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Whistleblowers at U. Utah Claim They Were Fired for Exposing Waste

Whistleblowers at U. Utah Claim They Were Fired for Exposing Waste

“Significant amounts of public funding.”

This wouldn’t be the first time people were targeted for exposing wasteful spending.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports:

Lawsuit accuses University of Utah of firing whistleblowers over wasted public funds

Two former University of Utah employees are suing the state’s flagship university, saying they were fired in retaliation for discovering policy violations and budgetary waste within the school’s information technology department.

In a lawsuit filed in June, Jasmin Davis and Barry Wilson list a series of allegations against the university and its staff, from falsified purchase orders to safety violations and ongoing expenses for expired or unnecessary services.

Reporting and correcting those mistakes embarrassed Davis’ and Wilson’s superiors, the lawsuit alleges, leading to the wrongful termination of both plaintiffs.

“The university took adverse action against Ms. Davis and Mr. Wilson because they objected to or refused to carry out a directives [sic] that they reasonably believed violated a law or regulation of Utah or the university,” the lawsuit states.

Davis and Wilson declined to comment. Their attorney, Roger Hoole, said his clients were successful at recovering and correcting the use of significant amounts of public funding.

“I’m pretty confident in saying that together they saved the university and the state of Utah millions of dollars doing the work they did,” he said. “They would have continued to do the same thing, but they were shut down.”

Davis was hired to work in the university’s information technology department in August 2013 and was promoted in March 2014 to the position of associate director of strategic vendor partnerships, according to the lawsuit.

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Comments

The Salt Lake Tribune, huh. The New York Times of Utah. I’ll have to wait for a concurring report. There have been baby hunts in Utah since Mormons were targeted for the votes of Democrats, Catholics, and Blacks in California opposing selective exclusion (“=”).