Item A1BOARD OF COUNTY COMNIISSIONERS
AGENDA ITEM SUMMARY
** TIME CERTAIN 8:30 A.M.*"
Meeting Date:
3/21/2007 - MAR
Division: -CquM
Attorn
Bulk Item: Yes
No xx
Staff Contact Person:
Bob Shillinuer
AGENDA ITEM WORDING:
An Attorney -Client Closed Session of the Board of County Commissioners in the matter of EEOC v.
Monroe County, Charge No. 5I0-2006-04265.
ITEM BACKGROUND:
Per F.S. 286.011(8), the subject matter of the meeting shall be confined to settlement negotiations or
strategy sessions related to litigation expenditures.
Present at the meeting will be the Commissioners, the County Administrator, the County Attorney
Suzanne Hutton, Chief Assistant County Attorney Bob Shillinger and Michael T. Burke, Esq. of
Johnson, Anselmo, Murdoch, Burke, Piper & McDuff, P.A., the County's counsel in this litigation, and
a certified court reporter.
PREVIOUS RELEVANT BOCC ACTION:
On 2/21/07 Board approved Attorney -Client Closed Session for 3/21/07 at 8:30 a.m.
CONTRACT/AGREEMENT CHANGES:
N/A
STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS:
N/A
TOTAL COST: $200 Estimate BUDGETED: Yes X No
COST TO COUNTY: $200 Estimate SOURCE OF FUNDS:
REVENUE PRODUCING: Yes
APPROVED BY: County Atty
DOCUMENTATION: Included
DISPOSITION:
Revised 2/05
No xx AMOUNT PER MONTH Year
OMB/Purchasing Risk Management
Not Required X
AGENDA ITEM #
County of Monroe
The Florida Keys
Robert B. Shillinger, County Attorney"
Pedro J. Mercado, Assistant County Attorney **
Susan M. Grimsley, Assistant County Attorney**
Natileene W. Cassel, Assistant County Attorney**
Cynthia L. Hall, Assistant County Attorney **
Christine Limbert-Barrows, Assistant County Attorney **
Derek V. Howard, Assistant County Attorney**
Lisa Granger, Assistant County Attorney
Steven T. Williams, Assistant County Attorney
** Board Certified in City, County & Local Govt. Law
January 9, 2014
Amy Heavilin, Clerk of the Circuit Court
Sixteenth Judicial Circuit, State of Florida
Monroe County Courthouse
500 Whitehead Street
Key West FL 33040
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
Mayor Sylvia J. Murphy, District 5
Mayor Pro Tern, Danny L. Kolhage, District 1
George Neugent, District 2
Heather Carruthers, District 3
David Rice, District 4
Office of the County Attorney
1 111 I P Street, Suite 408
Key West, FL 33040
(305) 292-3470 — Phone
(305) 292-3516 — Fax
In Re: EEOC v. Monroe County, Charge No.: 510-2006-04265
Dear Ms. Heavilin:
Please find enclosed herewith the transcript of the March 21, 2007 closed attomey/client
session of the Monroe County Board of County Commissioners regarding the above -
referenced matter. Under F.S. 286.011(8), the transcript may be made part of the public
record because the litigation has concluded.
Thank you for your assistance with this matter. Please contact me should you have any
questions.
Sincerely,
Robert . Shilling
Monroe County Attorney
Enclosure
MEETING OF THE
MONROE COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
ATTORNEY —CLIENT CLOSED SESSION
RE: EEOC v. MONROE COUNTY
CASE NO. 510-2006-04265
HELD AT THE
COMMISSION CHAMBERS
2798 OVERSEAS HIGHWAY
MARATHON, FLORIDA 33050
MARCH 21, 2007
8:40 AM — 9:10 AM
0 � 1 N A L
COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
MAYOR MARIO DiGENNARO
MAYOR PRO TEM DIXIE M. SPEHAR
COMMISSIONER CHARLES "SONNY" McCOY
COMMISSIONER GEORGE NEUGENT
COMMISSIONER SYLVIA J. MURPHY
ALSO PRESENT:
SUZANNE HUTTON, ESQ., COUNTY ATTORNEY
ROBERT B. SHILLINGER, ESQ., COUNTY ATTORNEY
THOMAS J. WILLI, COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR
MICHAEL BURKE, ESQ., OUTSIDE COUNSEL
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(The closed session regarding EEOC v. Monroe
County commenced at 8:40 a.m. as follows:)
MS. HUTTON: A closed attorney -client session
pursuant to Section 286.011 subsection (8), Florida
Statutes, will now be held. It is estimated that this
meeting will take 30 minutes.
