An award-winning human resources director working for a state agency found what she believed to be evidence of fraud and tried to get her bosses to fix the problem.
But instead of being rewarded for blowing the whistle on what she calls three years of mismanagement and fraud, Nicole Teasley says she was kicked out of meetings at the Department of Health Services-Milwaukee Enrollment Services (DHS-MilES) and bullied, stripped of some vital duties and involuntarily transferred to a new job—evidence of retaliation for her whistleblowing.
“Everything changed once I made my disclosure,” Teasley told the Shepherd exclusively.
Teasley has filed two retaliation complaints with the state Department of Workforce Development’s Equal Rights Division, but has gotten adverse decisions both times. She’s currently appealing those decisions.
Teasley’s retaliation complaints join three others filed with the state Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) alleging that those who had complained about nepotism and favoritism in the MilES office faced retaliation for speaking out. The three whistleblowers claimed that after they complained that MilES Chief Operations Officer Vanessa Robertson was hiring and unfairly promoting her relatives, they faced mistreatment. The whistleblowers even received anonymous letters with a photo of Robertson and the message: “Awe, u didn’t get the job But god don’t like ugly.”
MilES is tasked with administering the state’s income maintenance programs, including FoodShare, child care programs and BadgerCare, for Milwaukee County residents. The office had been run by Milwaukee County until 2009, when then-County Executive Scott Walker had so mismanaged the office that the state DHS was forced to take it over.
Teasley—who in 2012 received an honorable mention for the prestigious Virginia Hart Award for exceptional women who work in state government, with a commendation signed by Gov. Walker—said that bullying and intimidation are just part of MilES’s culture.
“If you make any type of complaint or stand up or ask questions and say this isn’t right, you better be prepared to be on the blacklist,” Teasley said.
An attorney for DHS argued that Teasley’s transfer had nothing to do with her whistleblowing complaint.
“Ms. Teasley’s reassignment to another position was the result of a reorganization of the Bureau of Human Resources (BHR) for legitimate business reasons, not the result of any retaliatory actions against Ms. Teasley,” attorney Lara M. Herman wrote in response to Teasley’s complaint before the Equal Rights Division.
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Alleged Time Card Fraud
Teasley was a Department of Corrections HR director when she took the HR job at MilES in early 2010, just as the state was taking over the office. At that time, MilES workers were still Milwaukee County employees, while managers, including Teasley, were state DHS employees.
MilES, like other Milwaukee County departments, used the Ceridian time and attendance payroll system. Ceridian’s system automatically pays people for 80 hours worked per pay period unless an employee or manager deliberately deducts time off for sick days, Family Medical and Leave Act (FMLA) time off and vacation days.
During her routine audits of employees’ time cards, Teasley noticed that employees were failing to note all of the time they were taking off. Even worse, managers seemed to be rubber-stamping their employees’ inaccurate time cards, which meant that these employees were getting paid more than they should have. Not only were they getting paid for time off, but they also occasionally qualified for overtime if they worked an “extra” day within a pay period; if their “days absent” were correctly documented, there would not be any overtime pay since the total numbers of hours worked for the week would add up to the 40 hours or less. And they were eligible to get paid out for more unused time off when they retired from state employment.
“I worked with the supervisors and I said you guys need to approve these time cards correctly,” Teasley said. “I would send out emails to the supervisors, to their managers. I had numerous conversations with my managers in Madison.”
Teasley continued to work on the problem, but she says it remained.
In 2011, Walker required all MilES employees to be state workers and Act 10, his collective bargaining bill, put an end to union contracts and protections. (Teasley, a director, hadn’t been a member of the union and wasn’t affected personally by Act 10.) MilES also went on a hiring spree and was able to take on about 100 new employees. The good news for Teasley was that workers wouldn’t need to use the Ceridian system anymore and could use the state payroll system, which she hoped would finally end the problem of the erroneous time cards.
Her hopes were dashed, though, when her routine time card audits in the new system, based on call-in logs, showed that employees were still failing to note all of the dates and times they were not in the office and supervisors were signing off on the inaccurate time cards.
