Lorain County's former HR director claims her personnel file was altered

The Lorain County Board of Commissioners' former human resources director said disciplinary documents and handwritten notes she never saw or signed were provided to the Chronicle-Telegram after it made a public records request for her employment file this month. Jen Sinatra took commissioners Michelle Hung, a Republican; Matt Lundy, a Democrat; and Auditor Craig Snodgrass to task in her exit interview on Aug. 19, the day she resigned as human resources director. She said their "flagrant" personal agendas made her job more difficult. Commissioners signed off on Sinatra's resignation at their meeting Aug. 3. There were no disciplinary items included in Sinatra's personnel file when it was first viewed by the Chronicle on Aug. 12. But a disciplinary document and several handwritten notes and typed memos were included in documents sent to the Chronicle on Aug. 26, when the Lorain County Prosecutor's Office turned over Sinatra's exit interview at the Chronicle's request. Sinatra said she'd never seen the documents, which the Chronicle first informed her about. She also said she is worried she is being set up for retaliation. "I don't know how you can plop something into someone's personnel file like that," Sinatra said. "I don't know how any of that is able to be published. I wasn't aware of it." Among the documents was a typed memo dated Jan. 19 in which County Administrator J.R. White discussed a meeting he had with Sinatra about "areas for improvement" and "friction between the Auditor's Office and HR." Sinatra "stated that she felt she was going to be fired and, if so that she knew so much that she would make (former County Administrator) Tom Williams look like nothing," according to the memo, which included White's initials. Williams, who was fired in August 2021, sued the county after commissioners declined to pay his severance package. The county eventually settled with him for $450,000, spending an estimated $150,000 on legal fees to fight the suit. White's memo also says Sinatra threatened legal action "or bad press if she is disciplined or fired." Sinatra denied making any threats in two separate interviews with the Chronicle this week. Handwritten notes with White's initials also revealed conversations he had with Sinatra and HR employees about the merger of human resources and payroll systems. He wrote that Sinatra apparently ordered the project stopped, but in a meeting he "advised and reinforced that, whatever the truth, they are expected to move forward." Sinatra also called herself "a scapegoat" and told him she was looking for another job, White wrote. He also asked her "not to do that," according to his note, the content of which he confirmed in a phone call with a Chronicle reporter on Tuesday. Sinatra said Monday she "probably" did call herself a scapegoat and that she was "very transparent about looking for other employment." In another handwritten note dated March 16, White recounted a meeting with Sinatra in which she allegedly "talked of new projects but expressed she wouldn't start them because she 'doesn't give an (expletive) anymore'" and told him she was interviewing for new jobs. Sinatra said she didn't recall the meeting and rarely uses profanity. "I was very transparent with J.R. to let him know this was a toxic environment and they (commissioners Hung and Lundy and auditor Snodgrass) were interfering with my ability to do my job," she said Monday. The final record was a written warning or "record of instruction and cautioning" for Sinatra for a rules violation that allegedly took place on May 26, 2021, but wasn't dated until Aug. 1 this year. In the space reserved for an employee's signature acknowledging receipt of the document, White wrote "Refused/Resigned." Sinatra said she never received a copy of the document, nor was it in her personnel file when she left her job on Aug. 19. White said Tuesday he got the date wrong on the write-up: He meant to write May 25, 2022, instead of May 26, 2021. That's when Sinatra allegedly failed to follow up with Snodgrass' office on a payroll project. He said it was true that Sinatra never saw that document: When White tried to hand it to Sinatra on Aug. 1, the day she turned in her resignation, he said she refused to accept it. Sinatra "said 'I don't want to see that, we're not doing that,'" and handed me her letter of resignation," White said Tuesday. "I don't have a comment because I don't know what he's talking about," Sinatra said, when told what White said. "The fact is, I never saw that document." As for his handwritten notes, White said they normally would have gone into Sinatra's file in Human Resources, but "there were a couple memorandums I was keeping for my own file." "Yeah, sure," he said, when asked if he is in the habit of keeping separate files on the directors who report to him. The practice he said "hearkens back to my lawyer days" when he worked in employment law. White worked at Fauver Co. LPA, an Elyria law firm that has represented The Chronicle-Telegram in legal matters in the past, from June 2005 to July 2021. He also advised the Chronicle as a client. Commissioners hired White to replace Rob Weber in October 2021. White said he keeps notes in a separate file and sent the ones that referenced Sinatra to the Lorain County Prosecutor's Office to be handed over to the Chronicle as part of the newspaper's public records request for her exit interview. "It wasn't like there was surveillance on her," White said. "I take a note when something of note happens." Sinatra said she was concerned county officials were "putting things in my file after the fact." "All that you just told me, I have never seen," she told a reporter who provided her with the documents so that she could comment on them. "The only purpose of these is to defame me," Sinatra added later. "Those documents were not in my file." Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @DaveOBrienCT.