Last week we ran a story about an attorney for a state ethics commission who forged a letter to the group she worked for, admitted it, and wasn’t fired. This week we feature the story of an office assistant who blew the whistle on a similar group and claims she was fired for it.
Amanda Thaxton raised concerns about possible preferential treatment to North Carolina Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and about a hostile work environment at the State Ethics Commission.
Thaxton was dismissed from her $30,400 per year job as an office assistant with the commission. She says the firing came without an explanation and that she hadn’t been disciplined or questioned about her work performance in her 15 months on the job, according to The News & Observer.
The State Personnel Commission reviewed her hostile work environment claim and found the Ethics Commission was a dysfunctional and distrustful workplace.
Now Thaxton has filed a lawsuit claiming her dismissal was in retaliation for reporting her concerns.
In the wake of all this, the state auditor is investigating the claims that a Perdue aide received special treatment when he was allowed to review the Lt. Governor’s disclosure statements alone in a closed office.
In contrast, the story we ran last week ended (so far) much differently. The attorney chose not to follow established whistleblower procedures, forged a letter, admitted it and still wasn’t dismissed from her job.
In comments we received about that story, some said the attorney should have known better than to try to launch an investigation by filing a forged letter. Others said the lawyer’s fear of losing her job was a valid reason to go about reporting her allegations through the forged letter.
And that’s just what happened to Thaxton in the North Carolina case. At 24-years-old, her position with the State Ethics Commission had been her first job out of college. Thaxton said the firing has hit her hard financially. She’s asking the court to reinstate her and award her triple damages that the state’s whistleblower law allows, plus legal fees. Most likely, she has a long fight ahead of her.
