Grand jurors lambaste Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District

7/6/9

The 2008-09 Shasta County grand jury today blasted the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District in a report detailing allegations of mismanagement, credit card abuse, harassment and other misconduct.

The district spent almost $40,000 in taxpayer money on longtime manager William Hazeleur’s personal legal bills, provided him with pre-retirement raises and arranged for a cushy retirement package, the grand jury found.

In their most strongly worded report in recent years, jurors recommended the board members who approved Hazeleur’s retirement pact should resign. The jurors also called on the city councils of Shasta Lake, Anderson and Redding and the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, to scrutinize future mosquito district appointees more closely.

Of greatest concern, jurors said, was the district’s handling of a negotiated retirement package for Hazeleur.

But the grand jury also wrote about a situation that began in 2005, when Hazeleur, now 65, became engaged in a personal legal conflict with the spouse of an SMVCD employee. Each of them eventually obtained a restraining order against the other, the jurors reported.

Those court battles racked up $45,000 in personal legal fees, of which $38,000 was paid by the district, the grand jury report said.

Hazeleur said in a telephone conversation this afternoon that he has not yet seen the grand jury's report, but maintained that he ran an efficient and financially solvent district and defended his management decisions.

He also said that he did not want to leave.

"I wanted to stay," he said. "That district was my life."

District board members held a special meeting this afternoon, but declined to specifically address the issues contained in the report because they said they haven’t had time to fully review it.

Board president Larry Mower said board members have 90 days in which to formally respond to the report, and will do so.

Board member John Dunlap, who joined the board only a few months ago, defended the district, saying its operation is “first class” and he hopes the work it performs to control diseases is not overshadowed by the grand jury’s report.

The district, he said, is “extremely well-functioning” and its operation is state-of-the art. “This district is not out of control,” he said.

The grand jury’s report, headlined “Just compensation or just a gift?’, said that Hazeleuer’s retirement package awarded him a $29,000 lump sum payment when he retired June 30.

That retirement package was negotiated by board members to convince Hazeleuer to retire in the wake of a nasty dispute with an unidentified employee who had been accused of abusing a district credit card, the report said.

Jurors also questioned a 13.5 percent salary increase granted to Hazeleur last July when other employees received raises of only 3.5 percent.

“The Grand Jury found that the board of trustees used taxpayers’ money to entice the manager into retirement by granting extra wage increases and payments, paying for a leave of absence amounting to more than $40,000 and allowing the manager to remain as an employee while using accrued vacation time until retirement,” the jury report said.

Board members also reimbursed Hazeleur $6,900 for lumber (stored at the district’s Anderson headquarters) which he “regarded as his own without proof of ownership, condition or its original cost,” the report said.

Although jurors said they were able to confirm credit card abuses by the unnamed employee, the report said that the abuse was due to carelessness on the worker’s part and was not intentional fraud.

But Hazeleur, who was not referred to in the report by name, failed to apply appropriate disciplinary action against the employee for misuse of the SMVCD credit card, the report said. He also failed to follow the district’s grievance procedure when the employee alleged a hostile work environment, the report said.

According to the report, the employee improperly used an assigned SMVCD credit card to buy gas and pay for smog certification for his personal vehicle and to pay for a meal for which a receipt already had been submitted for reimbursement.

After realizing the errors, the employee reported them to the district’s administrative assistant, the report said.

Hazeleur verbally reprimanded the worker and later took away the credit card, the report said.

Some of the employees at SMVCD told the grand jurors that Hazeleur repeatedly berated and threatened the employee with criminal charges.

As a result, the employee hired an attorney and filed a complaint with the Employee Risk Management Authority, which investigates workplace wrongdoing.

“A majority of the trustees stated to the grand jury that because of a fear of a lawsuit from the employee they agreed to pay $15,000 toward the legal fees of the employee who had misused the SMVCD credit card,” the jury’s report said. “One trustee told the grand jury that the board of trustees wanted to “smooth things over” and another trustee said that the board wanted to “make it (the issue) go away.”

http://www.redding.com/news/2009/jul/06/grand-jurors-lambaste-shasta-mosquito-and-vector-c/