Austin Public Health Secondary Employment and Misuse

Audit ATX speaks with Investigator Tope Eletu-Odibo about an investigation regarding secondary employment and misuse by a City employee. Transcript available on Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1419979/episodes

Transcript

Sam: Welcome audit enthusiasts and fellow Austinites to another episode of Audit ATX. 

Maxx:The podcast that dives deep into audits and investigations our office does to make Austin better for all residents. 

Sam: We're your hosts: Sam 

Maxx: and Maxx. 

Maxx:Welcome back to audit ATX, everybody. Today we're here with my fellow supervising senior investigator, Tope Eletu Odibo, to talk about a recent investigation our office conducted. The focus of this investigation was secondary employment and misuse by a city employee. Welcome back to audit atx Tope

Guest: Thanks for having me back.

Sam: Echoing Max. It's good to have you back on the podcast Tope to get us started here. Can you explain to us the allegation that the city received in this instance?

Guest: Yeah, we received multiple complaints that the subject Marie-joelle Dan had a full time secondary employment with a state agency, while she was also working full time for the city of Austin, and they also raised concerns that she was not coming into the office during her scheduled days, when she was supposed to be in office and not teleworking.

Maxx: Gotcha. And now that we know what the original allegation was, what else do you think our listeners need to know as far as background information goes before we take a deep dive here?

Guest: Yeah. So Marie Joel Dan worked with Austin Public Health from April twenty twenty three until November of twenty twenty five, when she resigned with the city. She also had a brief tenure at Austin Parks and Recreation in twenty twenty one. And this timeline is going to be very important when we talk about the findings later.

Sam: Got it noted on the timeline. Let's delve into the findings for this report. I see that there are two there. So can you go over the first one for us?

Guest: Yes. The first finding was a violation of city code related to the acceptance or solicitation of secondary employment that may reasonably impair one's performance of city duties. And so what we found was that while Marie Joel Dan was working for Austin Public Health during the period of April twenty twenty three to when she left in November of twenty twenty five, she was also working full time for a state agency, and she'd been working with the state agency going back to twenty thirteen. Based on the records we were able to obtain from the state agency. This started to impact her performance at work. When we spoke to her supervisor as well as her coworker, they noted that her performance had been poor, which had started to affect the team's morale and project deadlines. She was behind on work. She wasn't contributing to certain projects. Um, they had issues reaching her during the work day. And so it had gone to a point where her supervisor was considering putting her on a performance improvement plan. There was a written reprimand already on file. Um, and they just highlighted a lot of issues with the quality of her work. When we spoke to Dan, even she acknowledged that working full time at both those jobs negatively impacted her productivity at Austin Public Health.

Maxx: Got it. And what about the second finding?

Guest: The second finding, very similar to the first, was more about the misuse of city resources, because Marie Joelle Dan was scheduled to work from eight a m to five p m at both her city job and her state job. She was having to use some of the time that she would have worked for the city to do work for the state, so she confessed that in the morning she would do work for the city, and in the afternoon she would do work for the state, which meant that while she was supposed to be working for us, she was doing work for another employer. And so that contributed to our findings that she misused city time in order to complete her obligations for the state.

Maxx: That makes sense, and I'm always really interested in the distinctions and secondary employment rules. So would you be able to break down what is appropriate versus inappropriate secondary employment for us?

Guest: Absolutely. And I want to make clear that there isn't an issue. At least the city does not have an issue with employees having secondary employment, where there are concerns with employees having secondary employment is if there is a potential conflict of interest with their role they hold for the city and the secondary employment they're doing outside of their city job. But additionally, there's a section in code that highlights the city employees should not solicit or accept other employments that provide compensation that could reasonably be expected to impair their performance of their city duties. And so in this case, because she was working full time for the city of Austin and for the state agency having to work full time for both of them impaired her performance. And this was highlighted by evidence that we collected from her manager and her coworkers. And so those are sort of the areas in which the city is concerned and will highlight that secondary employment as inappropriate, because it's actually starting to impact the quality of work that the employee is providing for the city and as a result, for our taxpayers.

Sam: Thanks for recapping those findings with us and for distinguishing what constitutes appropriate secondary employment. I can see how the secondary employment was a bit problematic in this instance. To wrap things up here, can you tell our listeners about how our office finds out about instances such as the one that we went over today?

Guest: Yeah. Um, this particular allegation came anonymously through our hotline and it wasn't just one, but several, um, that were concerned about how Marie Joelle Dan was using her time. And so we do have that option to report anonymously through our online reporting form and our hotline phone. Um, or you can submit information through our website. Um, in our audit form. There are just so many ways in which you can reach out to us. So, uh, those are the, uh, options available.

Maxx: Well, thanks for coming back on the podcast today to break down your great work and all of its findings. We look forward to having you back here on ATX again, hopefully very soon.

Guest: Thank you Max. Thank you Sam.

Maxx: Thanks for listening to this episode of ATX. For more information about this report, you can visit our website at austintexas.gov/auditor or shoot us an email at austinauditor@austintexas.gov. 

Sam: Or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X @AustinAuditor and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcast.