Two employees of the District’s Office of Unified Communications who testified before a D.C. Council panel that their agency is poorly managed and undermanned were fired last month for alleged insubordination and excessive unapproved absences.
Alexandria Jones and Yolanda Geter said they both feared retribution when they twice told the council’s public safety committee that the communications office was understaffed and that the switch to a 911-311 system would endanger the public. Asked by the council in January whether the employees would suffer retaliation, Janice Quintana, the office’s director, responded, “Absolutely not.”
Both Jones and Geter have since been terminated.
“Everyone knew she was targeting me because I did speak out,” Jones, a 10-year agency veteran, said of Quintana. “This is the way she operates.”
Geter, who is currently on administrative leave pending the closure of her case, received her termination letter on Aug. 18, four days after Jones received hers.
“This time it’s just gone too far,” Geter said.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian Fenty said Wednesday that the administration could not comment on personnel matters.
Jones warned the council committee in January that OUC employees were overwhelmed and that many call takers — those who used to answer calls for government services under the former three-number system — were not trained to handle requests for emergency assistance. Geter offered similar commentary during a February hearing.
Jones was fired because she was unwilling to work a full 10-hour shift, Athena Plummer, Quintana’s deputy director of emergency operations, wrote in an Aug. 14 letter to the terminated employee.
“Your complete and continued disregard for management instruction is unacceptable and shows you have no intent to follow the direct orders issued by OUC management,” Plummer wrote. “Clearly, your actions and behavior are insubordinate and disruptive to OUC operations.”
Jones had sought to work an eight-hour shift, claiming stress-related medical disability. Every time she worked only eight hours, she was marked as absent without leave.
Fiscal 2009 budget documents prepared by the public safety committee slammed Quintana for being “antagonistic toward employees” and for “retaliating against employees.”
“There have been persistent complaints expressed to me and the council alleging retaliation by Janice Quintana,” said Councilman Phil Mendelson, the committee’s chairman. “The council is in a difficult position to prove the truth. But the persistence of the complaint is very troubling and I hear it from no other agency, and I can’t help but wonder if where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
