For years, Giarratano has been a hardcore cyclist, racing for the Columbia Race Team. She’s also pounded the pavement on two feet, running road races and completing several triathlons. In 1990, the Jefferson City resident started the Capitol City Cycling Club; three years later she helped establish the statewide Missouri Bicycle Federation. So in 1993, when the federal government passed a law requiring every state to have a bicycle-pedestrian coordinator, MoDOT interviewed her for the new post. The job went to a different candidate, but when it came open again in 2002, Giarratano got the gig.
“It was a natural fit for me,” she says.
She took over as chair of the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee and the group soon published a statewide plan to improve cycling and walking accommodations. She pushed to change the way MoDOT engineered streets and sidewalks, worked on legislative issues, and created a concise outline of the state’s cycling laws that’s now a standard handout at many bike shops in Kansas City.
But last November, she says, supervisors told her “to cut down dramatically my interaction with outside people.” They told her that the quarterly advisory committee meetings were to be canceled until further notice. She’d been part of a Mid-America Regional Council effort to create a regional bike policy for Kansas City, but when the issue of including bicycle accommodations on the new Paseo Bridge made headlines earlier this year, Giarratano wasn’t included in the discussion at MODOT.
Instead of continuing with her previous efforts, her supervisors told her to drop everything and devote all her time to creating a training program for MODOT engineers. Giarratano came up with a four-hour program and started traveling the state, teaching department staffers about cycling and pedestrian accommodations. After four workshops, Giarratano says the participant evaluations were consistently high. She had six more scheduled last month.
She was fired on October 2.
“They let me go in the middle of the training and I don’t know why,” she says.
Giarratano says her walking papers gave little explanation. The termination letter cited “poor communication” as a reason for her firing. As a statewide liaison for cycling issues, she says that allegation came as a shock. Giarratano has filed a grievance against the department for wrongful termination. She declined to comment on what grounds, but says she’s going to fight to get her job back.
More importantly, Giarratano doesn’t want to see the state’s bike/ped efforts to hit the skids. As of today, MODOT has not posted a notice for a new coordinator on its Web site.
Giarratano expects to have a hearing with the state this month. MODOT spokesperson, Jeff Briggs, said the department had no comment on Giarratano’s termination because it is an ongoing personnel matter. – Carolyn Szczepanski
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This article might sound biased in Caryn's favor, but that is because she was doing such a great job! Dontfoolme could be showing that he might work for the state, not to be suspicious about what happened to her. When MODOT says she was fired for 'poor communication' that showed that it was trying to mislead the truth, since she was obviously communicating well with transportation departments around the state!
I also work for the state, & am well aware of politics behind the scenes. I am highly suspicious of MODOT's reason for firing her.
I wish I could talk to her myself! You go, Girl!!
This article sounds extremely biased in Caryn's favor. I don't know Caryn, but this article doesn't seem like good journalism to me. It sounds like it could be written by Caryn herself. Sometimes people are let go from a job for very good reasons and it is easier for them to explain it by blaming it on something else, or to say they have no idea why they were let go. No one likes to admit to being fired, but it happens to most of us at some time in our career. I read somewhere that over half of sucessful business people have been fired at least once in their careers. I advise Caryn to cut her losses and move on to bigger and better things. There are plenty of better jobs out there than working at Modot.
It is amazing that a progressive voice even got in MoDOT. The agency needs to change its culture.
Does anyone communicate less honestly and more poorly than MoDOT? Caryn was on the right path while MoDOT is not. Truly MOronic!
MoDOT does it again. Way to show that Red Neck to the world folks. Sad that last I heard Missouri still had the number of road miles per capita and it's still such a mess. Time to start facing the real world folks. Bike are here to stay and you need to learn to get along with them.
Caryn was doing a bang-up job. Maybe that's what got her in trouble, the fact that A) she's a woman B) that what she was doing seemed to be working.
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