One of the great sticking points of these recent years is how state and municipal public service agencies fail to conduct decent background checks on their new employees. Or if they do, the responsible parties fail to read or interpret the background reports correctly and someone who should not be hired finds himself gainfully employed. Then comes the time when that new employee commits some egregious transgression. They commit a crime, commit sexual offenses, hurt someone in the office, do something that gets them and and the agency they work for into the headlines.
Not only is this embarrassing for the agency, but someone has probably been hurt, physically or psychologically. Or both. There is the downgrade in employee morale, and then the liability costs to settle the probably law suit. Given that every state, municipal and public agency is experiencing budgetary constraints in this tough economy, it is all pretty foolish. Especially when much of the nonsense could be prevented by conducting and reviewing a decent set of background checks for premployment screening purposes.
It seems every week we see ugly news reports about some public employee being discovered as a miscreant with a criminal record and perhaps with the dubious distinction of having his name on the sexual offenders registry. Terrific.
I have blogged about this issues a number of times. I have especially taken note when state,municipal and public service agents become proactive and engage in decent preemployment screening practices. One such article commending the practice was entitled, Dallas County to Run Background Checks on Constables.
Recently, the Austin Daily Herald of Austin, Minnesota, that the Mower County Board of Commissioners will begin conducting background checks on its new hires. A note in the article, in fact the lead in the article said background checks,”it’s cheaper than insurance.” Mower County will conduct these background checks on the top qualifying job applicant. If there are minor offenses, the board feels that perhaps the person has done his time and cleaned up his act. So that candidate would still possibly be eligible for hire. It is an imperfect world, after all.
We commend Mower County for taking this action. As we always say, check them out before you hire.