“I was upset,” Teasley said. “I was frustrated. I thought something else was going on. But at that point I didn’t think that there was intentional fraud going on.”
Teasley said she tried to set up new attendance reporting systems with COO Robertson and CEO Ed Kamin III to ensure that time cards accurately reflected employees’ work. (Kamin has since left state employment.) But the problem remained. Teasley chalks it up to a lack of accountability.
“Not a single employee was ever disciplined,” Teasley said. “Not a single supervisor was ever disciplined for failing to [verify attendance]. Never.”
Finally, when she spotted errors during a time card audit she conducted over her 2012 Christmas break, Teasley had had enough. She emailed her supervisors and notified them that if changes wouldn’t be made, she’d contact the DHS secretary and blow the whistle.
When she returned to the office in January, she says she was kicked out of a meeting, told to stop doing her time card audits and ostracized within MilES.
Weeks later, she mailed a letter to then-Deputy Secretary Kitty Rhoades (now the DHS secretary) outlining her concerns as a whistleblower, which she felt gave her protection under the state’s whistleblower law.
“As soon as they pulled my duty of doing time card audits, that said it was fraud to me,” Teasley said.
She filed a complaint with the state Equal Rights Division as well, claiming that she was the victim of retaliation for blowing the whistle.
That summer, she was told her job was being abolished and she’d be transferred to the state office building Downtown, working alone doing data entry and with a $1 an hour raise, which she’d been scheduled to receive anyway. After a few months at that job, she left state employment and found a human resources job with the federal government.
Her case was investigated by the Office of State Employment Relations (OSER) during 2013. She received a letter from DHS Deputy Secretary Kevin Moore stating that there was insufficient evidence to support her claims of time card theft, unequal treatment and discipline, a hostile work environment and the refusal of management to implement new policies and procedures.
Teasley’s complaints at the Equal Rights Division over workplace retaliation and her involuntary transfer weren’t successful. DHS argued that Teasley’s job was abolished because all MilES employees had become state employees and her role in the MilES office wasn’t necessary anymore. Her transfer wasn’t a demotion, either, DHS argued, nor was any of it connected to her allegations of time card fraud. DHS’ arguments prevailed and Teasley is appealing the decisions.
“Do I have any hopes that this will go in my favor? No,” she said. “But this is all about the principle to me.”
Whistleblowing Isn’t Easy
Teasley said she’s had many sleepless nights since blowing the whistle on her managers, but she said she doesn’t regret it.
“It’s been traumatic,” Teasley said. “I won’t downgrade it. But I’ve also learned a lot from this experience and I can help other employees in that regard.”
She has good reason for being wary about the outcome of her cases. A recent decision by the state appeals court seems to narrow the definition of whistleblowing for state workers.
State Department of Justice Public Integrity Director Joell Schigur claimed that she faced retaliation after raising concerns about having DOJ agents protect then-Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., in 2008. Schigur was near the end of a two-year probationary period for her director position when she emailed her concern about having state taxpayers pick up the tab for protecting Van Hollen at a political event.
Although Schigur had always received positive performance reviews, after her email she was told she would be demoted and transferred.
She filed a complaint with the Equal Rights Division alleging her demotion was retaliation. The administrative law judge agreed with her. The DOJ appealed to the circuit court and won by arguing that the state’s whistleblower statute only protects state employees who disclose “information,” not merely “concerns” or opinions, as Schigur allegedly did. A Dane County judge sided with the DOJ and the appeals court affirmed that decision in February.
Schigur’s attorney Peter J. Fox told the Shepherd he’s petitioned the state Supreme Court to take on the case to clarify Wisconsin’s whistleblower protections for state employees. He said whistleblowing is a nonpartisan issue and taxpayers deserve to know when state employees are doing something illegal or fraudulent. He said that strictly limiting the statute would have a chilling effect on potential whistleblowers.
“That’s what makes this statute so important,” Fox said. “It’s got to be available to workers so that they can come forward and know that their job is going to be protected and that allegations of illegality are going to be investigated and fixed so that we’re not wasting money and we’re not doing things we shouldn’t be doing.”
