April 28, 2009
by neighhay
If nothing else, bad BAD public relations have been exhibited by IDOT Director Nancy Richardson in the way she has responded to the outrageous traffic stop/RV search perpetrated on us by one of her law enforcement officers. Read below and you will see that by adding insult to injury she is doing the already tarnished image of her agency no favors. Queen of IDOT she seems to be, Damage Control Expert she most certainly is not.
We sent our first e-mail to Ms. Richardson on Tuesday April 14 at 1:11 P.M. In this e-mail we described the horrendous events of the traffic stop/RV search and listed our concerns about the officer in question Darrell Wiegand. In our e-mail we also questioned specific policies of IDOT which– due to our own observations plus discussions with other citizens and two representatives from IDOT —had begun to raise serious red flags for us.
Ms. Richardson responded quite tersely to our e-mail and not until nearly forty eight hours later, specifically at 9:09 AM on April 16. She did not employ the courtesy of a salutation, nor did she place her name at the end as author of the e-mail:
“This is to acknowledge receipt of your E-mail. I have asked staff for some information to answer the questions you pose. As soon as I have that, I will be in contact again.Thanks for your patience.”
To us this hardly seemed like an auspicious or gracious response to our e-mail which involved some very disturbing allegations against her employee and her agency. Nor did the nearly two day interval between our e-mail and hers indicate Ms. Richardson was particularly respectful of us or particularly cognizant of the seriousness of the matters at hand.
We also thought it odd that in responding to our request for answers to specific questions, Ms. Richardson did not seem to have the answers handy but had to have her staff look them up. In all fairness, when we did receive the answers they were quite exhaustive and appeared to have been copied painstakingly off a website–hardly work for a woman of Ms. Richardson’s position and stature, and no doubt transcribed with some kind of legal concern in mind.
Our next communication from Ms. Richardson was in response to our request to meet with her. Again given her high profile and stature as an IDOT official, Ms. Richardson just naturally assumed that when we asked to visit with her we intended to drive close to two hundred miles one way to the Des Moines area. It did not seem to occur to her to give us the same courtesy as had her employee Major Ned Lewis, whose first inclination on hearing our concerns had been to drive down to visit us. (BTW, not only do we believe the burden of travel should be on Ms. Richardson, but we also no longer feel safe and secure on the roads of Iowa, knowing that apparently we can be pulled over by IDOT officers at any time for any reason they choose to invent, or in fact no reason at all. Nor do we have any guarantees that another traffic stop might not escalate into exactly what happened to us with Officer Wiegand.)
Unlike Major Lewis, Ms. Richardon’s attitude seemed to be based on the assumption she was granting us an audience. When she offered us the choice of going to Ankeny or Ames, we responded by saying she was invited to our home, but in her next e-mail she simply ignored our offer. When we asked the question point blank, as in “……we mentioned in our previous e-mail we were hoping you would be able to come to our home in Fort Madison. Is it possible for you to meet with us here?” she responded with the following e-mail, which for us says it all:
“Mr. And Mrs. Schneider,
A trip to Ft. Madison doesn’t work in my schedule. If you decide you don’t want to come to see me, we can do a phone conference. I am currently out of state with limited E-mail access, but if one of the times I provided works for you to come to meet with us or for a phone conference, please respond as soon as possible so my secretary can get the time secured. Thanks. “
Again, as you will notice, no gracious salutation, no polite sign off, simply a perfunctory and dismissive message which reveals a could- care -less and imperious attitude.
This is part of the general culture of IDOT which has become all too familiar to us in the last few weeks. IDOT is a government agency which not only interprets the law in arbitrary ways but also seems to feel itself above the law. IDOT doesn’t seem to think it has any accountability to the taxpayers who fund it and in fact will use taxpayers money to fight taxpayers should they happen to challenge it as well they SHOULD.
Ms. Richardson’s patronizing, unprofessional, and rude attitude is very much the same–minus the element of terror– as what we experienced from the law enforcement officer for whose behavior she is responsible.
Given its director’s nature and actions we are not surprised that the culture of IDOT is what it is. As they say, the fish rots from the head down. IDOT, get rid of Director Richardson and replace her with somebody who cares and who will lift your agency out of its current state of irresponsibility and corruption, or somebody who at the very least is capable of doing halfway decent PR work.
Meanwhile, if I get pulled over again by an IDOT officer, the first thing I will do is call 911. Until I know that the corruption and abuse of power at IDOT have been remedied, I consider that being pulled over by IDOT is a threat to my life and well being.
As the end of this year’s session of the Iowa General Assembly draws near tempers are beginning to flare at the statehouse. This is especially so when the legislation being debated is controversial, such as the Governor’s bonding proposal known as I-Jobs. A portion of this bonding proposal was voted upon in the Iowa Senate this afternoon, and ultimately it was passed by a vote of 30-18.
