County Settles One Claim, Rejects Another

Travis County Commissioners last week agreed to pay $40,000 to the county's former human resources director but rejected a second settlement offer of more than $560,000 brought by Alicia Perez, the former executive manager of administrative operations. Commissioners fired Perez and former Human Resources Director Linda Moore Smith on Sept. 1, stating their intent to negotiate severance packages with the two longtime employees. Commissioners voted 3-1 to approve the Smith settlement, with Margaret Gómez voting no and Ron Davis absent; the second vote, to reject the Perez deal, was unanimous.

As part of her settlement, Smith agreed to assist the county with any future litigation stemming from her tenure of nearly 12 years, which included four Equal Employment Opportunity complaints filed against her. The action suggests that commissioners expect Perez to ultimately file a lawsuit against the county, particularly given their refusal to make a counteroffer. Perez said her attorneys had arrived at the proposed sum of $563,880 based on the income and retirement income she would have received had she been allowed to stay in her position another three to five years. "We sent [the county] a letter with our offer, and we asked for a counter. They chose not to counter," Perez said. If the county isn't willing to return to the table, she said her next step is to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Smith's settlement of $40,000 is relatively low – she had asked for nearly twice that amount – but commissioners took into consideration the number of formal complaints filed against her, as well as several e-mails to commissioners from employees who said they feared for their jobs under what they described as Smith's authoritarian management style, according to county documents (see "Travis County 'Death Spiral,'" Oct. 2).

In firing the two executives, the county asserted that the two could not get along and that their sour relationship was having an adverse effect on employees in the HR department. But records show that the source of the low morale in the department had originated with Smith as early as 2002. Perez, whose duties included oversight of the Human Resources Management Department, among other divisions, had sought to fire Smith in 2005, but the County Attorney's Office instead advised her to place Smith on a performance improvement plan. Smith did show improvement but then reversed course, Perez said. Perez again tried to terminate Smith in July 2008, but by then commissioners were already drawing the conclusion that the two simply could not work together and the best solution, as they saw it, was to fire them both.