Clay County pays settlements to five employees who alleged harassment and retaliation
Several top Clay County employees have reached settlement agreements for their claims of harassment and retaliation with the county and will leave their jobs by the end of the year.
Of the five employees, three are top administrators — Nicole Brown, Laurie Portwood and Brad Garrett — who claim they were harassed and retaliated against by Clay County Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte, who they clashed with in public meetings.
The employees will leave their positions Dec. 31, just prior to when new commissioners will be sworn into office.
Clay County will pay a combined $354,227 to the five employees, an amount that represents severance pay and settlements to resolve their claims. That amount does not include payouts for unused paid personal time off. The settlements also provide payment if the employees are asked to cooperate with investigations or audits of the county.
The other employees involved are public relations and event manager Nikki Thorn and tourism and project development manager Melissa Mohler.
“The Clay County Commission today approved settlement and severance agreement (sic) with five employees,” the county said in an unattributed statement. “Due to the confidential nature of employment matters, the County has no other comment at this time.”
The agreements show outgoing Clay County Commissioners Luann Ridgeway and Gene Owen signed some of the agreements as far back as September, but some as recently as Monday.
Nolte, who is frequently out-voted on the three-member commission by Ridgeway and Owen, did not sign the agreements.
Settlements for Portwood, Garrett and Brown claim Nolte, among other things, provided private personnel information to third parties, retaliated after complaints were filed against him and publicly discredited them. It was not clear what, specifically, the claims about the personnel information were referring to.
Nolte said their accusations were not true, adding that human resources protocols to make complaints were not followed, to his knowledge, by those accusing him of wrongdoing.
“They (Ridgeway and Owen) are just trying to make sure their friends get some money,” Nolte said.
None of the employees responded to an email seeking comment about the settlements. The settlements say media inquiries are to be directed to the county counselor, who did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Brown was a director of constituent services for Ridgeway from 2010 to 2012 when Ridgeway served in the Missouri General Assembly, according to her LinkedIn page.
Brown and Portwood at times clashed with Nolte in public meetings. Nolte often votes in the minority on Clay County issues while Ridgeway and Owen usually vote in lockstep.
Ridgeway and Owen, neither of whom sought another term in office during this year’s election, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Garrett also accused the Clay County Sheriff’s Department of harassing and intimidating him by shining a spotlight in his bedroom window and surveilling his residence.
Clay County Sheriff Paul Vescovo, who did not seek another term in this year’s election, denied Garrett’s allegations.
“They’re not being harassed,” Vescovo said. “By gosh if I wanted to be real honest, if I wanted to use my office to harass them, they would know it. But I don’t operate that way.”
Vescovo said the incident of a spotlight in Garrett’s window was from a deputy on patrol who did not know that anyone was living in the residence.
In email correspondence obtained by The Star, Capt. John Teale wrote to Garrett on May 13, 2019, explaining that he and another lieutenant were unaware that anyone was staying at the residence and told other sheriff’s personnel not to spotlight the building when they were checking on it.
In a response the following day, Garrett said he felt like the spotlight incident was intimidation and noted that it came after the 2019 budget was approved, one in which funding to the sheriff’s department was reduced.
“A significant portion of the sheriff’s staff actively participate in the social media groups dedicated to hate speech and harassment of commission staff,” Garrett wrote in a subsequent message to Teale.
Vescovo’s office sued the Clay County Commission in 2019 after Ridgeway and Owen voted during two budget cycles to reduce the sheriff’s budget, leaving Vescovo unable to pay vendors that provided food and health care to inmates at the county jail.
Vescovo suspected that the budget cuts were payback for when his office in 2017 initially handled an investigation into Portwood’s involvement in tampering with public records. The investigation was later handed off to the Missouri Highway Patrol. Portwood, who is responsible for budget and finance at the county, later entered into a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve the matter.
Vescovo won the lawsuit against the commission. A judge presiding over the case, who said Portwood’s testimony in the matter was “at best not credible” and that the county’s actions were “arbitrary, capricious or in bad faith,” ordered the county to pay the sheriff nearly $1 million.
Portwood’s salary is $145,933, according to county records, making her the highest paid employee.
Megan Thompson, the Clay County clerk, brought the Portwood tampering matter to Vescovo’s office.
Thompson was elected Tuesday, as well as Democrat Jon Carpenter, to replace Ridgeway and Owen on the Clay County Commission in January. The two join Nolte, who was re-elected in 2018, on the commission.
Voters also approved a new Clay County constitution, which backers say is a measure intended to reform county government and improve its poor reputation for in-fighting and dysfunction.
Ridgeway and Owen have been often criticized for mismanaging the county as they voted together and were viewed to be aligned with top county employees. The last four years have been chaotic for Clay County government; the Missouri auditor was invited by more than 9,000 residents to examine Clay County for taxpayer waste and other issues. The audit is ongoing.
“It’s crazy that the people who are the reason why we had to have a state audit and why our government was completely overhauled were paid to leave,” said Jason Withington, a Northland activist who helped with the petition drive to start the audit. “These are the people causing all the problems and they’re rewarded for all the damage they caused.”
Thompson did not directly comment on the settlement agreements.
“I can tell you as our next eastern commissioner, I will do everything I can to reduce the continued waste of the commission,” Thompson said.
Nolte said the settlement agreements were part of why voters overwhelmingly approved a new county constitution.
“I think a lot of this is: We’re getting ready to turn the page on this county and I am so looking forward to bringing Clay County into a better place than it is right now,” Nolte said. “The agreements signed I don’t believe are in the best interests of the county.”
