Stage set for showdown between commissioners, officials

Brushing aside calls to resign, Hillsborough County's top three administrators are gearing up for a showdown Wednesday over allegations of e-mail prying at County Center.

On Tuesday, Chair Ken Hagan called for the resignations of County Administrator Pat Bean, County Attorney Renee Lee and Internal Performance Auditor Jim Barnes by noon next Tuesday. If they don't step down, Hagan said will ask the board to consider firing them.

In a letter addressed to the community, Hagan they have "all made tremendous errors in decision-making" compounded by "public and private disagreements" and "back-biting."

"The culture they have created has become toxic and dysfunctional, and the leadership displayed by these top managers has fallen woefully short of expectations," he wrote.

Commissioner Mark Sharpe, who led an unsuccessful move to fire Bean in December and called for her resignation last Friday, said he also wants Bean and Lee to step down immediately. If not, he too will seek to fire them.

"I have lost faith in the ability of both these individuals to lead the county," he said.

But on Tuesday, at least two of those officials said they had no intentions of resigning.

"I think what we have done fully complies with the law," Lee said in an interview Tuesday before releasing a lengthy response to Barnes' audit.

Barnes expressed surprise at Hagan's edict and questioned why he was being targeted.

"I didn't expect to get thrown into this," he said Tuesday. "I just presented the facts."

Bean couldn't be reached for comment on Tuesday, but several county commissioners said they don't believe she had any intentions of stepping down.

"I don't think she is going down without a fight," Sharpe said. Bean has been the county's top appointed official since December 2003 and a county employee since 1976.

The board meets today to discuss allegations revealed in an internal last week that Bean and Lee may have sought records pertaining to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into pay raises they both received three years ago.

The board can't terminate their contracts at today's meeting because it's not a regularly scheduled meeting, Hagan said. But commissioners could hold a vote of no confidence today and then follow up with a hold vote at next Wednesday's regular board meeting.

Hagan said, the board would need either a super-majority of five votes in favor of termination or hold two separate votes with a simple majority, or four votes.

At least two other commissioners, Al Higginbotham and Kevin White, have said that if what Barnes has alleged proves to be true they would support firing Bean and Lee.

The audit by Barnes, who has been in trouble with the board on and off since he was hired in 2007, detailed instances of what he called questionable, and possibly illegal, records searches traced back to the offices of Lee and Bean.

The searches included more than 6,000 e-mails, written from July to November 2009, sent to and from county commissioners, Barnes' office and FDLE investigators. They included confidential correspondence and documents related to the pay raise probe.

Barnes said the searches may have violated state public records laws because some of the e-mails that were copied were between his office and FDLE investigators.

Under Florida law, government e-mails are considered public records, but there are exceptions for information on active criminal investigations and audits.

Bean issued a brief statement Friday acknowledging she had requested the e-mails but said that once she received the documents, decided it was a mistake. She has issued no statements since and has not returned phone calls for comments.

Lee has also denied any wrongdoing . "Neither I nor any member of my office has sought information independently regarding any FDLE investigation," she wrote in a memo to commissioners on Monday night and reiterated in her response on Tuesday.

In her 6-page response accompanied by 16 pages of back-up materials, Lee said:

Her staff searched e-mails regarding the pay raises in response to four outside requests, including one from the FDLE, but had nothing to do with the 6,000 e-mail records received by Bean.

The search included e-mails of "each and every Commissioner," not just those of Commissioner Kevin Beckner, who requested the FDLE investigation in October. Her staff, she said, "was performing the precise job for which they are paid."

Barnes claimed his records should be exempt from the state's open records laws, which she said is largely not the case. At one point, Lee says that "even the work he was allegedly conducting on behalf of FDLE were not automatically exempt from public records."

Some of Barnes' recommendations for changes to the county's public records policy run counter to the state's public records law.

In February, Barnes was criticized in a review by outside auditor Richard H. Tarr, who concluded his office "does not conform to professional standards." It also made clear the auditor's office needs to begin to operate more independently from county leadership.

Barnes also has denied wrongdoing and said the problem is with the system, not him.

Getting rid of the three administrators would cost the county's taxpayers, according to copies of their contracts reviewed by Hagan's staff members.

Bean, who makes $224,120 a year, is entitled to a full year of severance pay if she is fired before her contract expires Dec. 31, 2011, unless she is convicted of a crime.

Lee, who makes $212,722 a year, is also entitled to a full year of pay if her contract is terminated before it expires in August 2014, with similar exceptions for misconduct.

Barnes, who makes $113,090 a year, gets three months of severance pay if he is fired.