Hillsborough jobs board delays settlement to former CEO Edward Peachey

TAMPA -- CareerSource Tampa Bay officials voted Thursday to hold off paying its former leader a $117,000 settlement, a day after Gov. Rick Scott's administration warned the agency to reconsider its decision to award the money.

Former president and CEO Edward Peachey will get the payout only if state and federal investigations clear him of wrongdoing. They are looking at whether CareerSource Tampa Bay and its sister agency, CareerSource Pinellas, inflated their job placement figures or committed any crimes.

CareerSource Tampa Bay had initially agreed to pay Peachey the settlement if he agreed not to sue the agency or any of its board members. During a scheduled meeting Thursday, the board of directors unanimously voted to delay the settlement until it receives reports from the U.S. Department of Labor, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"I want to make sure he doesn't get one dime," board member and Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman said after the vote. "This is the best I can do."

On Wednesday, DEO executive director Cissy Proctor sent letters to the chairmen of both job agencies strongly urging them not to pay Peachey amid "allegations of serious misconduct and potential criminal conduct." Proctor warned that the agencies shouldn't use taxpayer money for any payment.

At the start of the meeting, Murman asked board chairman Dick Peck and the agency's attorney, Charles Harris, to discuss the letter and the best ways to move forward. But nearly all the board members said they didn't know about the letter. A CareerSource employee told Peck she never sent it to them and hurried to pass out copies.

Harris then suggested several options. He cautioned that revoking the settlement, as opposed to just temporarily delaying it, would most likely prompt Peachey to file a lawsuit. Harris added that Peachey would likely lose the suit because he became an at-will employee after his employment contract expired in January. But win or lose, the agency could end up spending more than $117,000 in court costs defending against the suit, he said.

"There is a great deal of pressure being applied by the governor," Harris said. "This is a difficult decision. The DEO has to tell us what's the criminal activity it's referencing (in the letter)."

The board eventually voted to delay any payment until the investigations are completed, at which time they will discuss the findings and decide whether to pay Peachey the settlement.

"There's a big question mark out there," Peck said about the investigations. "If he's prosecuted, he's not going to get any money."

The CareerSource board in Pinellas is set to hold an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss the DEO letter.

State and federal authorities launched investigations after the Tampa Bay Times began asking questions about how the two local agencies were reporting their job figures to the state. Since then, the Times has published stories about how both job centers took credit for getting jobs for thousands of people who never asked for help.

On Wednesday, the Times reported the agencies used a fictitious phone number -- 999-999-9999 -- more than 35,000 times from 2014 through 2017 when they entered personal information about job candidates into a state network. That's more than a quarter of the 126,633 job placements the two local agencies reported over those four years.

None of the other 22 CareerSource offices in Florida used the fictitious number nearly as often. In fact, most used it fewer than 20 times, two never used it, and two others used it only once.

Contact Mark Puente at mpuente@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2996.