The State Worker: The parks documents: the Elsie Brenneman interviews

The State Worker

Chronicling civil-service life for California state workers

August 22, 2012

The parks documents: the Elsie Brenneman interviews

The California Natural Resources Agency recently released more than 1,000 pages of interviews, adverse action notices and reports that detail a covert employee leave buyback program at the Department of Parks and Recreation during the summer of 2011.

Natural resources issued the documents online in response to media requests after The Bee broke the story of the leave cash-out program, which spurred a subsequent revelation that parks squirreled away millions of dollars while also threatening to close facilities due to extreme budget pressure.

This post is the next in a series intended to make all of those 38 documents readily accessible to the public within the next few days.

Person interviewed: Elsie Brenneman
Job classification: Parks budget officer
Interviewed by: Corrine Murphy, Justice Department deputy attorney general, and Angela Nowicki, Superintendent II, State Parks Law Enforcement Emergency Services
Date of interviews:Feb. 23, 2012, and Mar. 9, 2012 (click the link below to access)
Notable quote: "I just figured -- I assumed it was there personal information so why would they feel the need to share it, but if they wanted to, it was their information." - Brenneman on page 17 of the Feb. 23 interview explaining why she spread word of the parks leave buyout plan verbally and not in writing.
Brenneman Interview 2012-2-23

Brenneman Interview 2012-3-9

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