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Highlands Today

Instant Message Firing Appeals To Be Heard By Wright

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By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: June 6, 2008

SEBRING – The appeals of the firings of ex-county employees Treasa Handley and Jarod Lee will be heard by new Highlands County Administrator Michael Wright.

But the informal hearing process won't be scheduled until after Handley's and Lee's attorney takes depositions from at least four and possibly more county employees.

Attorney Jim McCollum, representing the two Office of Management and Budget employees who were fired for sending thousands of personal and inappropriate instant messages on their county computers, has not yet requested a hearing date.

Their firings go back more than three months, but McCollum is not rushing to schedule the appeals hearing in front of Wright.

Before any hearing is scheduled, McCollum said, he needs to get sworn statements in depositions from several high-ranking county managers and from one ex-county employee, Carl Cool.

McCollum was reluctant to have Handley's and Lee's appeals heard by Cool, who retired last week after 17 years as the county chief executive officer.

County officials were told more than six weeks ago that Handley and Lee would request their appeals be heard after Cool left his job.
Now that Wright has moved down from Tallahassee and replaced Cool, the appeals hearings could be scheduled with a phone call to the administrator's office, according to the county's attorney, Ross Macbeth.

On Thursday, McCollum said he won't ask for an appeals hearing date until after he can get depositions, which, apparently, he plans to use in the appeals.

McCollum was busy handling a mediation session in a West Coast city and did not have time for a lengthy telephone interview. He did not name specifically which county officials he will depose.

However, in addition to Cool, McCollum is expected to also depose: Bernis Gainer, director of the Office of Management and Budget; Ricky Helms, assistant county administrator; John Minor, director of human resources; and Gloria Rybinski, the county's public information officer who issued a press release about the dismissals of Lee and Handley.

Before he retired, Cool said that the appeal of a county employee's firing is usually an informal hearing and usually occurs within a few weeks of the dismissal. Cool said fired county employees have the right to delay their appeal as long as they want to, and they can bring up any information in the hearing that they think is relevant.

When McCollum became Handley's and Lee's lawyer, he said that he had questions about the official version of the firings, which is that Gainer, as Lee's and Handley's boss, made the decision to fire them by himself, then informed other county officials.

According to McCollum, some people suspect that Cool, or other county officials, may have played a role in making the decision to fire Lee and Handley.

Many of the instant messages that Handley and Lee sent to each other and other county workers were not only inappropriate, but also were sexually explicit, according to the Highlands County Clerk of Courts office.

The clerk's office uncovered the explicit messages during a routine audit of instant messages, e-mails and other public documents while auditing expenditures for a county project.

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