Turmoil among Manatee County’s administration continued Tuesday with the resignation of Chief Financial Officer Jan Brewer amid the budget preparation season.
Brewer submitted a letter of resignation on Tuesday, citing concerns about County Administrator Scott Hopes. She plans to vacate the position after June 8, the date of the county’s first budget workshop session of the year.
“That is drastic in the middle of a budget season,” Commissioner Carol Whitmore said during a county meeting on Tuesday. “She’s the most powerful person with our money in the county… I don’t know how we are going to do this with our CFO quit.”
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Hopes, who was hired on April 1, 2021, was publicly scrutinized after Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller Angelina Colonneso sent a letter to County Chair Kevin Van Ostenbridge on Friday admonishing Hopes.
Colonneso raised concerns over a lack of communication and transparency, a suggestion that she shouldn’t release public records, fiscal accountability, and the impacts of hefty organizational changes under his administration.
Brewer has worked at Manatee County since March 2012 and has served as one of the county’s four deputy administrators since August. In her resignation letter, she cited some of Colonneso’s findings and private concerns of her own as the reason for leaving the position.
Brewer wrote that she discovered last Tuesday that Hopes directed staff to withhold information from her that concerns to employees. When she didn’t give the direction, but Brewer said it was office that gave the direction to Human Resources two weeks before her discovery.
“He refused to bring in his staff member that gave the direction but instructed he would handle it,” she wrote as a part of her resignation. “The department was given this direction two weeks prior to my discovery of the situation.”
“While the matter is of a personnel nature, I cannot help but be concerned that other information is being maintained in this manner as well,” she said. “I now find myself in staff meetings wondering who has been told to keep information from me and if they are doing this action because of the fear of losing their job.”
Within days of discussing the matter with Hopes, Brewer said he scheduled a meeting for this week with all the leads from the same department that notified her of the directive, without notifying her even though she oversees them.
Brewer also cited Colonneso’s fiscal accountability concerns in her resignation letter.
Colonneso retiring an effort to open a separate account for Deputy Administrator Robert Reinshuttle, who was hired in June 2021, from VOYA, the county’s deferred compensation provider; and the purchase of a $46,000 Chevrolet Tahoe that Colonneso said Hopes exclusively uses to travel to and from work.
Brewer said that she was not notified about the effort to contact VOYA and Hopes’ company vehicle even though she is the CFO.
“The exclusion of the CFO from the conversations is not healthy for the organization,” she wrote. “I had no input on or direction of the letter but yet I have been accused of being a part of it.”