The persons attending the meeting will be the
County Commissioners, the County Administrator, the
County Attorney, the Chief Assistant County Attorney
Robert Shillinger, Michael Burke, Esquire from Johnson
Anselmo Murdoch Burke Piper & McDuff, and a certified
court reporter.
Since the law prohibits any other person from
being present at the closed session, the
Commissioners, the County Administrator, the attorneys
for the County and the court reporter will now remain
in this meeting room and all other persons are
required to leave the room. When the closed session
is over, we will reconvene and reopen the public
meeting. If the Mayor will now close the public
meeting.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Closing the public meeting.
(Brief pause.)
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Opening the closed meeting.
MS. HUTTON: Okay. For the record, this meeting
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is being held upon my request and as County Attorney
who announced at a prior public meeting held on
February 21st, 2007, that I needed your advice
concerning the pending lawsuit, EEOC vs. Monroe
County, Charge Number 510-2006-04265.
At that meeting, the Board approved holding
today's closed session and public notice was given by
publication in the Key West Citizen on March 2nd, '07,
the Keynoter on March 3rd, '07, and The Reporter on
March 4, 107. A copy of that notice has been given to
the court reporter for inclusion in the record.
For the record and the benefit of the court
reporter, each of us will state our name and position
starting with the Commission. Do you want to start,
Commissioner Murphy?
COMMISSIONER MURPHY: Sylvia Murphy, District 5.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: George Neugent, County
Commissioner for District 2.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Mario DiGennaro, Monroe County
Mayor for District 4.
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: Dixie Spehar, Monroe
County Commission, District 1.
COMMISSIONER McCOY: Charles McCoy, 3.
MS. HUTTON: Suzanne Hutton, County Attorney.
MR. WILLI: Tom Willi, County Administrator.
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MR. SHILLINGER: Bob Shillinger, County
Attorney's Office.
MR. BURKE: Michael Burke.
MS. HUTTON: Just as a reminder, we'll only be
discussing settlement negotiations and strategy
relating to litigation expenditures. We can't take
any decisive action at this closed session. We can
only provide information and you can give direction to
the attorneys. Any decisions this Board makes
concerning this case must be done in an open meeting.
And, I'm going to turn this over to Bob
Shillinger to start the discussion with you.
MR. SHILLINGER: This is not your traditional
lawsuit. This is an administrative charge that's been
filed against the County by the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission. That's a federal agency that
tries to resolve employment -related disputes based on
alleged discrimination.
They filed a notice of charge that there was a
sexual harassment complaint. The person who filed the
charge is Celeste Bruno. The charge is filed against
the employer, which is the County, not the person she
alleges has caused or has harassed her.
Because we have insurance coverage for these
types of claims, we have insurance carrier counsel
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here today, Mike Burke, who represents the County.
And we've met him last month, you've met him. He's
represented the County for the last probably what, 20
years, Mike?
MR. BURKE: 15, 20 years.
MR. SHILLINGER: 15 or 20 years on a variety of
types of matters. Mike's been handling the case for
us and was recently presented with a proposal from the
EEOC investigator. Mike is here today to talk about
that and a little bit about the case and give us some
guidance as to where we are and where we could go.
With that, I'll turn it over to Mike.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Good morning, Mike.
MR. BURKE: Good morning. As Bob was saying, a
former employee of the County, Celeste Bruno, has
filed what's called a charge of discrimination. She
alleges that when she was working for then Mayor McCoy
that she was subjected to what she calls a sexually
hostile work environment. She alleges in this charge
of discrimination that Mayor McCoy used sexually
offensive language in the workplace and that that
created a hostile environment for her to work in.
She did not -- the basic facts are that in March
of 2006, Ms. Bruno, late March of 2006 after she had
been here for more than about, more than a year and
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had already obtained permanent employee status, during
a conference that was taking place with Mayor McCoy,
Suzanne Hutton and Ms. Bruno in Mr. McCoy's office,
suddenly walked out for, really, no apparent reason,
and did not return to work with Mayor McCoy.
Thereafter, Celeste Bruno would not discuss with
County Administration or personnel as to why she had
chosen to walk out and had not, prior to that time,
communicated any kind of complaint with regard to the
terms and conditions of her employment over the, as I
said, the year or so that she had been working here.
