Mayor Turner should rethink decision on moonlighting employee.

Serious indiscretions merit tougher punishment for top aide to Mayor Turner.

How a boss reacts to bad behavior in the workplace sends a powerful message.

If an employee deliberately breaks some of the most important rules governing her job duties, the offense merits more than a slap on the wrist. If that employee literally speaks for the boss, the disciplinary action carries special resonance. That’s why Mayor Sylvester Turner needs to seriously reexamine the brief suspension recently meted out to one of his highest profile aides.

Darian Ward serves as the mayor’s press secretary, but she also has a business on the side. Her biography on the city’s website says she’s the president of a multi-media production company. What the website doesn’t mention is that she has apparently been doing a lot of private work while on city time.

Trent Seibert, a reporter for the Texas Monitor, decided it might be a story, so he filed a Texas Public Information Act request asking for relevant emails on her city account. State law requires government employees to turn over those documents because they’re public records. Ward gave the reporter 30 emails, only one of which had anything to do with her moonlight business. That apparently raised her supervisor’s suspicion. A subsequent investigation discovered about 5,000 relevant messages, indicating Ward tried to conceal that she’s been using her city email account while working to launch a reality TV show. She’s also accused of using her time in the mayor’s office to carry out an “intense and sustained” fundraising campaign for an unidentified non-profit, implying she may have used her position in the mayor’s office to help solicit money or in-kind donations.

So the mayor’s press secretary allegedly fell afoul of not only a state law requiring her to release her emails to a reporter, but also city administrative procedures and the local code of ordinances. These are not minor transgressions. Violating the Texas Public Information Act is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg should investigate whether any of this behavior merits prosecution.

Ward’s immediate supervisor wrote a disciplinary document last month that reads like a termination letter — all the way until the end. The mayor decided to suspend her without pay for ten days.

The mayor might as well have said, “Go to the beach for Christmas and learn your lesson.” The suspension stunned people at City Hall and left many of them shaking their heads in dismay, worrying that it reflected a lax attitude from the mayor toward wrongdoing by his staff. Just as troublesome was the mayor’s angry reaction to questions about Ward, striking a defensive posture about a management decision he needs to dispassionately revisit.

Houston taxpayers have a right to expect that city employees won’t spend their time at work operating businesses on the side. What’s more, a press secretary — of all people — should be expected to comply with state law regarding the release of public information. This mild punishment sets a bad precedent, basically telling city employees that if they’re caught running a side business out of a municipal office, all they’ve got to lose is two weeks’ pay.

What we’re seeing here is one highprofile employee interaction involving a mayor who assumed office with limited management experience. In this case, the mayor made a bad call that he needs to reconsider.