The growing scandal at CareerSource

A Tampa Bay Times Editorial

The questionable dealings at the region's jobs agencies, CareerSource Tampa Bay and CareerSource Pinellas, continue to mount. Once again, at the center of the mess is former CEO Edward Peachey. Once again, board members at these two agencies have irresponsibly awarded him a generous severance package he is not worthy of receiving. Fortunately, the state urged the agencies late Wednesday to reconsider and said it would prohibit the use of federal or state money for severance while investigations continue.

Here's just one of the latest examples of Peachey's abuse of his unchecked authority. In 2016, Peachey applied for a federal grant for CareerSource Tampa Bay to train 1,000 workers for IT and health care jobs. He wrote that it was "the lead applicant in a consortium of workforce investment boards, nonprofit organizations, employers, and educators" that included Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando, Manatee, Polk and Sarasota counties along with Hillsborough, which is served by CareerSource Tampa Bay. Peachey won a $3.8 million TechHire grant. Who didn't win? CareerSource Pasco, which had sought its own grant, unaware that Peachey included the agency on his application. Neither did leaders in the other counties, which did not get a share of the grant funds, reported the Tampa Bay Times' Mark Puente and Zachary T. Sampson.

As for the TechHire grant, CareerSource Tampa Bay has given shifting figures for how many people were trained and placed into jobs. Several Hillsborough employers who signed on to the grant said they had not hired anyone. Squishy numbers and specious practices are now the focus of multiple ongoing investigations. State and federal agencies are examining whether CareerSource Tampa Bay and CareerSource Pinellas inflated the numbers reported to the state of how many people the agencies helped find jobs, after the Times found that thousands of people were counted who never received career counseling or training. Successfully placing workers in jobs is how CareerSource drew part of its money through state incentives.

The evidence that CareerSource padded its numbers under Peachey continues to mount. The latest revelation reported by Puente and Sampson shows a quarter of all of the CareerSource Pinellas and CareerSource Tampa Bay entries in a state database used a fictitious phone number for the person they claimed to have helped: 999-999-9999. That happened more than 35,000 times over four years, and no other CareerSource office in the state used the fake number more than 405 times. This is another piece of the puzzle for the investigations to examine.

The controversy cost Peachey his nearly $300,000-a-year job. Executive committees from the Pinellas and Tampa Bay boards voted to fire him this month and agreed to pay him five months' severance if he agreed not to sue the agencies. Then they reversed themselves, saying that all board members should vote on the matter. But the full boards used equally poor judgment. The Hillsborough board fired Peachey again and approved $117,000 in severance, and the Pinellas board took similar action Wednesday. Fortunately, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity followed up with a letter that says the state will not allow the use of state or federal money for any severance payments for Peachey while the investigations continue. That is the prudent approach.

The federal TechHire grant and the phony phone numbers submitted to the state are the latest in a string of questionable deals at CareerSource Pinellas and CareerSource Tampa Bay. With multiple investigations still under way to determine the full breadth of the scandal, giving a generous payoff to the man who put CareerSource in this hole is beyond comprehension.