Lawyers Against County Deny Suit is Politically Motivated
911 Dispatch Director Ron Baustert is one of six county officials accused of permitting sexual misconduct within the Operations Center. (KP File Photo)
Attorneys filing a sexual misconduct suit against Armstrong County commissioners and 911 operation center officials denied allegations that the legal proceedings are politically motivated.
The Complaint was filed in Federal Court in Pittsburgh on Friday, May 8. It alleges commissioners David Battaglia, Robert Bower, and Richard Fink, in addition to Director of Public Safety Randall Brozenick, 911 Director Ron Baustert, and former Human Resources Director Maryanne Koleny ignored repeated requests from 20-year-911-veteran employee Marci Creel to take prompt and adequate action to stop conduct of a sexual nature that is prevalent in the private 911 operations center work environment. The suit alleges that Creel was then targeted, demoted, and eventually fired after she filed three different charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging the hostile work environment, discrimination, and retaliation.
The legal documents show that the commissioners and 911 officials are not only named in the complaint representing their county position, but also are being sued individually for their failure to respond.
The legal filing comes just over one week before the Primary Election. Creel’s attorney, Nikki Lykos with the Pittsburgh law firm of Rothman Gordon PC, denied allegations that the filing was politically motivated.
“Just to be clear, there is absolutely no political motivation here. We are under certain timelines and deadlines based on what the EEOC does. When the EEOC gives you your right to sue in court, you are under a specific deadline by which to file that lawsuit in court. So the timing of it was based on deadlines and the timing of the third claim being filed at the EEOC.”
Lykos said that in addition to the EEOC giving Creel the right to sue in federal court, the timing also had to coincide with the Pennsylvania Human Resources Act, which mandate a one-year period before litigation can be filed. Both requirements were met with the May 8th filing.
“The real reason for that being filed on Friday was that the third charge had finally been there for a year and it was ripe to be filed in court. So it had nothing to do with any political issues, or elections, or anything like that. It was just the timing of the deadlines that we were under to file.”
Armstrong County 911 Emergency Operations Center on the Armsdale Complex.
Federal Judge Cathy Bissoon will preside over the case. Judge Bissoon was nominated to the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania by President Barack Obama on November 17, 2010, and was confirmed by the Senate on October 17, 2011. She received her commission on October 19, 2011, and was sworn in as a district judge on October 20, 2011. With her appointment, Judge Bissoon became the first Hispanic female Article III judge in Pennsylvania and the first Asian American Article III judge in Pennsylvania.
While Lykos could not comment on how long it will take before the case will come to trial, she said that federal court operates differently from county and state courts.
“In Federal Court, there is a more rigid schedule of events. The system pushes the case through. It’s not like some of the (proceedings) in state court that takes a little longer.”
The 20-page Complaint outlines the inner workings of the 911 operations center, that included loud discussions about sexually explicit topics, researching sexually explicit topics on the Internet while working on county time, sharing personal sexual experiences, watching pornographic videos, and many other incidents of sexual misconduct in the workplace. The allegations state these activities were done with consent by 911 officials Baustert and Broznick, with full knowledge of the commissioners.
Local News | KP NewsDesk May 12, 2015
By mark, May 15, 2015 @ 3:24 PM
How did this issue ever make it to a federal court? Baustert and Broznick really dropped the ball here. They are paid to run their house and this proves they failed and they should be gone. Gone. We`re not in high school anymore boys. What a filthy mess.
By jorn jensen, May 21, 2015 @ 8:44 AM
Agree, mark. It is called ‘effective management’. I’ve complained about the Armstrong County 911 outfit for years. The vast spending of dollars - the ‘creating’ of the Taj Mahal out in the county and in an ‘out of watch jurisdiction’ from commissioners, the spending on the radio equipment along with the additional spending of $3.2 million for a 10 year radio maintenance contract (shouldn’t that have been negotiated into the purchase price of the original equipment? Original equipment probably would have been higher-priced, but a good negotiator could have held it to well below $3.2 million. I’ll come ‘dust’ the radios for a lot less than that.). I’ve complained about the stretch golf cart, at 2:58 PM, picking up people from the lower door of the courthouse and hauling them to their cars in the parking lot - that was when the 911 was in the basement of the courthouse.
So, I agree with you, mark. I’ve seen a need to do a ‘housecleaning’ in that 911 outfit long before this news broke.
Do people care? Doubt it. Doubt it.