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She will be recalled as a legend. The last of the great money grabbers.
Chastised and fired for slipping a $2,000-a-year raise past her bosses, former Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean convinced a judge this week that she had more than $300,000 worth of severance pay coming her way.
Bully for her. In the eyes of the law, this was justice.
And in the wisdom of the Legislature, it may be the last of its kind.
Too many outrageous payouts later, the state has correctly surmised that pink slips and golden parachutes have a tendency to clash when forced on taxpayers.
Not that you would know it around here.
Just in the last 12 months we have seen:
• Hillsborough County Attorney Renee Lee, caught up in the same scandal that brought down Bean, negotiated a $156,000 severance package when she was fired.
• HART chief executive David Armijo was accused by employees of conflicts of interest, favoritism and retaliatory demotions. A county commissioner said he showed a disregard for rules. For this, Armijo was fired and given a $90,000 severance package.
• Madeira Beach City Manager W.D. Higginbotham Jr. asked to be fired because he was concerned about working with incoming commissioners. The firing triggered a severance package worth about $78,000 in pay and benefits.
• Hernando County Administrator David Hamilton walked away with about $90,000 in severance and benefits when he was fired.
• Pinellas County Schools superintendent Julie Janssen, whose tenure should have been forgettable, is remembered instead for more than $400,000 she received in severance and unused vacation and sick pay.
Which explains why the Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott teamed up to save local governments from themselves.
The state approved a law, which went into effect last July, capping severance pay at 20 weeks for all future contracts for municipal employees. If employees are fired for cause, they will receive no severance.
In theory, the law sounds intrusive. Maybe even draconian. But when you consider the silly contracts being handed out in every walk of government, it was necessary. And probably long overdue.
Now some might argue it will hurt Florida in the long run. That local governments won't be able to attract world-class candidates without these executive perks.
That might be a good point if we were actually trying to attract world-class candidates.
Janssen was a longtime Pinellas employee when she was hired as superintendent. It's not as if she was going to turn the job down without the severance offer.
Bean was already Hillsborough's deputy administrator when they offered her the job. Even worse, her severance pay was changed from six months to one year after she was hired.
So, no, these are not cases of longtime employees being forced out by budget cuts. And these are not cases of loyalty going unrewarded. These are job performance issues and need to be treated as such.
In Bean's case, she was fired only after an auditor discovered her stealth raise. The auditor, by the way, was later fired himself.
Not to worry. He got a $40,000 severance package.
John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com.
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