In any event, the County had accommodated her
desire to work somewhere else within the County and,
of course, as you all know, worked for Commissioner
Spehar. I hope I pronounced your name correctly.
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: That's okay.
MR. BURKE: I'm used to calling you Dixie.
So, in any event, she returns to work here at the
County doing the same job that she had, but with a
different person. And then, after a newspaper article
came out about this charge of discrimination that had
been filed with the EEOC, a gentleman named Milo
Reese, who appears to have some psychiatric or
emotional difficulties, came by the office where Ms.
Bruno was working and started to talk with her about
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this charge of discrimination which she had filed and
the article that had appeared in the paper. It upset
her.
Mr. Reese was asked to leave. He returned the
next day. Ultimately, Mr. Reese was arrested on
charges of trespassing, on charges of stalking. He
didn't do anything violent, but his presence upset Ms.
Bruno. Mr. Reese was arrested. He's been
incarcerated ever since and recently was sentenced to
a rather substantial term of imprisonment.
The posture of the matter right now is that when
an employee like Ms. Bruno files a charge of
discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, they assign an investigator whose job it
is to try to ascertain the facts of the matter and to
do that, the investigator will take statements from
people who have knowledge concerning the matter; Ms.
Bruno, they'll be taking a statement from Commissioner
McCoy, Suzanne Hutton who was present when, of course,
Ms. Bruno walked out of the office, and others here at
the County. So that's what they're doing right now.
As part of that process, what the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission is usually trying to
do is to really try to resolve these issues short of
there actually being a lawsuit. That's one of their
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primary roles as the administrative agency is to try
to help out the federal courts and ensure that people
who have complaints of this sort can get them resolved
without going to court. In fact, you can't go to
court until you have been through this agency
procedure. And, if the agency can't resolve the
dispute, what happens then is that the party who feels
aggrieved, the employee, can then file a lawsuit in
the Federal District Court.
So the agency doesn't act as a judicial body to
decide the case or decide the dispute, but rather
tries to conciliate it, investigate it and, if they
can't resolve it, then it will usually go to court.
So we're at the investigative conciliation stage.
The investigator for the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission communicated to me a proposal
that she had received, the investigator had received,
from Ms. Bruno's attorney to resolve this case. So
that's, I think, why we're here today, was to present
that to you and to give you what my thoughts are on it
at this time so that we could get some direction.
The proposal to resolve the dispute was in the
amount of $200,000 and, in my opinion, based on what I
know about this matter at this point, that is not
anything that I could in any way recommend that you
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consider.
Under this statute, basically what -- this is
Title 7, the Civil Rights Statute is what's at issue
here. A charge like this, a claim like this, really
has three components to it.
First, was there sexual discrimination,
discrimination based on sex. And in this particular
context, since it's not someone being hired or fired
or not being promoted, it comes down to whether or not
the job environment was so sexually hostile that a
reasonable person would have -- it would have affected
the terms and conditions of their employment to be
present in it. That's the first element of this
matter and, so far, really, we have very little
information on that at all.
As I said to you earlier, Ms. Bruno did not
communicate anything to the County about this, refused
to talk to people at the County about why she had
walked off and what the issue was.
And so, really, other than an extremely cryptic
description contained in her charge of discrimination,
we don't really know what Ms. Bruno complains of,
other than she alleges in there that it was language
in the workplace, but the specifics of that, we don't
know.
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We do know that Commissioner McCoy denies
subjecting this employee to any kind of offensive or
hostile work environment, denies her charges
completely. Insofar as I know, there are no witnesses
who saw or heard any conduct that they regarded
between Mr. McCoy and Ms. Bruno as being sexually
hostile or offensive. So with respect to the first
element of this case, at this stage, there isn't any
evidence that I have, that I have seen, that would
support the charge.
The second element of a claim like this, as Bob
was telling you when he came forward or before I came
forward, this charge, this claim gets brought against
the employer, not against any supervisor within the
organization. And one of the principal defenses that
arises in these kinds of cases is that if, indeed, a
supervisor does subject an employee to a hostile work
environment, the organization is not responsible for
that if they had a policy of prohibiting that kind of
conduct and if they had established a procedure that
the employee could utilize to rectify any complaints
or problems that they had in the workplace.
