Today in Fort Smith filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the City of Fort Smith concerning an incident from earlier in the month when the city communications director,Karen Santos, was criticized for remarks calling Fort Smith "one of the most sexist" cities in the country.
At the time of the violation, city administrator Carl Geffken said he did not believe that Santo's remarks violated the city social media policy. However, in a reply to the FOIA request Geffken supplied documentation indicating that Santos was suspended for five days without pay the week of December 10 for violations of the social media policy.
You can read the disciplinary documentation by clicking HERE.
Because of the way the city social media policy is constructed, Santo's remarks appeared to have violated that policy when it comes to Section 3 (Personal Use of Social media by City Employees) because of what could be perceived as the insulting nature of her remarks to the male population of the city.
According to the information supplied by Geffken, the decision was made for the suspension on December 5, two days after our original story on the posting on December 3. Geffken did not reference TIFS, saying the "sexist" post being posted on something called the "Fort Smith Resident's Forum " is what led to the eventual suspension.
Geffken recapped the incident surrounding the post and stated "Although one can sympathize with Karen's feelings, the statement has a negative connotation and violates Fort Smith's social media policy and is a violation of 1), 3) and 40) above."
1) impair or impede then performance of e*/any employment duties;
3) interfere with the effective and efficient fulfillment of the City's responsibility to the public;
4) undermine public condfidence in the posting employee
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After the incident occurred, Santos seemingly removed her job title from her personal Facebook page. However, another post last week concerning the upcoming Martin Luther King Day Parade in downtown Fort Smith, which has since been taken down, was also addressed in the Freedom of Information request.
After expressing her thoughts on the current President of the United States, Santos went on to reference a "racist base" of supporters of the president. said there are "SO MANY MORE of us than in the base of this anemic, racist POTUS and ended that "post with "Spread that on your cheeseburger & enjoy it, Mr. “S***hole!”
The post was posted after her suspension for the previous post. That post was taken down after Today in Fort Smith made our Freedom of Information request.
Santos has apparently since blocked several people from accessing her personal Facebook page.
