Jonathan Bush, who along with Rick Hord and John Lee are suing Sheriff Larry Ashley for illegal termination, will be first to appear before the board.
It appears, at long last, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Personnel Standards and Review Board will convene to determine whether Sheriff Larry Ashley was justified in terminating three employees way back in 2010.
Jonathan Bush, who along with Rick Hord and John Lee are suing Ashley for illegal termination, will be first to appear before the board. He is scheduled to have his case heard Jan. 9-10. Hord and Lee will get their hearings Jan. 22-26.
The Sheriff's Office Personnel Standards and Review Board was established by a special act of the Florida Legislature in 1981. It was created solely to hear grievances filed within the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office and faded into obscurity sometime during the term of either Sheriff Larry Gilbert or Sheriff Charlie Morris.
Ashley discovered the enacting legislation shortly after he’d failed to retain Bush, Hord and Lee in 2010, after winning his first election. He obtained the help of then-state Rep. Matt Gaetz to get it repealed during the 2011 legislative session.
But Circuit Judge John Brown ruled in 2015, after the lawsuit had bounced between federal and state court, that the personnel board was technically still in existence when Hord, Bush and Lee were fired and appealed their terminations.
Brown said it would be proper for the three deputies to have their grievances against the sheriff aired before their case went to court, so he ordered the Standards and Review Board revived.
The first board assembled consisted of Larry Gilbert and Jerry Alford, selected by Ashley; Howard Oakes and Johnny Eubanks, elected by vote of the Sheriff’s Office employees; and Alexis Tibbetts, a former school superintendent selected by vote of the four previously appointed board members.
As more legal wrangling ensued, the board disassembled again. Oakes and Eubanks resigned and Alford died.
A second Sheriff’s Office election brought Charlie Boseman and James Wells to the board, and former Okaloosa County Property Appraiser Pete Smith was appointed by Ashley to replace Alford.
When the board convenes Tuesday, Gilbert will serve as its chairman.
Mead said he has confidence Gilbert, the former sheriff, will conduct a competent hearing.
“I think he will run the proceedings fairly and with his guidance I hope for a fair hearing,” he said.
Attorney Jeff McInnis, who represents the board itself, confirmed that the Sheriff’s Office had produced a witness list of seven, including Ashley himself.
Also on the Sheriff’s Office witness list are Don Adams, Ashley’s former undersheriff, J.D. Peacock a former Sheriff’s Office major and now Oklaoosa County Clerk of Court, Ronald Gay, Douglas Gaylord and Daniel Genrich.
Mead plans to call two witnesses, Steve Menchel, a Destin resident who, like Hord, ran against Ashley in 2009, and Bush himself.