Firing changed to ‘Resigned in lieu of’
♦ Floyd County makes changes to election chief’s termination.
The Floyd County Board of Elections has changed former Chief Elections Clerk Robert Brady’s termination to a resignation in lieu of termination after Brady appealed the decision.
The process has been slowed, Elections Board Chair Melanie Conrad said, by Brady’s attorney dealing with severe issues resulting from a COVID-19 infection.
The appeal was filed shortly after Brady was fired from the post in November.
Now, instead of going through a hearing, they’ve simply changed the documentation of the termination.
“It’s actually what we wanted to do in the first place,” Conrad said.
This new documentation also removes the second reprimand from Brady’s file, which was “on the basis of repeated failure to meet performance objectives.”
The board made its decision to remove Brady from the position after two reprimands.
One came after he verbally harangued a member of the public during an election board meeting and the second after an audit found approximately 3,000 ballots in the Nov. 3 election weren’t initially counted.
Floyd County Attorney Virginia Harman explained that the change is cheaper and easier for the county. They no longer have to pay for an attorney to represent the board of elections at an adversarial hearing.
“Just the cost of the hearing would be expensive, but we hadn’t scheduled it at this point because (Brady’s) attorney had been sick with COVID-19 ... so we waited until she was well,” Harman said.
A job posting for the chief elections clerk position has been on the Romefloyd.com website for about a week. Conrad said she knows of least one person from another county’s elections office who has voiced interest.