Unanswered Questions

Today, we are going to go back to the settlement that the county made with former employee Elissa Hofelt. If you need a refresher, here is my article from last week.

Today, we are going to get into the lawsuit itself. I am still waiting on my access to PACER, but someone sent me the complaint that was filed in Federal Court.

You can read it here. I will be sharing a few snippets as we go along. There is A LOT in there, so I suggest you read it.

First, I want to share this video that I posted on the Facebook page yesterday.

Here, a resident questions the settlement agreement and commissioner Holly Davis tells him she will speak to him in private regarding the matter and that she has more to add.

First... this is all public record at this point. Everything in the file is public. Now that the case is over, the shade meeting transcripts are public. The settlement is public. Even the personnel files are public.

Why is Davis wanting to do this quietly and not at the public meeting. Remember, she made a vote at the last meeting to approve the $160k payout to Hofelt. Why not tell us why she did that publicly?

Makes ZERO sense... unless she is trying to protect Auvis Cole and try to discredit Hofelt, whom she suggested she made it up in the shade meeting.

"So she's making all of this up to be, you know, when he was out
of the office, he was doing --"

So who knows... but this needs to be done public.

Second... what happened to Cole over all of this? If you recall, HR suggested that Howard terminate Cole. Howard decided on 3 days suspension among other things. Then, after all of that ends, Cole allegedly retaliates against Hofelt and costs the county over $160k in a settlement.

Yet, we have heard nothing regarding Cole or any discipline related to this. If termination was suggested for the other issues, I would think it would be suggested for retaliation against an employee.

Remember, our attorney on this case suggested the county cancel due to the amount of evidence Hofelt had in this case and the risk of the final judgement being north of $350k when all was said and done.

Cole is still employed and I have not seen anything to suggest there was any punishment. I have a records request in for further information.

For now, we are going to talk about the claims Hofelt is making.

That is the gist of the lawsuit. 4 claims against Cole and the county.

Here is the FMLA stuff.

It goes on to say she was recognized to have severe anxiety and depression by her healthcare provider.

This explains that she was fired during her FMLA leave.

This talks about her being termination for retaliation for being a whistleblower and provide evidence of wrongdoing to HR. Those are protected actions under whistleblower laws.

She goes on to ask for damages and for a jury trial.

So this is a pretty big deal and as we saw in the shade meeting, our attorney thought Hofelt has a good chance of winning and the county had liability and recommended settling.

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

Reminder, this is a senior level staff member allegedly treating an employee in this manner. This is a pretty significant issue and I cannot find anywhere that Cole was reprimanded or anything regarding this.

I do have a public records request pending.

But I go back to my original question... why is Cole still working for the county after this.

The first issue was the HR complaint. HR found reasonable cause to recommend termination... then this happens. This is a 2nd event/issue. This one was so egregious that our legal counsel suggested not to fight it and to settle. The board authorized up to $250k for the settlement amount.

This is a VERY expensive issue that county tax payers have to foot the bill for... and no punishment that I can see? People have been terminated for less.

Remember, it was only a few weeks ago that the county tried to fire Joanna Coutu for disagreeing with her supervisor. This issue with Cole led to a Federal lawsuit and a settlement... or payoff to make it go away.

Where is Steve Howard on this and why has he not done anything... and why were the citizens of Citrus County left in the dark when we are the ones footing the bill?

I will keep you posted on what I find.