Fired officer's case heads to district court

Whether Officer Talya Fruge’s actions justified her recommended termination by Chief Ronald Dies and the City Council’s firing of her has yet to be officially debated. Her case, instead, is caught up in a difference of opinion between the City Council and the Fire & Police Civil Service Board about how to hear her case.
The board in July ordered Fruge’s reinstatement, accepting its attorney’s opinion that she was denied guaranteed rights when terminated.
At that meeting, the board did not hear any evidence or take any testimony about alleged circumstances that led to Dies’ recommendation to fire her.
City Attorney Vernon McManus at the City Council’s August meeting said the board action was based on its attorney’s failure to consider the most recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on such public employee matters.
In essence, its attorney and the Civil Service Board contend that Fruge had the right to ask questions, to call witnesses and present evidence before the City Council.
McManus, and now the City Council on a unanimous vote, say that’s not so under the most recent case application, that “there is no absolute constitutional rule requiring a pre-suspension hearing prior to the suspension of a tenured employee without pay.”
The city contends that employee right is exercised before the Civil Service Board, which is empowered to hold evidentiary hearings.
The City Council has the option of upholding Dies’ recommendation or rejecting it, as it did with an officer earlier this year. “Then, depending on the decision by the Board of Aldermen, the officer has a right to appeal ... to the local Civil Service Board,” McManus told the council, adding he believes that is the procedure approved by the Surpreme Court in its most recent, though 17-year-old, ruling.
If the Civil Service Board upholds the chief in a disciplinary action, the employee in question has a right to appeal to district court.
In this instance and this appeal, the officer is not petitioning the court for anything. The city is.
Meanwhile, Fruge is not back on the job. That would require re-hiring by the council, an action it has not taken.
After elaborating on the the two Supreme Court rulings in question, and noting the questions left unanswered in them, Alderman at-large Jack Burson said he thought the “fairest thing” to all parties might be “to let the courts tell us.” He moved to appeal, Roland Miller seconded and Junior Bergeron and Scott Fontenot agreed. Germaine Simpson was absent.