Joplin City Finance Director: Why's everybody always picking on me?

During an impassioned speech at the Joplin City Council meeting Monday night, City Finance Director Leslie Haase set citizens straight about who has the most dangerous job in the city.

Haase, who pulls down an annual six-figure salary, explained why she is worth every penny.

While police officers have to deal with meth users, domestic violence encounters (sometimes involving meth users), horrific traffic accidents and situations that thankfully, most of us do not ever have to face, Leslie Haase for 20 years has confronted something far more frightening.

Critics.

Haase tearfully told the Council of "rumors and inaccurate statements" that have "flourished in social media. Many have centered on me and my family."

The comments have come recently as discussions continue about the pay level for police officers and firefighters. Haase's encounter with the widow of a Joplin Police Department officer who was killed in the line of duty as the topic of a complaint sent to the City Council and City Manager Sam Anselm last week.

(Previous post: Claim in letter to Joplin City Council- Finance director tell's police officer's widow- Even your husband knew what he was coming to work for)

Haase explained a major problem she has in working for the city. "Unlike the private sector, people in the public sector always serve in the public eye."

That means that even when she is not at work, the public is still looking at her, she said, but that is all right with her.

"I willingly accept that responsibility."

That being said, Haase maintained that when a member of the public confronts her, she has the right to respond.

Then Haase followed a Joplin city officials tradition of the past few years and played the tornado card.

The city is being split apart when everyone was working together in the days and years after the May 22, 2011 natural disaster when the city had "positive notoriety."

Now that has changed, Haase said, but her approach to her job has not. "I have conducted myself with professionalism and integrity and honesty as is expected of all city employees and especially department directors.

"The same cannot be said for those comments directed at me personally."

Those who have criticized her are doing so with sinister intent, she indicated.

"It is apparent that these attacks on me and my family are calculated in nature to try to remove me from city service either voluntarily or involuntarily."

But those who are attacking her have underestimated her.

"Attempts to intimidate me will not work as I have done nothing wrong except to do my job as finance director to the best of my ability with the interests of the community at heart."

In her conclusion Haase said, "A wise woman recently told me there have to be easier jobs out there."

Perhaps she could become a police officer or a firefighter.