Michael Schiavo & The Public Dole
Posted on Saturday, 31 of January , 2009 at 7:17 pm
COMMENTARY
Part I
© By June Maxam
Families across the nation are struggling to make ends meet, many going without necessities, making sacrifices while trying to pay their rent, trying to put food on the table and trying to stay warm.
Many are out of work or scared they soon will be.
And then there’s Michael Schiavo, with his pudgy hands in the taxpayers’ pockets, engaged in cyber-slacking.
According to a recent survey by Proofpoint, a messaging security company, nearly 10 percent of companies have fired an employee for violating a corporate blogging or message board policies, and 19 percent have disciplined an employee for the same infractions.
Internet abuse statistics reveals that 30 to 40% of Internet use in the workplace is not related to business and 64% of employees say they use the Internet for personal interest during working hours.
Paying government employees to publicly malign people on message boards and forums or conduct personal business on public time isn’t just unethical, it’s egregious government waste, a theft and misuse of public funds and should be addressed with a criminal charge, not just addressed administratively.
Employees who have a history of disciplinary problems should be fired and restitution sought for the money that has been pilfered — in essence stolen—from the taxpayers.
Pinellas County is facing a projected budget shortfall of $12 million, causing county officials to call for deep spending cuts and a selective hiring freeze. Agency heads have been asked to limit travel costs and equipment purchases and to spend only 97 percent of the money they’ve been allotted this year.
One of the biggest recipients of taxpayer dollars in Pinellas County is the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and county administrator Bob LaSala has said that he plans on cutting the county budget by 15% to 20%, including the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff Jim Coats says that he can’t absorb costs without eliminating positions.
Perhaps the place he should first eliminate some of the higher funded supervisory positions is in the Detention and Corrections Division where there seems to be inefficiency and a waste of tax dollars, especially among the supervisory personnel.
Following a recent Internal Affairs investigation, it has been determined that Michael Schiavo, the man who killed his former wife, Terri Schindler Schiavo, by dehydration, claiming that she would want to die in such an inhumane manner because she was incapacitated, has been using taxpayer-owned sheriff’s department resources and taxpayer time to engage in public attacks on the Schindler family and others involved in the Schiavo case–in essence–defrauding the taxpayers.
Schiavo, 45, of Marrie Court, Clearwater, has been employed as a nursing supervisor in the Inmate Healthcare Division at the Sheriff’s Department since late 2004. He had been hired for his job at the jail by former sheriff Everett Rice, longtime friend of the judge in the Schiavo case, George Greer, just prior to Rice leaving for his one term in the Florida House of Representatives.
According to payroll records from the sheriff’s department, Schiavo is paid over $35 an hour and nearly $75,000 annually. When he was first employed by Rice in 2004, he was paid $22.38 an hour or approximately $51,745. Rewarding slackers in government isn’t fiscally wise or efficient.
Schiavo’s fiancé’s mother, Eleanor Centronze, had been employed by Rice and the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department for over 20 years, until her retirement in the late 90s.
A investigation conducted by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office has substantiated that for at least the past six months, Michael Schiavo misused government-owned computers during work hours to engage in a vicious, abusive public attack against the Schindler family, the in-laws and siblings of Terri Schiavo; attorney David Gibbs III who represented the Schindler family in their efforts to save their daughter’s life, and others involved in the case. Michael Schiavo has certifiably wasted untold hours on the public dole—a prima facie example of waste and inefficiency in the government workplace.
Investigations conducted by both the Administrative Investigations Division of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the command level of the Detention and Corrections Division substantiated that Schiavo violated department policy and for a period of nearly six months, has routinely been posting derogatory messages, even starting threads to post negative comments about the Schindler family and their representatives, on the Terri Schiavo Forum at topix.com.
