2024-05-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board May 24, 2024 CHR. CABANAS: Yes, correct. MS. BOND: So, then, it says, "The County has the same opportunity CHR. CABANAS: Yes. MS. BOND: And then they "may waive doing so" or word salad, word salad, word salad. Okay. MS. MATHEWS: So, going back to my original objection to a lot of this in the first place —is — "It is not an opportunity for a party to make arguments or to provide testimony" that's all very well and good if you're an attorney. If you're a layperson, who has no idea about how this works —what defines an argument or testimony is actually a legal thing as opposed to what would be common sense to the person that is driving the truck — MR. WISEMAN: Exactly. And, if you recall at the last hearing we had, I kept interrupting that goes to the merits, we're not asking that. So, it takes the Counsel and the Chair to, sort of, reign that in when it gets there. That's all. MS. MATHEWS: My problem that pushed us back to the original issue of it seems like there's a huge imbalance. You've got an attorney who's had three years of legal training and umpteen million years of working —and you have somebody that has no legal training whatsoever and they don't understand this, and all it's going to feel like is that people up on high are beating up on the little guy when you got two other attorneys sitting there. That's where it goes back to is the issue of fairness and I don't know how to get past it. MR. WISEMAN: Yeah. Well, there's nothing really (inaudible) do, but most lay people will think that they just tell their story. And we just have to rein that in and explain to them as basic terms as possible that you'll have an opportunity to state that later on —right now, there's a question and we just want to answer the —have the question answered. It's always going to be a problem with lay people. MS. BOND: Well, I think that maybe if you —in "you are allowed to make a brief opening statement" which is just tell your story without any evidence. And somehow put that in there that what we don't want to hear is seven miles of your evidence. What we just want to hear is why you're here. MR. WISEMAN: Yeah. But the lay people always going to interject when they feel they need to tell a story. In fact, as they call it in court —it's called a "pro se" —someone who represents themselves that in court there's an old cliche, "He who represents himself has a fool for a client." Page 25