County Worker Fights to Win Back His Job

Report Not Cleared With Superiors

By Jonathan Mummolo (Contact), Sandhya Somashekhar (Contact)

Thursday, March 27, 2008

A former Loudoun County employee who says he was fired for alerting county supervisors to Loudoun's environmental problems is fighting to get his job back.

Bruce McGranahan said he was fired as the county's environmental program coordinator March 7 after he distributed a 100-page report on the county's threatened natural and cultural resources to several members of the Board of Supervisors, without clearing the information with his superiors.

He said he did not go through the chain of command because he was worried that his report would be "watered down" by top county administrators.

McGranahan's attorney said his client plans to appeal the firing today. The attorney said he will file suit against the county if the appeal is denied, citing a state law that protects the right of government employees to express their opinions directly to elected officials.

"I am very angry . . . but I guess not just because of my job, but because this is basically suppressing information that needs to get to the board members and to the citizens," McGranahan said Tuesday. "It's not a question of the content of the report, it's this whole idea that I took it directly to the board and didn't go though the . . . bureaucracy. I believe I did the right thing."

His supervisor, county planning director Julie Pastor, said "the county does not comment on personnel matters."

"From my department's perspective, we're fully committed to the environmental program," she said.

McGranahan, 55, is being represented in the case by a national nonprofit group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

In a Feb. 20 letter to McGranahan that the group provided to The Washington Post, Pastor said she was considering firing him because his action "constitutes serious misconduct in accordance with . . . the Loudoun County Human Resources Handbook" and offered him a chance to meet with her and state his case.

"The document review process is in place to assure the quality and validity of the work produced by county staff," she wrote. "Your statements during your interview with HR show a blatant disregard for the quality assurance review process and a reliance solely on your own judgment, opinions and sense of timing. You deliberately circumvented the review process despite your assertion that there was nothing controversial in the report."

McGranahan said he hand-delivered the report to the offices of six of the nine board members before other county staff members found out and began retrieving the document.

The report, titled "Loudoun County's Environment: Challenges and Opportunities, 2008-2012," discusses the effects of land development, increasing traffic and other trends on ground and water pollution. It includes a "report card" that assigns grades in categories including air, water, land, living resources, cultural resources and climate change. Most of the grades are C or lower.

Among the recommendations in the report are to improve the collection of environmental data, fund environmental education programs, develop a tree-planting strategy and devise a plan to reduce the county government's energy use and emissions.

Near the beginning of the document, McGranahan wrote that "the recommended actions are strictly the views of the author."

He said in an interview that he did not recall being specifically assigned to compile the report but viewed it as part of his job. He said he gave it directly to board members or their aides because "the alternative would have been to give it to my supervisor, and she would have given it to her supervisor, and the county administrator would decide when and in what form this would ultimately get to the board. My concern was that it might take a year."

Adam Draper, an attorney with the national public employees group who is handling the case, said McGranahan met with Pastor on Feb. 27 and explained his reasons for circumventing the normal process but was fired the next week.

Draper said McGranahan's administrative appeal will be considered by a three-person panel, in keeping with county procedures on employee grievances.

"In its overreaction to prevent unapproved candor from reaching the Supervisors, the Loudoun County Administration crossed legal lines protecting the right of employees to express opinions to elected officials on matters of public concern," Draper said in a written statement. "Candor in public service should not be a firing offense."

McGranahan had been in his job for about three years and had worked in Loudoun County government for 10 years, he said.

Several supervisors interviewed Tuesday declined to comment specifically on the firing, saying it was a personnel matter that should not be discussed in public.

Supervisor Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac) said his report was in her possession for about a week before county staff members asked for it back, "because it hadn't been vetted properly," she recalled.

She said she skimmed the report and staff members told her that a final version would be available in April.

"I'm a well-known environmentalist, so I am looking forward to looking at whatever the administration is going to suggest," she said.

Supervisor Lori L. Waters (R-Broad Run) said she never got the report. It is a "break in procedure" for a report to go straight to supervisors without being read first by top county officials, Waters said.

"You have to have various people look at materials that are sent out and delivered, especially if we're going to make decisions based on information received or not received," she said.

However, Supervisor James Burton (I-Blue Ridge) said leaders need to hear from everyone, not just their organization's top brass. A retired Air Force colonel who was known as a whistle-blower at the Pentagon, Burton said it is important to have sources at every level of an organization.

"It's a dangerous game," he said. "However, anyone at the top who wants to understand what is really going on . . . has to have communication paths down into the bowels of the organization."

Burton, too, said he never got a copy. It "never made it to us and probably should have," he said.

Tagged: Board of Supervisors, environment, LC Board of Supervisors, Supervisor Andrea McGimsey, Supervisor Jim Burton, Supervisor Lori Waters

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