In cases of life and death, civil servants deserve a break

Is it OK to close a government office when an employee dies?

A woman visited a local courthouse office to renew her car license plates. But the tax assessor-collector’s office was closed.


Allison Davis photo

Allison Davis, a former courthouse employee


A note on the front door stated: “We are saddened by the loss of our fellow employee, Allison Davis, who suddenly passed away on the 28th. We regret the inconvenience, but we will be closed for Allison’s memorial service this day.”

The notice referred visitors to other locations — there are seven other offices in the county — and the office’s Web site, which accepts payments for everything but vehicle title transfers.

Frustrated, the woman tried to get in touch with Tarrant County, Texas Tax Assessor-Collector Betsy Price, finally reaching her on the phone after five tries. Price said she closed the office so Davis’ co-workers could attend the funeral.

The woman was not satisfied.

“Who is your boss?” she asked Price.

“You are. If you live in Tarrant County, you are,” Price replied.

That day, the woman wrote to The Watchdog, “As a taxpayer, I am concerned about the use of our tax money in closing for a day.”

When I called, she said: “We can’t just shut an office. In a school, even if a principal or a teacher dies, they don’t close the school.”

I called Price. As first told in the Dec. 6, 2009 Dave Lieber Watchdog column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. here’s the rest of the story:

Davis, 38, was a 10-year employee of Tarrant County known for her wonderful customer service skills. “She loved people,” Price said. And “everybody loved Allison.”

On Oct. 27, Davis told her supervisor that she felt sick. She was pale and sweaty. The supervisor called Davis’ husband, Matt, and asked him to pick her up.

Matt Davis thought she had the flu. But the next morning, her lips were blue. He rushed her to the doctor, who sent her to an emergency room. From there, she took a CareFlite helicopter ride to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, where she was born. She was placed in intensive care.

But 23 hours after she first complained to her boss, Allison Davis was dead.

Matt Davis told me that he is awaiting autopsy results but that doctors think his wife died of blood poisoning.

The weekend before, his wife threw a surprise birthday party for her mother. On her last night, Matt Davis said, they were going to celebrate Halloween, a few nights away, with a “scary movie and takeout food” — a date night, he called it.

“That was my best friend,” Matt Davis said. “We were still honeymooning.” They were married for nine years.

He said he admired her devotion to her job. “She went above and beyond,” he said. She used to take government forms to people who needed them rather than have them come to the office to pick up the forms.

“She always had a bright smile,” he said. “She was not your typical civil servant. Allison would greet you: ‘Hey, darling. How are you doing? I haven’t seen you. Come up here.’?”

She handled vehicle title transfers, renewals and property tax collection.

“She was a sweet and funny lady,” one woman wrote in Davis’ memorial book linked to her star-telegram.com obituary. Then the ultimate compliment: “She made it worth waiting in line.”

The day after Davis died, Price brought a chaplain to the office to talk to employees. “It’s a very tight office,” Price said.

Under civil service rules, county employees may use four hours of emergency time to attend a funeral. They can take off the rest of the day as vacation time.

The employees in Price’s office spent the morning together before the funeral; they took vacation time, Price said.

“We’ve never had a death of an employee,” Price said of her 10 years in office. She decided to let the Granbury Road office staff and one or two senior people from each of the seven other offices attend the funeral. As an elected county official, Price runs her department as she sees fit. While she follows civil service guidelines for employee rules, any decisions about office operations are up to her.

“It was a tough decision,” Price said. “I had never closed an office before. But this was one of those rare exceptions.”

Agreed. In extraordinary circumstances, especially those involving life and death, public officials deserve a break.

What do you think?

Note: The author of this report, Dave Lieber, is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His new book — Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation — won two national book awards for social change in 2009.