South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
State investigators dismiss claims of Florida fudging COVID-19 data
Information was withheld, but no policy in place to prevent it
State investigators said they weren’t able to determine whether health officials fired Florida’s former coronavirus data expert, Rebekah Jones, because she refused to manipulate COVID-19 data.
Jones was thrust into the national spotlight in the early days of the pandemic when she accused the DeSantis administration of directing her to falsify COVID-19 positivity rates to support the push to reopen Florida after months of quarantine. In the investigative report, released Thursday, investigators at the Florida Department of Health’s Office of Chief Inspector General, Michael J. Bennett, said there was “insufficient evidence” to prove or disprove Jones’ claims.
Bennett, who investigates whistleblower complaints, reports to Chief Inspector General Melinda Miguel within Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office.
The OIG report supports the DeSantis’ administration, denying that Florida misrepresented its positivity rate data to justify reopening schools and businesses. The South Florida Sun Sentinel analyzed state data in 2020 and found that Florida did indeed obscure the true extent of the pandemic by using a misleading measure of positive cases.
Jones also claimed that her supervisors directed her to restrict access to the underlying data that supported what appeared on the COVID-19 data and surveillance dashboard. Investigators acknowledged that this did occur, “but was not found to be a violation of any governing directive,” meaning there’s no policy or rule that makes that conduct illegal.
Reached Friday, Jones said it felt vindicating that their investigation found that the state did direct her to restrict access to the underlying data. “This was vindication to an extent, and next is the reckoning,” she said.
Jones plans to sue the state in federal court for wrongful dismissal now that the state investigation is complete.
“It speeds up our timeline of being able to sue the state, and because DeSantis repeatedly inserted himself, we get to put him under oath and ask him about what he knew and whether he cared that people were dying,” she said. “We get to interrogate him for every person in Florida.”
Jones was granted whistleblower status to pursue her charges. She filed the original complaint on July 16, 2020, with the Florida Commission on Human Rights. It was later forwarded to the OIG.
Investigators looked into the four allegations she raised against top health department officials: Courtney Coppola, the agency’s former chief of staff; Dr. Shamarial Roberson, the former deputy secretary; Carina Blackmore, director of the agency’s Medical and Health Services within the Division of Disease Control and Health Protection; and Patrick “Scott” Pritchard, who worked in the Bureau of Communicable Diseases, which is part of the Division of Disease Control and Health.
Jones submitted a 70-page rebuttal, which was attached to the OIG’s 27-page report. She disputed the OIG’s findings and presented evidence of emails and other communication, including a text message exchange with then-director of internal communications for the Health Department, Wesley Payne, who had approached the OIG with “similar complaints” about misleading COVID-19 data.
The state fired Jones in May 2020 from her job as the Florida Health Department’s geographical information systems manager, where she built and maintained the state’s COVID-19 surveillance dashboard. She publicly accused state officials of asking her to wrongly manipulate COVID-19 data, though her official termination letter states she was fired “without cause,” she said.
Jones launched her own dashboard to track cases in June and maintained her accusations against the DeSantis administration of falsifying data to make Florida look better.
Jones is running in the Aug. 23 Democratic primary to unseat U.S. Rep Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach. Gaetz, a close ally of former President Trump, has represented the heavily Republican district since 2017.