My father once told me that most people see themselves as the hero of the movie playing in their head. The following memo proves his point.
Last Friday, Escambia County Clerk Pam Childers sent a memo to her staff explaining “what has been happening in our community since July 2021 and why, as the clerk and comptroller, am involved in a lawsuit with our Board of County Commissioners.” She sent the memo in an email less than an hour before the hearing started.
From her perspective, the issue began at the Board of County Commissioners meeting on June 3, 2021:
“Commissioner Steven Barry, District 5, North End, brought a proposal to the Board of a settlement to get back pay for a retirement plan that they were not enrolled in and felt they were wronged by the county HR who did not tell them of their options. Commissioner Berry enrolled in FRS, as most do. Commissioner Bender, however, elected the 401(a) ICMA option when he got elected.”
She described how Barry and County Attorney Alison Rogers went to Florida Commission on Ethics to get a ruling in April 2021: Commissioner Barry worked with the county attorney to present a case to the Commission on Ethics to get a favorable ruling that the could in fact vote for themselves to get a “settlement.” (This assumes the settlement is legal.) This settlement was about $240,000 to Commissioner Barry and Commissioner May, and they wanted it deposited to their personal checking account.”
Childers then wrote how she stopped the settled: “In listening to his proposal on July 3rd, 2021, I realized this was a scheme to get taxpayer dollars and it went against statutes. (Obviously there’s a long string of facts, but I’m trying to give you a very, very condensed version.)
Here are some of the “long string of facts” the clerk failed to include
1) A backpay proposal wasn’t discussed at the meeting. It was tabled by Commissioner Jeff Bergosh without any discussion of the details until the board could receive further legal advice.
2) Childers did not speak up until the commissioners had tabled the item.
3) She failed to mention that Barry and May both have said they would not take any backpay. Barry wrote in a memo to Inweekly that he wanted “a legal opinion about a fair and equitable resolution for our senior management employees, many of whom w but wanted to see if senior managers were eligible for it.”
4) The Ethics hearing wasn’t about them voting. It was whether they could discuss the item. The ethics commission approved that they could discuss the item.
Childers brags that her objection “turned up the heat” on the BCC. She wrote, “At that meeting. I stated that I would not support the settlement. (It wasn’t even a court order settlement, just something they schemed up) and as the comptroller, I will not pay. As comptroller, I am the watchdog of the public treasury. This turned up the heat. That evening in the hallway the commissioners left the meeting in the back hallway with county attorney and called me a “F…B..tch” with no right to get involved in their business. (This could help to explain some of the political cartoons in the PNJ.)
No one “schemed up” anything. That allegation implies commissioners met illegally and plotted to come up with a backpay plan. The agenda item was the only time it was presented to the board and they chose to table it rather than discuss it in detail. No heat was “turned up.”
The allegation about the elevator conversation is unproven. Inweekly requested any audio of the hallway and the elevator. There is none. Childers has not said who told her about the alleged conversation. She put her allegations in an email to the county attorney but never said the county attorney was with the commissioners when the alleged conversation was overheard—until now. Inweekly talked to everyone on the elevator. No one said they heard the words “F…B..tch” used.
Childers explains why she cut the commissioners’ retirement contributions and eventually discontinued it in January. She never mentions that had she continued making the payments they would have been the same as those written to the Florida Retirement System. The contributions are the same.
She also fails to tell her staff that she refused to join the commissioners in asking for a Florida Attorney General last August.
Here’s Childersmemo