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| Documents that will be imminently released pertaining to a recent legal settlement with a former employee illustrate how contentious some personnel issues can become when board policy is not followed with fidelity |
A large batch of documents became public late this afternoon.
They are related to a recent settlement that the county made with a former employee, a former paramedic in our EMS department.
I took an interest in this individual's circumstance when he reached out to me in frustration after his due process was violated an he was not treated fairly by staff. He was left in limbo for months and months on end---before he ever even contacted me.
It was horrific, how badly this employee was treated. I was disgusted when I peeled the onion and figured out just how badly this individual was treated. So I took up his cause---and tried desperately to help him get resolution and salvage his career here in Escambia County.
But nobody in administration did the right thing. One administrator that was leaving didn't have time to close the loop. The incoming administrator did not fix the issue, saying she was unaware of it. Once I spoke to her and brought it to her attention--she failed to fix it. Instead, she doubled down on the bad and incorrect advice of her newly hired HR director and her "mentor" a former state representative who she brought in to "consult." The new county leadership group failed to fix the issue, and allowed this employee to twist in the wind. To the point he made a tough decision in absolute anger and frustration.
He left the county and rebuilt his career in another location.
But he never wanted it to come to this, and he certainly didn't want to be treated the way he was treated. The county dropped the ball, staff turnovers exacerbated this situation, and NOBODY wanted to step up and fix the issue. It was infuriating.
This employee suffered economic losses, and an attorney took the case on contingency. It was an open and shut case--no wonder the attorney took the case. Opinions have varied, and some don't see the issues as they unfolded. But we have now gone through a couple of years and lots of facts and shade meetings since that happened.
Fast forward a couple of years, and we have now settled. $200K and we're LUCKY it was not more--that's how bad our position was--thanks to staff inattention and feckless handling of the issue.
I heard, just today, that the case is now officially closed.
So several documents will be coming out. There will be the transcripts of three BCC "shade" litigation
sessions where board members, staff, and attorneys wrestled with the best course of action to handle this situation-----after it escalated to litigation.There will be .pdf of a late night email exchange between our former HR director and an insurance "claims" adjuster who lamented the size of the settlement in his emails. He even went so far as to say it was my fault the issue had to be settled in this late night email to our former HR director. "It wasn't your fault--it was that guy Bergosh--how dare he tank our 'defense' strategy by telling the truth once he was subpoenaed and had to testify under oath" was the flavor of his comment..
What a tool. I guess he must think I should have been a "team player" and lied under oath after I was subpoenaed. Luckily--this individual adjuster and his flawed opinion mean nothing. His client the insurance company got dealt a bum hand due to the bungling of many issues by staff. They were, to their credit, smart enough to get this settled and not take it to trial.
A read of the three transcripts I intend to release first thing tomorrow morning (Inside the Sausage Grinder part II, III, and IV) will illustrate this fact with crystal clarity.
Follow policy, fix issues, and don't sweep issues under the rug and these sorts of issues can be avoided.
Listen to bad advice, support weak employees, and fail to uphold board policy--------and we will be living in a virtual "Groundhog Day."
I think the new staff we are moving forward with understand this. There are good things coming ahead.
Meanwhile-- over the next several days--- much of this same documentation will be released on various facebook chat sites. Most will be devoid of contex, just snippets here and there designed to frame issues in certain ways to make some look great, and others look culpable for the failures..
Set the garbage opinions aside and remember the bottom line is this:
--The insurance company picked up this claim, 100% with no deductable.
--The insurance company's attorney was not confident we would prevail if this case went to trial.
--when several of us, during one of these sessions--said--"let's just go to trial!"----the insurance company attorney walked us back from that--illustrating MANY weaknesses in our case
--Going to trial vice settling this case could have cost the county $600K or more--plus additional legal fees
--The case is now settled, it is over.
--Most importantly--justice was served, culpable employees are gone, and the wronged employee has been made whole
These are the facts.
17 comments:
Thank you for the facts…The opinions of people that don’t matter…..don’t matter.
Anon 9:55--Nicely Stated, thanks
Per your statement "culpable employees are gone," Commissioner Bergosh, it's mind blowing just how many County employees have contributed to not just Matt Selover's atrocious harassment and due process violations.
The entire EMS debacle transpired primarily because two successive County administrators--Jack Brown and Janice Gilley--aided and abetted, through (1) managerial negligence and (2) active and sometimes illegal cover-ups and political tactics,
--Dr. Edler's malicious harassment of staff and the toxic workplace she fostered,
--systemic fraternization that went all the way up and down the chain and inter-departmentally (including the head of HR, of course, as the entire County is aware),
--NUMEROUS terminations and force-outs of good staff in order to silence them from blowing the whistle any louder,
--poor care administered out on the road as Dr. Edler chased off competent medics and protected some who shouldn't have ever been elevated from EMT to begin with,
--the QA system completely stymied by Dr. Edler's refusal to process the serious incidents involving any of the staff in her "army" and Janice Gilley/Jana Still's abrupt termination (oh, excuse me, technically they lied that her position was being eliminated) of Rebecca Brownfield on a Fire Me Friday, and, of course,
--a full-blown, orchestrated conspiracy to railroad innocent employees on certification problems, as retribution for valid complaints filed and potentially as a way to clear positions for the former Fire Chief's past associates.
