More Than a “Termination Issue”

Good morning and Happy Friday!

Today, we are going to talk a bit about a settlement agreement the county commissioners agreed to at the last meeting.

Here is the agenda item.

And here is the settlement agreement if you wish to read it.

As you can see, the agenda item is pretty vague. It does not provide much information aside from a $163,658.61 payout to Elissa Hofelt.

The settlement agreement dives into it a bit. Reading through the document, Hofelt was an employee of Citrus County and she has sued in Federal Court for unlawful discrimination and retaliation. She also filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC). It goes on to mention Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Florida Human Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Rehabilitation Act, Family Medical Leave Act, The Fair Labor Standards Act, The Florida Whistleblowers Act, and Florida Workers Compensation Act.

Well, that got my interest. What in the world happened to her that she filed a Federal Lawsuit against the county apparently alleging some pretty serious things under those listed acts above.

Court Listener has some docket details, but I do not have PACER account approved yet for searches, so I could not read the actual filings.

However, the agenda item mentions a shade meeting. For those not familiar with the term, a shade meeting is where the commissioners meet at a publicly noticed meeting, then close the doors and have a "private" meeting with the attorneys where they can talk about the case.

Remember, commissioners have to follow sunshine law. The only time they can meet as a group is at a publicly noticed meeting. Since these are legal issues related to the county, they are closed to the public.

However, there is a court reporter there to transcribe the entire meeting. This becomes a public record document when the court case is closed. This allows the public to see what exactly was said at these meetings and by whom... to satisfy public records laws and Florida Sunshine law.

So I did a records request for the shade meeting transcript. Here it is.

In this case, we are represented by Cindy Townsend from Roper, Townsend and Sutphen. She specializes in labor cases and can practice in the Federal Courts.

For those wondering, when there are lawsuits, the county attorney does not usually represent the county. These cases require specialized legal counsel that go beyond government attorney type work. You do not want a heart surgeon to operate on you if you need a neurosurgeon. Similar idea.

Reading through this transcript, Townsend tells the commissioners about the case and what the legal risk is. She goes on to explain the claims and all of that.

Well... what happened?

Short version... Hofelt was a whistle blower on Auvis Cole. She was one of the people who gave testimony to Human Resources in his case back in 2025 when he was recommended for termination for breaking county rules.

He was placed on administrative leave in February 2025 pending a HR investigation. That investigation ended in March and resulted in HR recommending that Cole be terminated.

There were 4 "charges": misuse of county funds; inappropriate comments/language; unexcused absences from the office; and use of his county vehicle for personal use.

"Mr. Cole displayed a blatant disregard to the policies and procedures of the county, he failed to notify and obtain approval from his supervisor, the County Administrator, when he was out of the office on numerous occasions, using the county vehicle overnight for several days without permission, using foul language in front of staff, and engaging in inappropriate conversation with his staff.”

Ultimately, County Administrator Steve Howard decided not to fire Cole. He gave him 3 days suspension and added additional time to his probationary period.

This is where Hofelt comes in according to the shade meeting transcript. Apparently she was one of the people that reported this to the county.

From the transcript Townsend explains what happened after Auvis took the job that would become the supervisor of Hofelt.

"In October of 2024, so several months later, there were complaints that were lodged against Mr. Cole by several employees in his department, including Ms. Hofelt. Those allegations included the misuse of county funds, inappropriate comments and language in the workplace, timecard fraud, unexcused absences, the use of the county vehicle for personal reasons, harassment, and age discrimination."

HR began to investigate the issue and interviewed Hofelt. Towsend explains:

"Now, in addition to these verbal reports, she has kept very detailed, written logs of pretty much everything that has happened, everything that she perceives to have happened in the workplace. And those logs have been provided to – to HR during the investigation, so they are, you know,
part of the factual record. And I believe there were a total of six written logs, detailing, again, you know, a host of information."

So not only did she report it, she kept notes.

Townsend goes on to explain that HR did a very detailed investigation and found that most of the claims were substantiated and added further details by June Randall, then HR director.

"She also found him to be dishonest during the investigation. Didn't
think that he was credible when he was answering some of the questions. And also determined that he was incapable of effectively carrying out his duties and responsibilities. As a result of that, because he was still on his probationary period, she recommended termination."

Again, Howard decided against termination.

Townsend goes on to explain how we got to the lawsuit by Hofelt.

"Shortly thereafter, when he returned, Ms. Hofelt began experiencing medical symptoms and conditions that she has related to the impact his returning to the work force had on her health, because she knew that she
had been one of the primary players in bringing these complaints against Mr. Cole to light."

She goes on to say Hofelt has been diagnosed with severe and debilitating
depression and anxiety for which she was still in treatment. Hofelt felt that she could no longer work, so filed for leave under Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). She was approved for 12 weeks leave.

She requested an additional 30 days the day before she was supposed to return to work. It was granted, which is within county policy.

