Dear Board Members:
I am writing to request that the SJRWMD notify every staff person receiving a layoff notice of their legal rights under the environmental whistleblower laws to file complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, and to request a hearing before a USDOL Administrative Law Judge.
I was moved to tears when I read the excellent Folio Weekly cover article about SJRWMD Director Richard Hamann's critique of Governor Scott’s anti-environmental ideology and its sequelae -- the St. Johns River Water Management District’s layoffs of professional people protecting our wetlands. Susan Cooper Eastman, “Who’s Guarding Your Water Supply? In the wake of cutbacks and politically motivated layoffs, one St. Johns River Water Management District Board member says the answer is: Nobody,” Folio Weekly (Jacksonville, October 4, 2011).
So much progress has been made in protecting our environment since the 1960s, and Governor Scott wants to reverse it all.
Professor Hamann rightly spoke truth to power, and I salute him!
Will the SJRWMD please advise every single laid-off SJRWMD environmental employee of his/her legal right to file complaints under the First Amendment, the Florida Constitution, and federal environmental whistleblower laws?
Our federal environmental whistleblower laws are administered by the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration, with hearings before DOL Administrative Law Judges. There are landmark USDOL precedents that may help reverse layoffs, win backpay and compensatory damages, and firmly establish the right of SJRWMD environmental law enforcers to do their jobs without fear or favor.
Those landmark U.S. Department of Labor environmental and nuclear whistleblower precedents include Tyndall v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 93-CAA-6 (DOL ARB June 14, 1996), available on the Internet at http://www.oalj.dol.gov/PUBLIC/ARB/DECISIONS/ARB_Decisions/CAA/1993CAA06P.HTM , reversing two ALJs who asserted DOL had no jurisdiction to protect environmental law enforcement personnel from retaliation by regulatory agencies like EPA. On remand, a stellar UF environmental law graduate, Ms. Lori A. Tetreault, then of Lawrence & Tetreault in Gainesville, helped me to persuade the EPA to settle with the complainant, EPA Office of Inspector General Senior Special Agent Robert E. Tyndall, with the assistance of DOL Settlement Judge Michael P. Lesniak, a former FBI agent. Within two months of the Tyndall settlement, EPA Administrator Carol Browner fired the wrongdoer, EPA Inspector General John Martin, the scourge of ethical EPA employees (appointed by President Ronald Reagan thirteen years before, in the midst of the Rita Lavelle, Anne Burford and other EPA scandals). Another helpful precedent for SJRWMD professionals resulted from my first trial in 1990, holding that one nuclear engineering manager’s layoff was retaliatory, even in the context of 1200 layoffs at the same time. DeFord v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 90-ERA-60 (USDOL District Chief Administrative Law Judge Daniel J. Roketenetz, April 29, 1992 RD&O), available on the Internet at http://www.oalj.dol.gov/Decisions/ALJ/ERA/1990/DEFORD_WILLIAM_DAN_v_TENNESSEE_VALLEY_AUT_1990ERA00060_%28Apr_29_1992%29_143900_CADEC_SD.PDFI have shared a copy of this E-mail with Folio Weekly and with our former U.S. Department of Labor Chief Administrative Law Judge Nahum Litt (1979-1995), for whom I clerked during 1986-1988. He now lives in New Smyrna Beach.
Thank you again, Professor Hamann, for your speaking the truth to power.
We shall overcome!
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed
Ed Slavin
P.O. Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-829-3877 (o-direct)
215-554-1187 (cellular)
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