Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean has had a tough year, and it may not get any easier now with revelations from a former housing official that he was fired unfairly for calling out a direct hire of Bean's.
Michael Rowicki, a former executive planner with the Hillsborough County affordable housing office, is currently involved in litigation against the county, claiming he was unfairly fired earlier this year for telling the truth about problems in that office.
Rowicki has claimed that the head of the Affordable Housing Office, Howie Carroll was directly responsible for a loss of over $2 million in federal grant money. Carroll was hired by Bean, who will be evaluated by County Commissioners on December 16.
In May of 2008, Bean announced that federal law enforcement authorities were investigating the housing office, based on the findings of an internal investigation that took place in 2007. Rowicki and two other officials were announced as being the focus of the investigation. Among the allegations at the time were that they steered clients of the affordable housing office to businesses owned by affordable housing manager Maggie Tagliarini.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2009.