A few days before that was set to expire, she requested an additional 30 days. Randall was out of the office at that time, so she responded when she returned. She reached out to Cole to get the approval, which he denied.

Townsend quoted him stating:

"listen, I've got – she's been out for several months at this point. It's a
burden on the department and I can't grant another 30 days."

She was discharged with an administrative discharge. Townsend explained that was important because Hofelt has no disciplinary issues and was not terminated due to a disciplinary issue.

"In fact, the letter specifically says she basically was discharged, she's still in good standing. It wasn't related to performance or disciplinary issues at all."

Townsend points out that the replacement hired by Cole was 33 years old. Hofelt is 64 years old. This is important because age discrimination was part of the lawsuit.

"So the lawsuit was filed on October 15th of 2025. There are four counts contained in the lawsuit. We've got FMLA retaliation because she was discharged after taking her protected leave. There's a claim for disability discrimination, disability retaliation, and also for violation of the public Whistleblower's Act."

Townsend goes on to explain that she has already started the discovery in the case after taking the case. What she found at that time showed there was liability on the county due to the detailed written record, presumably from the notes Hofelt kept.

After I received this case and did my initial evaluation, I determined that there are some potential issues, some liability that we are facing.

She basically tells the commissioners they need to get this case behind them before it goes to trial. The longer it goes on, the more damages the county faces.

"And in light of that, I made a recommendation that we try to engage an early mediation before the defense costs increase, before her
attorneys' fees increase, and the longer she is not employed, the more her potential damages are increasing. So I just – so we've made that recommendation.

She tells them that the depositions will be very detailed and Hofelt has named each of them as people she wishes to depose. This means they would have to answer her questions about the situation. All this will take time and billable hours.

However, the bombshell her is that Townsend goes on to tell them that she has a very strong case and one that they very likely may lose.

"And I had been doing my research, and in drafting the response, I – I am not confident that I'm going to get a ruling in my favor. Because the law is just not on our side as far as that goes, because you don't have to prove the merits. It's a much smaller threshold. And there's no doubt that she engaged in protected, activity. Some of the things that she revealed, she wasn't facing any sort of discipline prior to this, because that would be one reason why the Court would deny it. They would say, well, she had improper motive. She knew that she was going to get disciplined, so she trumped up these allegations against him. That is not the case here.

Ouch. Not a good sign when your attorney tells you she has a strong case, so the conversation started to shift towards the settlement offers.

Long story made shorter.... the commissioners authorized Townsend to settle for up to $250k. Townsend told them that the overall cost to go to trial could be well over $300k and if they lost, go well beyond that. So $250k was the number and the county settled for significantly less than that.

Hofelt won't be too thrilled to see that she could have gotten more, but that is how these things go.

But the key here is that OUR attorney told the commissioners they faced a very like $350k or more lawsuit due to the actions of a county employee... who was ultimately not fired by Howard despite HR making that suggestion.

Had he been fired, as HR recommended and supported, NONE of this would have happened.

Part of the transcript being made available allows us to see what commissioners say. Well, Holly Davis takes the cake. Despite our legal representative telling commissioners that Hofelt had a very strong case, Davis comes out in defense of Cole essentially suggesting that Hofelt is making it all up.

"Are you familiar with any of the rebuttal to all of this? Because it's not quite as simple as she's making it sound.... I chair that board. So I interact with that staff a lot. And – typically, in the board meetings and so
forth. And the prior director, who was terminated, was a very easygoing, not an ambitious, let's-get-it-done kind of manager.

Mr. Cole is very much, from what I can tell, a very positive, happy, future-thinking, let's go kind of guy. He did make some mistakes very early on. This was his first government employment. I made a couple of those same mistakes myself, which staff caught and I fixed it. You know, not allowed to valet park, et cetera. So I paid those back.

His very first week on the job, he wanted to do team building, so he took everyone on the team out for lunch and he put it on his P-card. And then, you know, the budget office caught, you know, flagged that. And he immediately paid it back, said I'm sorry, and never did it again. So she's making all of this up to be, you know, when he was out of the office, he was doing --"

At this point, county attorney Denise Lyn speaks up.

Chair – chair – chair. Sorry. Sorry. I just want to remind all of
you that this is being reported and I think you've already been told you're going to have your depositions taken.

She stopped Davis from saying something that could hurt the county in the lawsuit or create an additional lawsuit such as slander for stating it was all made up... and these proceedings are public record.

And then Davis wants to fire Lyn a few months later.

What in the world was Davis thinking? Despite all the evidence that Hofelt had for this case, Davis is going to defend Cole? The lawsuit was not about what Cole did to get himself in trouble and suspended. It was about the retaliation Cole did toward Hofelt when he returned... and Townsend thought she had a compelling enough case to tell the county to jump at a settlement offer and not let it get to trial.

Absolutely insane.

In any case, that about covers it. Just wanted to provide the full details of the settlement agreement that was described as a "termination issue". I think it was a bit more than that.