Fort Worth City Council members are mulling whether to pay three former employees $9.6 million in taxpayer money to settle whistleblower lawsuits against the municipality.
The legal back-and-forth has been going on for five years, and the proposed settlement could end the three suits, reported The Dallas Morning News.
The City of Fort Worth hired Joel Fitzgerald in 2015 to serve as police chief. Fitzgerald was subsequently fired in May 2019 on the same day he was supposed to meet with FBI investigators regarding the city’s use of the federal Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), reported CBS News Texas.
“Because of your increasing lack of good judgment as the Police Chief of the City of Fort Worth, we have lost confidence that you can be a trusted member of the City’s Management team. You have a track record of making decisions that are more focused on your best interest instead of the best interest of the city, the organization, or the department as a whole,” Fitzgerald’s termination letter read.
The letter also claimed Fitzgerald created “more problems and added unnecessary stress and drama” in his effort to address alleged city violations in relation to CJIS.
Former city technology employees William Birchett and Ronald Burke were also fired in 2019. They claimed they were fired in retaliation for reporting city violations related to CJIS.
Among the allegations they claim are that the city concealed security breaches, intentionally destroyed public documents, and lied about complying with the rules governing the FBI’s CJIS, per DMN.
The city argued that the claims were “absurd,” and former Assistant City Manager Jay Chapa claimed that Fitzgerald was fired for a lack of “good judgment.”
However, the Texas Workforce Commission did not find evidence of any work-related misconduct, and a local judge later ruled that the city had to change Fitzgerald’s discharge from “general” to “honorable” since he testified that his terminations had made it difficult to find another job, reported CBS News Texas.
Since Fitzgerald filed suit, the city approved the expenditure of $2 million in taxpayer money to challenge the allegations, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
If the settlement is approved, Fitzgerald will get $5.2 million, Birchett $2.4 million, and Burke $2 million.