Depositions Set For Instant Messaging Appeal

SEBRING - The formal legal process for the appeals of two county employees for exchanging inappropriate and often sexually explicit instant-messages will begin in six days, on Monday.

Jim McCollum, the attorney for ex-county employees Jared Lee and Treasa Handley, will take sworn statements, recorded verbatim by a legal stenographer, from four people, starting at 9 a.m. in a conference room at the Highlands County Government Center.

Handley and Lee were dismissed more than five months ago for sending thousands of personal instant messages to each other, and others, on their county computers during working hours.

Many of the messages were sexually explicit, and all of them are public record, accessible to anyone, with a request to either the county's public information officer or the Highlands County Clerk of Courts office.

Most appeals of dismissal from a county job are heard with a few weeks of the firing.
Handley and Lee are having McCollum take depositions from at least four and possibly six current and former county employees.

The four county workers who will be deposed on June 23 are, in the order of which their depositions will be taken: county Engineer Ramon Gavarrete; director of the Office of Management and Budget Bernis Gainer, who was Handley's and Lee's boss; Ben Henley, who works at the Emergency Operations Center; and Tim Mechling, a budget analyst in the Office of Management and Budget.
According to e-mails between county officials and legal representatives of Handley and Lee, the two former county workers also are trying to get depositions from Carl Cool, who retired May 31 after 17 years as county administrator, and Tom Portz, a previous assistant county administrator.

In the last e-mail sent, county officials said that Cool had not yet responded by e-mail about their e-mail informing him of his deposition.

John Minor, human resources director, said county officials don't know where Portz is and don't know how to find him.

The depositions are not the appeal of Handley's and Lee's firings. But they signal that the actual appeal will happen soon, possibly within one to two weeks after the depositions are taken.

McCollum said he wanted to schedule the appeals hearings, but he first had to take depositions for his clients.

The appeals will be heard and decided by Michael Wright, the new county administrator who started his job here June 1.