Last Blog On Earth

Not sure how closely y’all have been following the Laurie Madigan/Chula Vista story. In short: Madigan was an assistant city manager in Chula Vista, in charge of “special projects” like the redevelopment of the Chula Vista Bayfront. For that she recevied a salary of roughly $184,000 a year. Tonya Mannes over at the U-T reported two weeks ago that Madigan was on paid sick leave since Feb. 8, but still teaching a course on urban planning with her husband, Mike Madigan, at UCSD.

Much controversy ensued, fueled by the old “if you’re going to stay home sick, you can’t go out to play” rule. Madigan agreed to step down and was offered a nice severance package, which only drew more criticism. Ends up she has rheumatoid arthritis—something she revealed in a letter to the U-T (bottom of the page). If only she’d said right off what her illness was, it might have calmed things down. I know a little about RA and how nasty it can be from my friend Jessica Hanson, author of the blog EastGirlsWest. Jess suffers from RA, too, and so I asked her thoughts on the Madigan sitch.

“Have you been following the Madigan story?” I wrote in an e-mail. Here’s her response:

Obsessively. While her departure from CV sounds like a sweetheart deal, and it also seems as if she and her husband have a history of borderline ethical issues (don’t know too much about this)—I do have some sympathy.

As someone with RA, I can definitely support the idea that there is a HUGE difference between working a stressful, full-time job and co-teaching a class once a week when it comes to coping with the disease.

When I was first diagnosed, I worked at home part-time, which I could handle. Going into an office five days a week would have killed me. Two days a week for 4 hours? I could have dealt with that.

Frankly, half the battle in dealing with an exhausting, auto-immune disease like RA (or any disease, for that matter), is staying positive. And hell, if she really enjoyed teaching that class, and found it relaxing and positive, then I say more power to her. She obviously wasn’t doing it for the money, and started teaching before she went on sick leave.

It seems like the UT was a bit too zealous in covering what really should/could have been a non-issue. On the other hand, based on the history she and her husband have in city/county politics, I can see why they followed it.

Jess is going to talk about this more on her blog and hopefully will have posted something by the time you’re reading this. The “borderline ethical issues” she’s referring to is that Madigan played too big a role in an agreement between Chula Vista and a developer her husband worked for, among other things (see the U-T story for details).