So Monroe County has such a procedure. Monroe
County prohibits discrimination based on sex. You
have a procedure which provides that if an employee
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believes they've been subjected to harassment or a
hostile environment, they can go to people within the
organization and get help. And, Ms. Bruno, as I said,
did not choose to utilize that.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Commissioner Neugent has a
question.
MR. BURKE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Michael, I'm a little
confused as far as how the process takes place. We've
got the EEOC that is investigating this to determine
if there's merit to the cause?
MR. BURKE: Yes, that's essentially what they do.
They don't decide the cause. They issue what's called
F�
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: So, okay.
MR. BURKE: Sorry.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Then, and this is a little
different situation in that we have elected folks.
Are we considered employees of the County?
MR. BURKE: Are you considered an employee of the
County?
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Yes.
MR. BURKE: I don't, I don't believe that --
MR. SHILLINGER: For purposes of that statute, I
mean, you're Officers of the County, so you're
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managers and directors of the entity.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: But we, in this
explanation and laying out of the groundwork, I'm a
little lost here because it seems a little different.
Are we like the board of directors of a corporation?
MR. SHILLINGER: In some respects, yes.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Because we work, we -- we
don't work for anybody --
MR. SHILLINGER: Right.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: -- other than the
citizenry that elects us.
MR. SHILLINGER: Right.
MR. BURKE: If I could explain, this might be
helpful.
You have to remember now, the charge of
discrimination is brought here by a County employee
against her employer, the County. And so there's no
dispute there's an employer/employee relationship
between Ms. Bruno and the County.
The law provides that the employer, that is the
County, has to provide the employee with a workplace
that is free of discrimination. And that would
include, for instance, let's suppose that a County
employee was being sexually harassed by a vendor. I
mean, there's someone who stands at the building
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department or at the -- yeah, the building department
table where people file applications. If a person who
is not an employee of the County, not an elected
official, not even a vendor, was coming up and
harassing this employee, it would be the County's job
to take steps to deal with that issue.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Right.
MR. BURKE: And so it doesn't really matter --
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: But since you said that
the EEOC doesn't resolve the matter, it tries to do
whatever it does.
MR. BURKE: Settle it.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Then -- and settle the
situation, then does Ms. Bruno have the ability to
bring this to a civil court?
MR. BURKE: Yes. The way the process works is
she's first required to file, if she has a complaint,
she's first required to go through the EEOC.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Commissioner Spehar?
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: Let him finish that. Go
ahead.
MR. BURKE: All right. And the EEOC does two
things. It first conducts an investigation to
determine whether there's reasonable cause to believe
there's been a violation of the statute, reasonable
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cause to believe that. And during that process, it
also attempts to settle or conciliate the dispute. If
it's unsuccessful in conciliating the dispute, then
the employee, in this case Ms. Bruno, could file a
lawsuit in Federal District Court against the
employer, Monroe County.
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: Now, my question is, you
mentioned Mr. Reese. Is that part of this and her
feeling safe? Because that part is the only part that
I have any knowledge of. Is that part of this?
MR. BURKE: Yes. Ms. Bruno is making that part
of this. She's basically saying two things. She's
saying first, I was subjected to a hostile work
environment when I worked for the Mayor. And then
later, after making the complaint of discrimination,
she alleges or I expect her to allege, and from the
newspaper articles I've seen she apparently will
allege, that Mr. Reese did this at the behest of
someone who was friendly to Mayor McCoy or someone who
wanted to cause Ms. Bruno difficulty. And she is
claiming that the County did not adequately protect
her from Mr. Reese and that, as a result, she felt
that she was compelled to resign.
So that's, yes, she will, I fully expect she'll
make that part of her claim.
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MR. SHILLINGER: It's called a retaliation claim.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: You say, adequately didn't
protect her, but we had the guy put in jail.
MR. BURKE: Yes. I didn't say, I didn't say it
had any merit, but --
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Okay.
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: Is there any reason that I
can't speak on this?
MS. HUTTON: You mean, to talk about what you
know of the --
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: Uh-huh.
MS. HUTTON: I think you can talk about that.
There's no reason not to.
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: Okay. All right. Because
I -- she declined, you know, the assistance.
MS. HUTTON: That is true. Just, you know, we're
really supposed to be talking about settlement
negotiations and expenditures, but there were -- there
definitely were some measures that were offered which
she declined, which would buttress our position and
make the possibility of some kind of settlement -- it
would definitely make us not want to give a whole lot,
if anything.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: I didn't understand Ms.
Spehar's comment.
