Federal suit filed against Orange official
Property appraiser accused of spending tax dollars on personal trips, other allegations
Orange County Property Appraiser Rick Singh spent taxpayer money on personal trips, falsified documents, used a racist slur, and asked employees to cover up having strippers in the office, two former employees claim in a lawsuit.
Aisha Hassan, the agency’s former finance director, and Laverne McGee, its former director of communications, filed the lawsuit this month in federal court in Orlando.
“It’s a shakedown by two employees who essentially tried to extort money from me,” Singh said Thursday. “They have not a shred of evidence.”
Beth Watson, a spokeswoman for Singh’s office, called the allegations “baseless” and pointed to an internal review by former Orange-Osceola Chief Judge Belvin Perry, commissioned at Singh’s request and paid for with taxpayer funds, which earlier this year found Hassan and McGee’s allegations without merit.
Singh, a Democrat, was first elected to the office in 2012 and re-elected in 2016.
In the suit, Hassan and McGee also claimed sexual harassment: Singh told McGee to flirt with male vendors and called her “hired help,” according to the civil complaint.
“For example, McGee was presented by Singh to his male friends as if she was part of Singh’s harem along with other females,” attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote in the
lawsuit. “Singh instructed McGee to ‘cover’ for him and lie to his wife when he brought women, including strippers, to the OCPA’s office after hours.”
Hassan claimed Singh sent her texts at odd hours and told her to run personal errands, like getting gas for his car, getting him rental cars and making hotel reservations that were not workrelated.
“It was clear that these overtures were unrelated to Hassan’s job and constituted thinly veiled propositions to engage in a sexual relationship,” attorneys wrote in the complaint.
In the 40-page complaint and 61 pages of exhibits, McGee and Hassan allege Singh regularly used the office for personal gain. Among the allegations:
■ Singh gave friends and associates lower appraisals on their homes, meaning they had lower property tax bills. They also claimed he inflated the property values of people who got in his way, including Hassan.
■ Singh spent $8,342 on business-class flights and hotels for the 2017 International Real Estate Federation conference in Andorra, even though he was not invited to the conference, the suit claims.
■ Singh gave McGee a list of places he wanted to visit and asked her to “write up something and make it sound like it’s legitimate” and “make up something that we can justify why the office is involved” so he could bill taxpayers for the travel.
■ On a trip to Boston, Singh billed taxpayers for three extra nights with his wife at a waterfront hotel. The bill came to $944.
■ Instead of flying back from Boston to Orlando, Singh asked Hassan to look up more expensive flights back home so he could “justify me flying to Fort Lauderdale” instead for a Democratic Party event. Hassan found an $894 flight to Orlando and a $718 flight to Fort Lauderdale and booked the latter at taxpayer expense.
■ On the way to a conference in Sacramento, Singh stopped for a taxpayerfunded layover in Dallas for a night so he could go to a wedding. Singh billed the office for lodging in Dallas and the extra flight, the suit claims.
■ Singh used taxpayer money to pay for hand towels, T-shirts, baseball hats and plaques for his trip to Pune, India, a city about 70 miles southeast of Mumbai where Singh’s son lives, the suit claims. To make the trip appear official, Singh drafted a letter to a local mayor.
■ Singh used derogatory language to talk about women in the office, and called a local black reporter the Nword.
■ Singh ordered 100 baseball caps with the agency’s logo, which the suit claims were for use in his 2016 reelection campaign.
McGee and Hassan are seeking back pay and benefits, as well as unspecified damages and attorneys’ fees.
Singh said he attends conferences to learn best practices. “I would be abdicating my duty” if he did not attend, he said.
Singh was an entrepreneur before he took office. In the years since his election, a local lawyer, Wade Vose, accused him of routing money from the office to his daughter’s charity. The lawsuit was dismissed about three months later.
Attorneys of Walt Disney World accused him of inappropriately raising the theme park’s 2015 property valuations. A judge ruled in Disney’s favor, though Singh filed an appeal.
He was also the subject of anonymous attack mailers during his 2016 re-election campaign. He sued to find out who was funding the mailers, but two years later the source has not been revealed.
On Thursday Singh called the allegations in the lawsuit “frivolous, salacious and artfully crafted to generate headlines.”
“I’m a target. But I’m not going to be a punching bag,” he said.