I share this concern. First, there is no point in this process where we should rely solely on what public comments "reveal." We should fully consider public comments, but we are not here merely to receive revelations. We need to exercise judgment.
Fortunately, this was an instance where judgment should have been relatively easy.
Unfortunately, the Third Draft Report nonetheless gets it wrong.
A review of the public comments to the Second Draft reveals no support for the statement “Public comments revealed that a review of staff accountability should not be pursued.”
According the public comment analysis tool, only 9 comments (out of 94) directly addressed staff accountability. All 9 of these comments were deemed to support the overall recommendation. Four of the comments did note issues with aspects of the recommendation, but none of the comments opposed the recommendation outright.
90% of the comments did not even find our second draft recommendation on staff accountability worthy of comment, and all those that did supported the comment, completely or in large part. This provides nothing but support for pursuing staff accountability in Work Stream 2, not the opposite. The statement in our Third Draft Report is a clear error, which must be corrected.
This is a big project, and mistakes can happen. Fortunately, this one was caught in time, and we need to make it right. We need to restore the recommendations from the Second Draft report, tweak them as we deem necessary, and put staff accountability squarely in the hands of Work Stream 2.
Greg