Topix is a news aggregator and claims that it allows its posters to “edit” the news and provides links to “lively user-generated forums”. (See Part II to follow)
Schiavo, posting under the screen names of “Tom of Saint Petersburg” and “Mike of Saint Petersburg”, has often engaged in a virtual tag team attack on the Schindler family and others with Walter Gay, 62, of Dunedin, Fla., aka “Walter in FL”. (More to follow in Part II)
Gay’s wife, Cynthia, worked as a paralegal for Schiavo’s euthanasia attorney, George Felos, the man who, other than Michael Schiavo, benefited the most financially from the death of Terri Schiavo, both by promoting his ideological agenda and financially.
A particularly neurotic and abusive group of a half dozen Michael Schiavo fans still continue to carry forth a diatribe of bigotry, hate and misinformation about the Schiavo case daily on a Terri Schiavo forum at topix.com. Forum participants bully, abuse and harass individuals who dare to disagree with them and who are labeled
Schindler supporters”.
Sheriff’s department policy states that internet access accounts provided by Sheriff’s Office shall be used for official business only during a member’s assigned work hours and not for any other purpose. Employees are prohibited from “Viewing, downloading and/or transmitting materials for other than law enforcement purposes that is known to involve the use of obscene language, images, jokes, sexually explicit materials or messages that disparage any person, group or classification of individuals”.
Paying government employees such as Schiavo with taxpayer dollars to randomly surf the internet and to post messages disparaging the Schindlers and others on forums such as Topix should be grounds for immediate dismissal. In private business, such slackers should be canned. This should definitely be the case for government employees as such misuse of public funds is immoral and corrupt.
A recent report issued by the Internal Affairs Division of the sheriff’s department found that Sgt. Robert Haimes watched several World Series games last October at a relatives house when he was on duty and the taxpayers paid him. The report concluded that Haimes took time off totaling nearly 24 hours between last August and November, at the expense of the taxpayer.
He was suspended for 80 hours and demoted to deputy.
Earlier this month, it was reported that some city employees in West Palm Beach spent hours on porn sites while they were on the time clock while others e-mailed ethnic jokes or racist photos.
Officials there correctly called it what it is—the misuse of government equipment on idle or offensive pursuits—and that fits the conduct in which Michael Schiavo was involved before he got caught.
That type of conduct in West Palm Beach government led to four firings, nine resignations, one suspension and three reprimands. They also have to attend training sessions in e-mail liability and workplace harassment.
Records indicate that one of the city employees charged with “gross misconduct” and “excessive loss of normal working hours”, had spent more than 20 hours on the Internet, recording 64,853 hits on websites that were unrelated to the performance of his job duties. A parks and recreation secretary who spent an “enormous” number of hours on the Internet, got a three day suspension.
How much did Pinellas County taxpayers pay Schiavo to sit and post nasty comments on a message board instead of doing his job? Why did he only receive “counseling” instead of a suspension? Why wasn’t he required to make restitution to the taxpayers? He’s been sanctioned previously for employee misconduct so why hasn’t he been demoted?
Schiavo has a history of disciplinary action and apparent inability to get along with co-workers, suspended for eight hours in March 2007 for his failure to timely report an incident of alleged illegal dispensing of a prescription medication by a co-worker who claimed Schiavo filed a false complaint against her in retaliation and spite.
On March 31, 2005, that day that Terri Schiavo died, Michael Schiavo, the “loving” husband who had fought Terri’s parents for years for a court order to stop Terri’s assisted feeding and cause her death, called Diane Cross, his co-worker and former supervisor, from the hospice parking lot to tell her of his wife’s death.
Cross said she rejected his advances and disagreed with what Schiavo “did to his wife”. She said he later taunted her that she didn’t send him a sympathy card when Terri died and that she hadn’t sent him a congratulatory message when he remarried.
She said she tried to be friendly and professional. He apparently wanted more.
Rick Brennan, a male co-worker at the jail called Schiavo a slacker and a jackass.
In a fit of anger in September, 2006, six weeks after Cross and Brennan told the nursing supervisor that Schiavo wasn’t “pulling his weight” in performing nursing duties at the jail, he retaliated against them, filing a complaint against Cross about an incident which he said allegedly occurred in the nursing office last July, resulting in her termination and nearly causing her arrest and that of another nursing supervisor.
