- November 7, 2024
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The Flagler County Sheriff's Office has settled a lawsuit filed against the agency by a former employee during the leadership of former Sheriff Jim Manfre.
The Sheriff's Office announced the $200,000 settlement in a news release March 10 after settling during a pre-trial hearing. The agency will pay $120,000 of that total, and the balance will be paid from the Florida Sheriff's Risk Management Fund.
The suit was filed by Linda Bolante, the Sheriff's Office's finance director under Manfre. She alleged that she was pushed out of her job for bringing attention to inappropriate spending by Manfre on his agency credit card, and to the fact that he'd not officially reported as a gift his stay in a cabin owned by Rick Staly, who was at the time his undersheriff, then beat him in the campaign for sheriff and succeeded him as the current sheriff.
Manfre was ultimately fined $6,200 by the Florida Commission on Ethics in connection with the spending that Bolante brought to light. He decided not to appeal the fine, but called the Ethics Commission process unfair, and said the charges were politically motivated.
"It’s very clear to me that this is a political setup," Manfre said at the time. "It should be suspicious to anybody that the two people involved in this matter are Linda Bolante and Rick Staly. ... These are the people I relied on for advice, and then they had the nerve to use that position to then set me up and use it for their own purposes."
Staly recused himself from managing the lawsuit after he took office, because he was a witness in the case, according to the Sheriff's Office news release. He appointed his undersheriff, Jack Bisland, to represent the Sheriff's Office with the Florida Sheriff’s Risk Management Fund.
The settlement total represents Bolante's lost wages, plus legal and litigation costs, according to the news release.
In the Sheriff's Office news release, Staly took a dig at his predecessor. "This is a significant impact to our budget," he said in the news release. "It is unfortunate that we are faced with this financial impact in our budget and the citizens of Flagler County have to pay for what was truly an avoidable situation caused by the former Sheriff.”
The Florida Sheriff’s Risk Management Fund decided to settle the case "after a total risk assessment of continued litigation which included the potential of an adverse verdict," according to the news release.