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MS. HUTTON: We offered doing some things in her
office to provide additional protection besides the
items that -- I mean, besides the fact that every time
Mr. Reese showed up, Bob or I or both of us ran over
to the Commissioner's office to protect her.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: She -- no, Commissioner
Spehar said she declined.
MS. HUTTON: She declined -- she elected to leave
her office and resign rather than accept the measures
that we offered as potential securement. Like, we
were going to put in like a bulletproof glass door
kind of thing.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: So anyway, your recommendation?
MR. BURKE: My recommendation is that the
$200,000 proposal is -- I would not recommend that the
County accept it. And from what I've seen so far, I
just have not seen any evidence, so far, to support
her claim.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: There's been no depositions,
nothing taken? So we have no --
MR. BURKE: No.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Okay.
MR. BURKE: Yeah, we -- that's --
MAYOR DiGENNARO: So your recommendation right
now is to decline the proposal.
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MR. BURKE: That is correct.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Do we have any discussion on
this?
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: So take a motion or --
MR. SHILLINGER: No, we can't take --
MS. HUTTON: You have to take your action in the
public meeting.
MR. BURKE: I was just -- any time you get a
settlement proposal, you feel the need to bring it to
the client and let them make the decision with respect
to it, you know, and give the advice or
recommendation.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: So there's a proposed
settlement for $200,000 and you're recommending we
don't take it.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Okay. Mike, my question
is, what is the next step? Do we take an action that
we decline two offer any settlement for the lawsuit
and let the lawsuit go forward?
MR. BURKE: Well, I think that until, until some
evidence is brought forward, that's about all we can
do at this point.
Now, that may change in the future. I can't
predict what I haven't yet seen, but as I said, so far
there hasn't been any evidence brought forward that
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would justify this.
And let me say this, too. Ms. Bruno is going to
say certain things occurred and I can assure you that
Commissioner McCoy is going to say other things
occurred. So there is going to be definitely the he -
said -she -said with respect to the language used in the
office. But, one of the things that the employer has
as a very viable defense is that if it has a policy
which prohibits discrimination, if it disseminates
that policy to its employees, which the County does,
and if it can show that it's prepared to utilize that
policy in the event of a complaint or that it has in
the past utilized that policy effectively, the
employer does not incur liability.
In other words, just because -- if an employee
believes they're subjected to bad language in the
workplace, the first thing that the employee should do
is report that, utilize the policies and procedures of
the County to rectify that.
And in this particular case, this employee did
not do that. And so, even if what she says is true,
which I'm not suggesting that it is or that there's
any evidence to support that, but even if it were,
she's, you know, she should have utilized the County's
policies.
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And, you know, what's relevant in this regard is
that when she, when she walks out suddenly from her
work environment, from Mayor McCoy's office with Ms.
Hutton there, the County immediately accommodated her,
even without her willingness to provide an explanation
as to what the underlying issues were. That is, they
provided her with substitute employment and ultimately
a transfer to a position that was just what she had.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that the employer,
in this case the County, has to be given some
opportunity to address the employee's concerns, and
usually before the, before liability of this sort
would be imposed on the employer. She didn't seek
that.
COMMISSIONER McCOY: Contrary to the good advice
that's been given me, it's very difficult to listen to
these things and stay quiet at any level.
I have seen things going on that have no basis,
even in a small amount. There was a very happy
relationship at that office the whole time. She would
come and bring me presents, made -- suggested things
and everything. It was just perfect and everything,
and everything went that way. Something happened at
the very last minute. It was very difficult for me to
fully understand it, although I have done some search,
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research in the matter, but --
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Well, maybe we should -- you
know, you're on record here now. I think that we
should not --
COMMISSIONER McCOY: I know.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: I'm just, I'm --
COMMISSIONER McCOY: It's difficult for me and
I'm doing this contrary to counsel --
MAYOR DiGENNARO: I know it's difficult, but I
would recommend right now that we just discuss the
settlement.
MS. HUTTON: The settlement is really what we're
here about.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: That would be a very good
idea.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Just, let's just discuss the
settlement and we -- listen, she was emotional when
she walked out of two different places, as far as I'm
concerned, but whatever happened, happened. We're
here to discuss the settlement. Let's do that right
now. Commissioner McCoy, please take my advice.
COMMISSIONER McCOY: Your advice is very good and
it's good counsel, but it's been very difficult for me
to --
MAYOR DiGENNARO: I understand.
