Manatee County declines a third-party investigation requested by Teitelbaum

Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh had one question for fellow board members: How exactly did calling an investigation meant to exonerate Mitchell Teitelbaum from a sexual harassment claim wind up on Tuesday's meeting agenda?

Concerns about the county's human resources department have been mounting over the past week following news that Teitelbaum declined a position as Manatee County's fourth deputy administrator after a county employee filed a sexual harassment claim against him. Teitelbaum has served as general counsel for the School District of Manatee County since 2014.

On Tuesday, commissioners met to discuss a proposal by Chairman Kevin Van Ostenbridge to hire a third-party firm to investigate the situation on behalf of the board, and either exonerate Teitelbaum or find him definitively guilty of the claims. The proposal was ultimately denied.

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No third-party investigation

Manatee County officials never publicly discussed the need for an independent investigation into those claims during a workshop meeting last week, where they openly criticized County Administrator Scott Hopes over the situation and other frustrations.

But Teitelbaum told various media outlets that he personally requested a third-party investigation to exonerate him from sexual harassment claims, and that request made its way to Tuesday's agenda.

Board members decided not to pursue an investigation and did not vote on the matter. In a 6 to 1 vote on Tuesday, they did agree to rescind a previous decision made in late November that confirmed Teitelbaum to the deputy county administrator role. Van Ostenbridge was the lone opposing vote.

"Where is it all this coming from?" Baugh questioned. "I feel like there are other forces involved here that seem to feel that they can decide what this board is going to do and when we are going to do it."

Baugh called the effort a "witch hunt," and on Tuesday questioned whether the board is simply doing the bidding of Teitelbaum himself in an effort to discredit the female county employee.

"It does seem like a witch hunt," Baugh said. "I am concerned by some of the things that are being said in the paper about our staff, by this person, and all of a sudden this person is talking about how we are going to do an investigation."

"Has he contacted somebody in the county and asked for an investigation to be done?" she questioned. "I'm not aware of it. I haven't been told that. Anybody been told that up here on this board? Did we communicate and hear that? Anybody want to answer that question?"

Teitelbaum emailed that request on Dec. 19 directly to Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes and Van Ostenbridge, records show. Van Ostenbridge said he believed the email had been distributed to all commissioners, but County Attorney Bill Clague said that was not the case.

"I'm personally not comfortable with what has taken place over the last few weeks in this building regarding this matter," Van Ostenbridge said when he proposed the investigation. "I have received lots of conflicting information, and what I'm proposing today is a fact-finding inquiry, the purpose of which is accountability."

"People are entitled to due process," he said later in the meeting. "I get it, it's not an employee in this building. But you can't have paperwork coming out of this, documents, coming out of this government accusing someone of something, possibly ruining their career, and we don't even look into it."

During the county meeting, commissioners indicated they empathized with Teitelbaum, but said he is not entitled to an independent investigation by the county because he was never officially employed. He declined the position on Dec. 13.

"Someone that's not at the time employed by Manatee County, I don't know that we do have that duty to get to the bottom of that for them even though I may empathize with that situation," District 1 Commissioner James Satcher said. "I would hope that other government agencies would have that same way of looking at things."

He indicated the county should address internal concerns about its HR department.

"As far as our procedures, that's a different question," Satcher said. "It seems like, this is not my area of expertise, HR, but I don't know that I'm real pleased with the procedures that took place to do both what the chair mentioned, which is protect someone that might be accused, and protect someone who may very well have been a victim."

The sexual harassment claim, and its timeline

A woman who works in Manatee County's administrative division claims that Teitelbaum inappropriately grabbed her waist on Nov. 29, the same day that commissioners unanimously voted to confirm his hiring to a newly created role as the county's fourth deputy administrator, records show.

The woman submitted the written complaint on Dec. 13, but added that it was necessary to do so because verbal reports to the county's human resources department were ignored. She reported the incident on Dec. 5 to one human resources representative in person, and again on Dec. 6 to HR Director Jennifer Harmon in person, records show.

