By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                County Attorney Anne Bast Brown has feathered her nest in county government over the past 16 years with the cooperation of Levy County Commissioners by writing her own contract, choosing the rules she obeys or ignores and accepting state retirement and pay-raises like any other employee.

            Brown is listed on the county’s organizational chart as being on par with the board’s chief administrator, County Coordinator Wilbur Dean, which means she answers only to the board, not to Dean or the county’s Human Resource Director Jacqueline Martin.

            Martin said Brown has a personnel file in the Human Resource office like other employees but with one big difference.

            “She has a personnel file like other employees but she doesn’t have to do what other employees do,” Martin said.

            Brown has made a point on many occasions of saying she works only for the county commission, not for the citizens of Levy County who pay her salary through their tax dollars. Her contract allows her to work with the departments of the county commission and other “agencies of the county.”

            As a contractor who receives all the benefits of being a county government employee, she and commissioners have fashioned a hybrid position that gives her an annual salary of $128,000 and a pay and benefits package of $182,000, which is as much or more than any other employee or elected official in county government including the sheriff, tax collector, property appraiser or clerk and comptroller.

            She has become so powerful that employees in county government only whisper their complaints about her taking advantage of pay raises negotiated by Laborers International Union of North America Local 630 to pad her salary and state retirement benefits. She has received at least 11 LIUNA negotiated raises in the past 16 years. The LIUNA pay raises aren’t mentioned in her contract but there is language that says the board can give her other benefits as they see fit.

            Brown is the only county employee other than members of the International Association of Firefighters Local 4069 that can sell unused vacation pay back to the county commission, increasing her overall compensation package.

            IAFF negotiated a clause in its union contract allowing members to sell unused vacation time. Brown’s contract says she can sell up to three weeks of unused vacation pay every year.

            “I have been writing checks as far back as when Sheila Rees was here to pay her for annual leave she hasn’t taken,” said Clerk of Courts and Comptroller Danny Shipp. “We did this just a couple of weeks ago for her.” Rees was the former financial officer for the clerk’s office.

            Brown told a news reporter in an interview after first arriving in Levy County in 2004 that she planned to write a county personnel policy. Brown and her administrative assistant, Susan Haines, are exempt from the personnel policy that governs other employees of the county commission.

            The policy states:

            “The employees and volunteers to which this Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual applies shall not include: (a) elected officials; (b) the county attorney and all employees volunteers reporting either directly or indirectly to the County Attorney;  (c) any person hired as an independent contractor on a contractual basis, fees, per diem, seasonal, casual or retainer basis.”

            Brown was questioned about her exemption from the Personnel and Policies Manual at the Dec. 22 county commission meeting. She said her contract is her personnel policy.

            “The fact that you all have a contract with me acts as a personnel policy,” Brown said. “My contract is my personnel policy. I also have adopted a large majority… into the office and exempted out certain ones that don’t apply. I wanted you to understand how those work together.”

                Shipp said he feels Brown has an ethics issue as an employee of the county commission that wrote her own contract detailing what she will do for the board.

                “That would be an ethics problem for her telling how she’s going work and turn around and be a county employee,” he said. “It would be different with a union contract, but an attorney that says I am an attorney and I am going to write my contract on what I’m going to do for you, and I’m also going to be a county employee and get all the benefits….”

            Unlike other employees, her contract also allows Brown to ask for pay raises beyond what she accepts from the LIUNA labor union contract. She asked for and was granted a 3 percent pay raise at the Dec. 8 county commission meeting, increasing her pay by just under $4,000 annually.

            Spotlight Founder Linda Cooper made an appearance before the county commission on Dec. 22 to ask the board to rescind the raise on grounds that she misled the commission about the amount. The raise was actually in excess of $5,000 when state retirement benefits were included. The board declined to reverse its decision.

            Brown added language to her contract that makes it challenging for the board to fire her. The contract said she can be terminated if four (4) members of the county commission agree to remove her from office or if three (3) members of the board vote in two official meetings, “of which the second meeting shall be the third subsequent meeting following the first meeting” to fire her.

            Her contract also designates her as having senior management status, increasing the amount of retirement the county pays her for her work and substantially increasing the retirement she will receive. In the current budget year, the county commission will contribute $35,000 to her retirement account.

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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting December 22, 2020; Posted January 2, 2021