Worker not dinged for casino trips

CITY EMPLOYEES

A Columbus city employee made at least six trips to the Hollywood Casino during work hours last summer, but he was never punished.

City officials said they couldn’t hold the worker accountable because the city had not yet negotiated with its unions to use GPS tracking to punish members. An arbitrator had ruled three years earlier that the two sides had to bargain over the issue, but that negotiation had never happened.

All of the human resources employees who would have been involved in the bargaining left their jobs before the oversight was discovered, said Nichole M. Brandon, the city’s human resources director.

“They were all gone,” she said. “They weren’t here. What we did was try to pick it

up and move forward with it instead of looking back to see why it wasn’t bargained.”

When Brandon’s staff discovered that the city never followed through on the arbitrator’s ruling, she said they worked with the unions to negotiate memorandums on vehicle tracking. Those were signed earlier this year, and now the city can punish workers when GPS indicates they are caught misusing city vehicles.

An investigative file The Dispatch obtained in a public records request shows that the city’s Department of Public Service started investigating construction manager Richard “Doug” Daily last summer.

Daily’s supervisor, Paul Chilton, tried to reach him on his work phone on Aug. 12, 2016, but Daily didn’t answer, according to the file. Chilton told investigators that Daily later admitted to taking “a longer lunch” with his girlfriend.

Chilton used the city’s GPS tracking system to see where Daily had been taking his city vehicle.

That showed that Daily used his city-issued Ford F150 pickup truck to visit the casino on the West Side six times during work hours between June 9, 2016, and July 28, 2016. His shortest visit was more than an hour, according to the file. His longest stay was more than three hours.

Daily, 58, was hired in 2004 to monitor construction projects for the city. He earned nearly $67,000 in 2016. Daily did not return a call seeking comment.

Susan Wilson, vice president of Communications Workers of America Local 4502, declined to comment.

City investigators had the GPS evidence, but they dropped the case against Daily in November. Officials said they didn’t have agreements in place that outlined potential punishment, and notes in the investigative file show that they expected dropping it would help get the union “back to the table” on the issue.

“We were having trouble getting them to the bargaining table,” said Mike Duco, city labor relations manager. “They were dragging their feet.”

The city tried to implement a GPS policy in October 2012, but the CWA balked and filed a grievance. Only the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees accepted the policy then.

An arbitrator ruled on the grievance in July 2013, saying the two sides had to negotiate those terms. Negotiations didn’t didn’t start, though, until 2016 — the same year Daily was caught with his city vehicle at the casino.

“The department felt fairly strongly we were going to try to run it up that flagpole anyway, so we did take it to hearing,” said Lauren Hunter, human resources officer with the Department of Public Service. “We were told that because of the absence of the MOU we needed to stand down and withdraw the charges.”

Hunter said GPS has never been used as the primary evidence to punish a public service employee.

“More often than not we’re able to clear our employees,” she said.