Yes, most of the principal leadership who either participated in this sort of activity or simply allowed it to happen are gone--including Jack Brown, Rusty Nail, Janice Gilley, Jerry Maygarden, Jana Still, Jimmie Maddrey, Bill Hopkins, Shawn Hoopaugh, Lindsay Ritter, Jason Rogers, and Billy Shipp--with Doug a lame duck and Edler herself out to pasture in some nebulous way that means we are probably paying her grossly inflated salaries while we are also footing the bill for the BOCC's defense of her lawsuits. (Hey, what's new on the pay. The woman never worked a full week at the County from her first day, and who knows what she was getting paid for per "directing" the medical at the jail.
I would really like to encourage County elected officials and leaders, however, to recognize that **UNTIL THE COUNTY COMES CLEAN ON WHAT REALLY HAPPENED**--to FDLE, to the SAO, to the press and to the public, there will be no end of fallout from the last few years of County leadership for a very long time.
There will probably be more (justifiable) law suits; more court costs covered; and more explosions coming out from what I can only imagine is the absolute mess of depositions some of these serial liars must have spit out during the Selover suit. (I can't wait to see, for instance, whether Edler and Maddrey were asked about any romantic liaison, and what the response was. Same goes for Maddrey and Jana Still.)
It really would be best for the County to come clean on all this and heal it. The cover-ups have all failed miserably, and generated misery on top of misery. Let's just cut to the chase, admit that these people were railroaded, and move on!
Think about it: wouldn't it be nice if the public knew that our EMS wasn't really perpetrating all this criminal behavior that Edler, Underhill, Jaqueline, Gilley, and Jana Still assured them they were? Seriously. What better thing than for our community to have this thrown into the light of day, disinfected, and healed?
That would be a good news, win win story for EVERY agency involved in this. Because right now, a single renegade employee at the County managed to rope three state agencies--DOH, FDLE, and the SAO--into an absurd fiasco that was not of their making. So why doesn't County leadership just do everybody a break and admit what happened?
I'm going to laugh my ass off when you get drug back into court and sued, Mel.
From the insurance Liability Specialist paying the paramedic settlement claim:
"The primary reason we ended up paying so much in this Selover case was due to Commissioner Bergosh's testimony against the county. While there were perhaps minor issues with how Selover's complaint was handled, it was largely defensible until Bergosh made statements that he was really not qualified to make and tanked the defense that we had been working to put forward and damaged our ability to file a motion for summary judgement. "
And why didn’t you release ALL of the important documentation? Because it shows that Commissioner Bergosh was in fact the reason WHY the taxpayers are paying a $200,000 settlement to a paramedic who is still under state investigation. The whole story needs to be told.
11:19, didn’t she win the suit filed against her?
Wow, they're in full meltdown mode over at ECW. Underhill is panicking and lashing out at everyone... JAR is desperately trying to bury this under Jana Still's way after-the-bell exchange with her insurance friend... and they're trying to lay it all up to Bergosh?? Seriously?
Matt Selover would be doing this county a HUGE favor if he would go ahead and sue the whole lot of them. If he were half as litigious as Edler, he'd own the whole place.
Anonymous 9:06, I’m inclined to believe it’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when.
Anon 3:01--because that document was a manufactured set up job to attempt to blame me for everything that happened, which is BS. I was subpoenaed to testify under oath, I gave sworn testimony that was accurate and corroborated with a timeline that was not helpful to the county's position (because the county was at fault here, and that is an undisputable fact) and some beancounter-type somewhere didn't like the fact that I told the truth and it hurt his BOSS's ability (the insurance company) to do a lowball job on a former employee whom the county wronged. That's the reality of what happened, born out in the transcripts and in the evidence. Now, if your're one of a dozen or so folks in the basement in the dark, foil-hat on, at the keyboard on a facebook chat site, you might actually believe the lie in that email. It is a lie, and does not comport with reality which is difficult for some who live in online chat sites to comprehend. Don't be like them, they really are very hateful, spiteful, narrow-minded and overall unhappy people. Don't let yourself fall into that dysfunction junction fantasy squad, follow the facts and reality instead. LOL
Anon 11:19 not likely. While Edler got away with a lot outside the courts, everything Pino said above is true and is coming out in the legal system. Why do you think it’s all been a loss in the legal system for them/her?
They really are the nastiness group of people. They don’t even think twice about what they’ve done to that paramedic and his family, or to anyone else they choose to hate and destroy. They’ve gone too far and they’re going to get sued.
The paramedic isn’t the only one that should sue the hateful admin on ECW. Look at what she did to the Westmarks. I think Jacqueline is messed up in the head. Miserable envious people are mean people. She takes the cake.
It would do Pensacola a big favor. ECW’s thugs led by JAR have used the group to prosecute the people they hate. They get off on creating hate to divide Pensacola. It’s their whole life.Commissioner Underhill has given her information for 8 years on particular people to go after.When their life savings has to go to a defense attorney they’ll wish they wouldn’t of been such hate filled puppets. How much did Mel say it cost her when she got sued? I think she won her case and still lost alot of money.
Switch to signal they say it’s secure they say LMAO
I respect you for doing the right thing even though it exposed what the county was doing wrong. What’s the protocol when one commissioner directs county employees and private citizens to railroad another commissioner? I feel like that’s what Commisioner underhill has done.
Is she absolutely one hundred percent correct without a doubt and all of this laid out and not just what she says?
9:32 when elder was up for discovery she dropped the suit.
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