City of Mansfield fired woman who found police misused funds, whistleblower suit says
A former employee with the city of Mansfield said she was fired after calling attention to misappropriation of funds by the city’s police department.
In a whistleblower lawsuit filed against the city Wednesday, paralegal Alma Coronado said Mansfield’s leadership was “openly hostile” toward her and eventually defunded her position because she pointed out misuse of about $44,000 in court funds.
While working as the city’s legal assistant, Coronado found that the police department was taking municipal court funds and using the money on city costs — an issue that had already been brought to the city’s attention, the suit, which was filed in the District of Dallas, says.
The city’s attorney, Allen Taylor, says the police department did use municipal court funds on city costs, but the misuse was accidental due to a legal change that the city was not aware of. The problem was swiftly corrected and did not involve a significant amount of money, Taylor said.
Taylor said all spending using the municipal court budget was pre-approved and legally permitted up until a law changed in January.
“In January, the law went into place that more tightly said what you could use (court funds) for,” Taylor said. “The police department and court did purchases under the old set of regulations, but then it changed and nobody caught that it had changed.”
A court coordinator brought the issue to the city’s attention in the spring, he said. The city conducted an audit and refunded the money back into the court account. Along with other costs, $13,000 was spent on the lease to a motorcycle that police used to issue traffic tickets, he said.
“We went back and looked at it and said no harm, no foul,” Taylor said.
However, Coronado told the Star-Telegram that the police department never received authorization to use any of that money, and continued to use court funds after she explained to the police chief the department could not do so.
Coronado said she and the court coordinator discovered in the spring that the department used $10,584 from a court account on motorcycle leases. In March, she gave the police chief a copy of the statute that explained the department could not use those funds.
During an audit in July, Coronado found that the department used $33,847 from another court account to buy dash cameras, body cameras and radar guns in April and June.
Taylor said he is not aware of a second audit or a pattern of the misuse of funds. Two funds were involved, but in each instance, the use was unintentional and the mistake was corrected, he said.
Coronado told her supervisor and legal partner, Bill Lane, about the audit’s findings, and the two spoke to the police chief again in mid-July. Coronado said the chief again said he was not aware the department could not use those funds.
Lane said he emailed the city attorney and manager.
“I said, ‘this is still going on,’ and made it clear you cannot spend these funds in this way,” Lane said. “The next day, they shut down Alma’s account and shut her out.”
‘They cut my legs out from underneath me.’
At 8:30 a.m. on July 27, Coronado, 57, was watching the city council meeting online when she heard management announce that her position had been “defunded” and she would be out of a job by September. She had no prior warning that her position would be eliminated, she said. Lane’s position was also defunded.
The following day, Coronado could not access her work files. She had a meeting with Mayor David Cook, City Manager Joe Smolinski and Human Resources on July 29.
“I told them, listening to this online was like finding out your family died on the news,” Coronado said through tears. “They cut my legs out from underneath me.”
Cook, Smolinski and Police Chief Tracy Aaron were hostile to Coronado following her audit, according to the lawsuit.
Cook, a Republican, is currently running against Democrat Joe Drago and Libertarian Nelson Range to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Bill Zedler in a hotly contested Nov. 3 race for the 96th Texas House District.
The mayor’s office and the police department referred questions about the lawsuit to Taylor.
Taylor said he was not aware of anyone being hostile toward Coronado and said the termination of her position was for budget reasons.
Smolinski referred to Coronado as “one of the best employees that we’ve got” in an April email obtained by the Star-Telegram. Coronado worked with the city for 13 years, 10 of which she worked with the police department to obtain $3 million in grants.
Coronado, who was 18 months away from retirement, was an exemplary employee and one of 120 paralegals in Texas to be certified as a Level III Municipal Court Clerk, Lane said. She applied for other city positions, including as an assistant secretary, but did not get the job.
Taylor said Coronado’s position was eliminated, along with the entire in-house legal department, due to “budget shortfalls and money issues because of the pandemic and the caps put on municipal spending.” Other sectors, such as the Law Enforcement Center, were eliminated this year for the same reason. Coronado did not receive the job as an assistant secretary because the city wanted to hire someone with election experience, he said.
This story was originally published October 28, 2020 at 5:50 PM.