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COMMISSIONER McCOY: -- just stay there, and she
had a little attorney that has come out and said
things in the paper --
MAYOR DiGENNARO: They talk about us in the paper
all the time.
COMMISSIONER McCOY: -- that is contrary to even
what she, what the other person wanted.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Commissioner, I have no doubt
of --
COMMISSIONER McCOY: This is very difficult for
me.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: We have no doubt here on your
integrity. None whatsoever. Let's just move on to
the settlement.
You've made some -- you've made a recommendation.
I think that we should take counsel's recommendation
and just move on today because it's after nine
o'clock. Unless somebody else wants to bring up
something else, I would recommend that we just take
counsel's advice.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Well, again, I go back,
and we decline the settlement offer agreement and then
what's the next step? Where do we get brought back
into this from the standpoint of Mr. McCoy wants to,
quote/unquote, "clear his name," and he says that
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there's -- that he hasn't done anything wrong. So at
what -- where do we get brought back into this?
MR. BURKE: The next step will be that the EEOC
will complete its investigation. They'll --
MAYOR DiGENNARO: They'll make a recommendation
then, right?
MR. BURKE: They'll make a recommendation then
and, at that point, they may try to sit down again and
try to conciliate the case. I would expect that they
would do that.
At that point, we would then have available to us
or ask to have available whatever statements that they
have to support their --
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: So, Michael, right now,
your suggestion to walk away from this offer is based
upon a very limited amount of knowledge at this point
in time?
MR. BURKE: Well, it's based on what I have.
It's based on the knowledge I have. I've spoken to --
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Would you qualify that as
limited?
MR. BURKE: It's limited in the sense that I've
not heard from Ms. Bruno and I have not seen the
results of their investigation.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: So her attorney has made
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this offer and you have made this decision based upon
a limited amount of information provided to you. So
the possibility, now, I'm just going to describe a
worse -case scenario, you come back to us and say,
maybe we should settle for 200,000.
MR. BURKE: Yes, that would be speculation on my
part, but if evidence, if the information changes,
sir, my recommendation would change.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Okay.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: And he can also say that we
should never give her a dime.
MR. BURKE: That's a fact, as well.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: So I recommend that we take
counsel's advice and let him move on and we'll deal
with this at a later date. I need a little consensus
from the Commission. Everybody seems to agree.
MR. BURKE: Okay.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: So, I think we're finished with
this one.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: We agree -- I want to be
on record, we only agree from the standpoint of
agreeing with the turn -down of the settlement offer.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Of course.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Nothing --
MAYOR DiGENNARO: That's what we're doing this
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morning.
COMMISSIONER NEUGENT: Nothing more.
MAYOR PRO-TEM SPEHAR: That's all we're talking
about.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: That's the only thing we're
talking about.
MR. SHILLINGER: And I think the way to clarify
that is we haven't been presented anything at this
point that would justify this settlement, a settlement
for that amount or any amount. So at this point,
that's the recommendation.
MR. BURKE: Okay. Thank you very much.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Thank you. So we can -- does
anybody have anything else to discuss? Otherwise,
we'll close this special session.
MS. HUTTON: We need to close this session, go
back into open session, and then we have another
closed session, as you know.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: Oh, okay.
MS. HUTTON: But, you need to reconvene.
Terminate this session.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: All right. I'm terminating
this session.
MS. HUTTON: And reconvene the public hearing.
MAYOR DiGENNARO: All right. I'm reconvening.
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MS. HUTTON: The attorney -client session has now
been terminated and we are now reopening the public
meeting.
(Proceeding concluded at 9:10 a.m.)
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26
CERTIFICATE
STATE OF FLORIDA, )
COUNTY OF MONROE, )
I, SUZANNE F. EX, CVR, Court Reporter and Notary
Public in and for the State of Florida, do hereby certify
that the foregoing pages numbered 1 to 26, constitute a
true and correct record of the proceedings in the above -
styled case.
I further certify that I am not an attorney or
counsel of any of the parties, nor a relative or employee
of any attorney or counsel connected with the action, nor
am I financially interested in the action.
Dated this 27th day of April, 2007.
Suzanne F. Ex, CVR
Notary Public, State of Florida
a K. ''• SUZANNE F. EX
MY COMMISSION # DD 437962
'oEXPIRES July 27, 2009
9: m ih: , N.3m P„blk Underwriters
i
All Keys Reporting - Court Reporters - (305) 289-1201
Locations in Key Largo, Marathon & Key West