Your April 28 editorial "De-bugging a law" omitted an issue that the Governor's Task Force avoided -- a worker who experiences a pesticide safety violation cannot make a confidential complaint to the N.C. Department of Agriculture, the state agency that enforces the N.C. Pesticide Law.

The Department of Agriculture will accept anonymous complaints, but its policies do not require it to keep confidential the identity of a person who makes a complaint or provides information to its pesticide inspectors. In contrast, N.C. OSHA has a policy of confidentiality that has worked well for other workplace safety issues.

Confidentiality and anonymity are not the same. Anonymous complaints handicap inspectors because they do not know which witnesses are key, or even whether the complainant was made available for interview at the worksite. If their statements to investigators are not confidential, anonymous complainants and their coworkers have reason to fear cooperating with the inspectors. If the employer identifies and retaliates against an anonymous complainant, his anti- retaliation claim will be more difficult to prove since no record will link him with the complaint.

The lack of confidentiality is a weakness in the current system that the task force did not forthrightly address.

Mary Lee Hall

Raleigh

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.