YULEE, Fla. -- Action News has the personnel files of four Nassau County employees accused of misusing tax dollars.
We now know which sessions four former Nassau County employees attended at a hurricane conference in Ft. Lauderdale. We went through 1000 pages of their personnel files. The stack of papers contains 70 years of personnel files for the employees accused of misusing taxpayer money.
One of the big questions was did they attend the hurricane conference you paid for or did they use the trip to party? A private investigator caught intimate images of Brenda Rothwell and Daniel Salmon at a hotel pool. Rothwell was also caught standing naked on a balcony at a hotel where she wasn't registered.
In paperwork obtained by Action News, we found certificates that show at least two of the employees, Rothwell and Butch Hartman, attended a few sessions. We also found paperwork that may suggest Hartman and another worker, Marion Pickett were disgruntled.
Just last year on Hartman's evaluation, he was told he had problems with policies. But Hartman fired right back writing, "I disagree with the overall scores on this evaluation. They are extremely low." We found out he's been in trouble with the county before. Hartman was reprimanded in 1994 and got in trouble for trying to get a fellow employee to fight in 1995.
Action News couldn't find any certificate in these files to suggest Landfill Supervisor, Marion Pickett, went to any of the hurricane conference sessions, but the video and his expense reports show he was definitely on the trip. His file also suggests problems with evaluations including one he signed, "against my will." He even wrote a letter saying "I do a good job, and I don't thank everything is a joke."
But these four former county employees aren't laughing now. They're looking for new jobs. Three of the employees were fired last week with five days to appeal the county manager's decision. The fourth, Brenda Rothwell, resigned. The county manager didn't want to comment on any of the files we got today.
The county manager says he is not going to ask them to pay back the money spent at the conference. That could change if criminal charges are filed.
