Wednesday afternoon Hillsborough County Commissioners will hold a special discussion in which the fate of County Administrator Pat Bean's career with the county may be ultimately resolved.
The latest controversy involving Bean erupted last week, when the St. Pete Times reported that a report by internal performance auditor Jim Barnes said that Bean and County Attorney Renee Lee had gone thru e-mails written by Barnes and two of his employees. Bean admitted last week that she requested the e-mails, but said she never actually read any of them.
Now Bill Varian with the Times reports that County Commission Chair Ken Hagan has requested copies of the contracts for Bean, Lee and Barnes in advance of tomorrow's discussion.
Media attention has focused in the past week almost exclusively on Bean since she was already considered to be on thin ice with Commissioners on a host of other issues already (Bean survived a BOCC on her fate just last December) . Her request to look at the e-mails could be illegal, since those emails involved an investigation that the FDLE was conducting on pay raises that Bean and Lee gave themselves back in 2007 without board permission, which Commissioners did not learn about until last year. Under state law, government e-mails are public records and can be accessed by anybody, but there are exceptions for information on active criminal investigations and audits.
Commissioner Kevin Beckner confirmed with CL this morning that he has contacted the FDLE about looking into this latest revelation involving Bean, saying that officials he spoke with at the law enforcement agency said "it was of interest to them."
In the light of these most recent revelations, there have been opinion pieces written in local media (including in this space the day after the story broke) challenging the County Commissioners about what they'll do about Bean, since they have talked a lot of smack about how unhappy they've been with her performance over the past couple of years, yet have only required her to give a "vision" statement about clearly defined goals and objectives so they .
In the past, some Commissioners have said that with all of the issues on the County's plate, that it would be too disruptive to terminate her (her contract runs for a couple of more years). Do they still feel that way? The issues of the day are as formidable now as they were when they initially grew angry with her; currently the county is looking at cutting some $50 million from its budget, and is working against the clock to try to craft language for a ballot referendum on transportation.
