.

We’ve also asked managers to dramatically increase the quality of performance reviews and documentation of employee problems. This can allow us to exercise “termination for cause” when appropriate, reduce the likelihood of expensive litigation, and in many cases, reduce the amount paid out to the departing employee.

And we’ve expressed our desire that the State change these laws and start defending taxpayer interests instead of stacking the deck in favor of public employees who need to leave their jobs. Sierra College has a large number of very good public employees, and no good public employee should be fearful about reforming such a process.