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The AAUP AZ Conference has been very active in trying to get protection for whistle-blowers, both at the universities and at public agencies in Arizona.

 

Three whistle-blower protection policies are now pending (one of them a "Trojan Horse" policy that would maintain current poor protection or possibly decrease protection). If you can, please lobby actively for the good polices and speak against the poor policy!!

 

Extra proposals, to confuse and delay support of good proposals, is a standard major attack. Proposal 3 below, was put forward by opponents of real whistle-blower protection.

 

The 3 proposals are:

 

(1) An AAUP bill, "HB2617 whistleblowers; exemptions", on the web at http://aaupaz.org/HB2617.htm

(AOL Users:

<A href="http://aaupaz.org/HB2617.htm">http://aaupaz.org/HB2617.htm</a> This bill will substantially improve protection for university employees. This bill is now before the State Legislature, and has passed its first hearing on Feb. 20, 2001.

 

(2) A public agency bill "HB2561 public employees; information disclosure" with language provided by the AAUP is on the web at http://aaupaz.org/HB2561.htm

(AOL Users:

<A href="http://aaupaz.org/HB2561.htm">http://aaupaz.org/HB2561.htm</a> This bill will greatly improve whistle-blower protection for all other state employees, including community college employees. If both this bill and the university bill are passed, the university employees would benefit from both new laws. HB2561 has just passed its first committee and will go before a second committee shortly.  HB2561 basically copies the language of 28 federal, well tested whistle-blower protection laws.

 

(3) A policy proposed by the Arizona Board of Regents to "improve" whistle-blower protection, the "January 2001 ABOR Whistle-blower Policy", is on the web at http://aaupaz.org/Jan_ABOR.htm

(AOL Users:

<A href="http://aaupaz.org/Jan_ABOR.htm">http://aaupaz.org/Jan_ABOR.htm</a> Again, this proposed policy has a few token improvements, but relying on it will allow great harm to whistle-blowers at the universities. The loopholes in this policy are given on the web at http://aaupaz.org/loop_ABOR.htm

(AOL Users:

<A href="http://aaupaz.org/loop_ABOR.htm">http://aaupaz.org/loop_ABOR.htm</a> The January ABOR policy merely makes it easy for university lawyers to protect administrators against whistle-blowers who allege wrongdoing, and does not allow whistle-blowers to protect universities from waste, fraud or abuse of authority.

 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being excellent protection, we might rank current and proposed policies as follows:

 

9.0 Federal 1989 Whistle-blower Protection Act (with 1994 amendments)

2.0 Current State of Arizona Law for public agencies except universities

0.5 The three current university policies

 

9.0 Proposed public agency protection

.............."HB2561 public employees; information disclosure"

3.5 Proposed university protection

..............."HB2617 whistleblowers; exemptions"

9.5 For a combination of HB2561 and HB2617

0.8 The January 2001 ABOR policy

 

Note that a Congressional study found that 69% of scientists who report abuse of authority, waste, or fraud, have experienced harm or ruin to their professional careers through threats, censorship, physical isolation, retaliatory investigations, accusations of racial bias or false accusations against the whistle-blower for the very misconduct they challenged, academic expulsion, denial of access to their data or laboratories, and even threatened deportation or physical injury.

 

University administration lobbyists and public agency-paid lobbyists vocally and vigorously oppose genuine whistleblower rights. Please do not let special interest resistance to the public's right to know dominate the record of public comments! Please look at "Actions Needed Now!!" to see what is required at this time to protect whistle-blowers.

 

Sincerely yours,

Carol Bernstein, PhD

President, AAUP AZ Conf.