On a local front

Arbitration panel says Lexington Public Library owes former director

The library fired Imhoff after the Lexington Herald-Leader detailed more than $134,000 she spent on travel, meals, gifts and other items over five years. A city audit later raised more questions about library spending and reported that 1,522 images of "adult materials" were found on a library computer assigned to Imhoff, in violation of library policy.

Kathleen Imhoff sued the library for more than $5 million in damages, citing being fired in violation of her contract, defamation, and discrimination due to being a woman. The judge dismissed the defamation and discrimination claims, but the contract violation issue was sent to arbitration. The sex discrimination aspect was interesting. Yes, despite the overwhelming percentage of female librarians, men have a disproportionate amount of administrative jobs in our profession, so I'm sure it does happen. But the majority of administrators are, indeed, women. I don't know the details of the case, but apparently the judge did not find it having merit. However, it does sound like the library may have to pay her contract completely. If there were concerns about her spending, etc., then they should have made that the cause. Of course, these days, employers don't seem to want to do that, probably due to legal concerns. Kentucky is an 'at will' state, meaning employees can be terminated without cause, so they were under no obligation to put that in the contract. But once it was in, I think you pretty much have to go with it.