On Dec. 13, the same day of her written complaint, Teitelbaum emailed Manatee County officials to decline the county job, County Attorney Bill Clague said on Tuesday. The School Board of Manatee County tabled his resignation with the district on the very next day without discussion.

HR Manager Kate Barnett sent an email on Dec. 15 to other staff-members indicating Teitelbaum declined the position.Days later, on Dec. 19, Teitelbaum emailed Hopes and Van Ostenbridge to assert the claims made against him were false, meant to stop him from earning employment at the county, and called for an independent investigation to clear his name on the matter.

"This is pure fabrication that was made in a direct attempt to prevent me from joining the county," Teitelbaum wrote in that email.

"Based upon potential violation of statute, FS 837.06, pertaining to false complaints, I hereby request a full and complete formal investigation by a neutral third-party into the complaint, all those associated with the complaint, those that perpetrated the filing of a false complaint," he wrote.

At a later date, about two weeks ago, Van Ostenbridge requested that an investigation be placed on Tuesday's Manatee County meeting agenda for consideration, he said.

Last week, on Jan. 5, after the release of public county records led to public knowledge of circumstances surrounding the situation, commissioners slammed County Administrator Scott Hopes over the complaint's management, questions about the county's HR department and its procedures, and shortcomings in other aspects of his role. Commissioners called for further discussion on that matter at the county's Feb. 21 workshop.

Teitelbaum was also placed on paid administrative leave by the school district on Jan. 5, the day district staff returned to work after the winter holiday break. He remains on leave at this time. The district did not provide any details on the terms for his return to the Herald-Tribune.

Teitelbaum responds

Upon learning of the board's decision not to pursue an investigation, Teitelbaum emailed a statement to the Herald-Tribune saying that the decision is regrettable.

“It is regrettable the Manatee County Board of County Commissioners decision not to conduct any investigation into the false employee complaint asserted against me," he said. "Where false and career ending accusations are taken as fact although never proven to be true, corroborated or supported."

"No employer, especially a governmental body fails to investigate an employee complaint," he said. "Due process has not been followed for me or the claimant. Rather, character assassination continues to reign supreme. There is absolutely no merit whatsoever to the false complaint."

"Other remedies will now and are being pursued," he said. "I look very forward to being fully vindicated and taking all legal recourse possible against those that perpetrated the false complaint against me.”

"Bogus" investigation

Questions about the treatment of Manatee County's employees during sensitive human resources situations have been raised before, and staff-members have been escorted out of the building on multiple occasions during Hope's tenure as county administrator.

Baugh alluded to that fact on Tuesday, when she criticized the handling of the situation. Some media outlets have reported that staff members that tried to advocate on behalf of the victim were themselves escorted from the building.

"One of the things, and I'm going to go ahead and say it, that has been very concerning is I also know that when we treat our staff so quickly, what I would call incorrectly, that it's a good possibility that we're going to have a lawsuit," Baugh said. "I still fear that to this day."

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Tanya Shaw, a former code enforcement officer for the county, found herself on the receiving end of a similar investigation in 2021 as the one proposed to defend Teitelbaum on Tuesday. She settled her lawsuit against the county for $65,000 in October.

Shaw raised claims of suspected preferential treatment by her superiors in the county's code enforcement division to high-profile community members, and claimed to be a whistleblower.

Although Shaw's specific claims were never proven, her claims sparked a months-long investigation by The Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court's Division of Inspector General.

Hopes was forced to publicly respond to the matter as well, and hired the Brown Law & Consulting firm to conduct a parallel investigation on behalf of the county. He also placed all six other employees involved on paid under administrative leave until the investigation was concluded. They were reportedly escorted from the building.

The county's former director, John Barnott, retired about a week later.

The inspector general detailed many examples of preferential treatment among building department officials in a 93-page report released in March 2022.

Staff members who were vindicated by the report were allowed to return to work, although not all of them remained employed by the county.

Barnott was allowed to retire without penalty, despite numerous findings that were eventually made against him.

Shaw, who reported him and other officials, was fired by Hopes' administration. Her claims of retaliation have received no further scrutiny since her separation from the county.

She called the county's investigation, "bogus."

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: County won't investigate Mitchell Teitelbaum sexual harassment claim