Schiavo also caused the demotion of another of his co-workers and the suspensions of two more, claiming that Cross had illegally dispensed a prescription medication to still another fellow registered nurse and clinical supervisor, David Richardson. Cross was ultimately terminated as a result of Schiavo’s complaint.
At least three other complaints that Schiavo filed against his co-workers were marked closed and unfounded. Documents obtained by The North Country Gazette from the sheriff’s office indicate that Schiavo has a history of filing unsubstantiated complaints such as unsuccessfully trying to have Diane Cross criminally charged as well as fired.
His co-workers are continuing to file complaints against Michael Schiavo for his belligerent attitude, short temper and abusive behavior according to inter-office memos and reports obtained by The North Country Gazette. In that Michael Schiavo works for a public entity and is paid by taxpayer dollars, there’s no claim of right to privacy about his disciplinary and pay records.
Then, another co-worker uninvolved in the Cross incident turned the tables on Schiavo, accusing him of doing the same thing he accused Cross of doing—illegally dispensing prescription medication, but to a lieutenant in the inmate division who died a short time later in a Pinellas County hospice.
That complaint was dismissed as the primary witness was deceased.
Bernie McCabe and the State Attorney’s office refused to prosecute anyone due to credibility issues involving Schiavo.
In a memo dated Feb. 21, 2005, regarding “M. Schiavo’s conduct” and signed by seven of his co-workers, it states that on Jan. 30, M. Schiavo was working as relief supervisor. “He passed out the assignment and then said that was all he had . He then stormed out of the room and slammed the gate as he left. L. Fulton said to Nurse Cross “What was that all about” and she never replied. About five minutes later, he returned and gave something to nurse Cross and stormed out again, slamming the gate again. We feel this was unprofessional conduct for a relief supervisor”.
According to file notes, Schiavo was “made aware of his behavior and their perception was enough of a resolution”.
In another memo in Schiavo’s file, signed by Rick Brennan, the clinical supervisor involved in the current complaint concerning Schiavo, complaints were filed that “Nurse Schiavo delegated an excessive amount of work to the Bravo assist and that he in fact did very little with regards to patient care. Nurse Schiavo stated that he felt that Nurse X’s complaints were baseless and seemed upset and offended by the allegations. At times Nurse Schiavo raised his voice and had to be instructed to lower it and remain calm and professional”.
Schiavo’s been feeding at the pubic trough since October 2004. Pinellas County taxpayers paid him over $6,000 plus benefits in March, 2005 to watch his disabled wife die after he pulled her feeding tube to cause her long, tortuous death.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/050906SchiavoImmunity.html
Michael Schiavo misrepresented his arrest record on the employment application to the sheriff’s department and that by itself should have disqualified him from consideration to be placed on the public payroll. The taxpayers shouldn’t have had to pay for him to sit watch at Woodside Hospice for two weeks, waiting for his incapacitated wife to die, to pay for him making repeated phone calls to Diane Cross at the Pinellas County Jail, yet another woman to whom he was apparently attracted.
TO BE CONTINUED.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This commentary may NOT be reprinted or republished in its entirety by anyone in any medium without the express written permission of The North Country Gazette. A link and paragaraph or two may be used.
Due to the importance of this topic,Part I of this article is being provided free of charge to non-subscribers. Part II will be available ONLY to paid subscribers of the NCG Daily Digest as all of our investigative reports and commentaries. To obtain the rates and signup, see the subscription ad and PayPal button to the right of this article or go to www.northcountrygazette.org
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/01/25/schiavo_fraud/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/01/24/nasty_schiavo/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/10/03/fingers-of-accusation-fuel-schiavo-retaliation/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/08/25/michael-schiavothen-and-now/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/07/24/michael-the-truthschiavo%e2%80%99s-other-woman/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/09/22/schiavo-flirtations-credibility-again-a-court-issue/ 1-31-09
Category: Consumers, Crime, Florida, Government, Labor, Opinion, Police, Schiavo
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