By Stan Matthews
County Website and Communications Manager
Former County Information Services Manager George Johnson and the Washington Counties Risk Pool have reached settlement terms on Johnson’s lawsuit alleging that his August 23 dismissal from the County was retaliatory. Johnson receives $105,000 and his attorney, Jack Sheridan of Seattle receives $145,000 in legal fees.
“We wanted to take this to court,” said County Administrator Pete Rose. “We have ample evidence that Mr. Johnson’s dismissal was based solely on his performance and on budget considerations. Our IS department continues to perform well with fewer people and at a lower cost.”
Rose said the County did not regard Mr. Johnson as a whistle blower. He said the retaliation claim was based on a purchasing issue that Johnson never brought to the attention of his supervisor or the County Administrator. Further the County filed documents with the court showing that the County Administration was in the process of terminating Johnson prior to the time it even became aware of that issue.
The purchasing issue was brought to the Administrator’s attention by another department. He turned the matter over to the County Prosecutor who, with the Administrator’s encouragement, also contacted the State Auditor’s Office.
“This settlement was made by the Risk Pool strictly for economic reasons. We had no option, short of hiring our own attorneys and spending potentially hundreds of thousands of the taxpayers’ dollars on legal fees.” Rose said.
Even though the lawsuit was settled prior to any court hearing on the merits of the case, the Counties Risk Pool – the insurance consortium which represents counties in legal actions such as this – reportedly amassed more than $180,000 in legal costs. San Juan County’s share of the legal costs for this case is $20,000. The settlement itself is paid with Risk Pool funds.
I can only relate in the matter of performance as affected my efforts to get interactive audio visual communications implemented between our islands. It was my feeling that Johnson impeded this process. I don’t know how much of this was a result of his own personal experience in technical matters, but I felt those feelings should have been transcended by efforts to make government more transparent. The County Administrator has my confidence that he did not arbitrarily terminate Johnson without good cause.
Additional editorial comment: Please refrain from referring to solid waste in the pejorative as, garbage. Food waste and trash can successfully be recycle and reused. Our disposal society treats solid waste as garbage and apparently wants nothing to do with it – except get it as far away from them at the cheapest cost possible. We of course do not honor then the responsibility that we have for the harm that this thoughtlessness does to our environment. Our small island community must not let an uninformed society do harm to our environment. If the County solid waste goes private then exacting standards regarding, at least, reuse and recycling must be part of the deal.