County Clerk Pam Childers has sent a certified letter with an invoice for $39,670 to County Commissioner Jeff Bergosh. The invoice is her estimate of what the county’s legal department spent on the lawsuit over the commissioner’s text messages stolen from the county’s server.
Background: When voters went to the polls on Tuesday, the PNJ published Childers’ claims that morning before other media received a copy of the letter. Commissioner Bergosh’s opponent, Steve Stroberger, received 2,295 votes to Bergosh’s 1,185 on Election Day.
- The newspaper posted several articles on Bergosh and a negative viewpoint during the Early Voting period. Stroberger got 1,686 votes during that one-week period to Bergosh’s 1,031, erasing the incumbent’s lead and putting the challenger ahead by 423 votes.
- I will let you determine if the Gannett newspaper put its thumb on the scale to punish Bergosh and help his opponent.
Pam’s Reasoning: Childers claims that since the judge ruled in the case of Escambia County v. Gannett MHC Media that the county had “no possessory interest” in the text messages, “public resources were expended” to benefit Bergosh.
- She blames the county for not discussing the matter with her last November when she “attempted to determine the legality of the proposed expenditures before payment.”
Childers admits the invoice is her best guess of what the county’s legal department spent because:
- “I have previously asked for an accounting of the hours spent by the County Attorney’s Office related to this action, and absent a response, a fair cost has been imputed to you for personal legal representation.”
The invoice is based upon the average amount of attorneys’ fees expended by the defendants in defense of this action. Childers provided no supporting documents to transparently show how she came up with $39,670.
Read 2024 08-21 Letter to Jeff Bergosh With Invoice.
#notreadbypamchilders
