Ruling says fired landfill employees should get jobs back

A judge has ruled that two Macon-Bibb County employees should not have been fired due to managerial issues related to failed landfill inspections.

The ruling from administrative law judge Pope Langstaff said that while the two employees — former Assistant Director of Solid Waste Larry Dunning and former Waste Disposal Coordinator Lee Stringer — could not prove that they were blameless for the landfill issues, the county’s actions following their firings might show that the failures extended beyond a managerial problem.

The ruling said the punishment for Dunning and Stringer, both fired in July 2015, should be a six-month suspension instead of termination.

Another landfill supervisor, Michael Schena, was demoted at that time because of violations related to landfill inspections.

Stringer and Dunning’s firings came after a June 2015 landfill inspection that resulted in a failing score. That inspection by the state’s Environmental Protection Division was a follow-up to another failed inspection in April, which cited violations including debris being in ditches, faded or unmarked survey markings and employees using an unapproved set of operating plans.

Both Dunning and Stringer were suspended following the April landfill evaluation. While that offered a warning of more consequences if another failure occurred, there was not enough communication between them and Solid Waste Director Kevin Barkley on whether their performance goals were reasonable, Langstaff wrote in the July 29 ruling.

“In fact, this issue just leads back to the real question of whether the failed inspections were the fault of Schena, Stinger and Dunning (and which of those three) or were the result of inadequate soil, equipment and personnel combined with heavy rains, none of which they had much control over,” the ruling said.

The county is still deciding if it will appeal the ruling, Macon-Bibb spokesman Chris Floore said.

“Any potential back pay would not have been set since an appeal is still a possibility,” he said.

Attorney Lars Anderson, who represents Stringer and Dunning, said if the county accepts the judge’s ruling, then the two would receive six months of back pay and be allowed to return to their jobs with the county.

“I have two people who need to get back to work,” Anderson said.

The ruling appears to be a middle-of-the-road judgment and is not a win for the county or a win for Dunning and Stringer, he said.

“This is just the latest chapter of the city and county trying to run a landfill on the cheap,” Anderson said Monday afternoon. “They never had dedicated the resources, rather financial or human, to properly run the landfill.”

Barkley gave “convincing testimony” that Schena, Stringer and Dunning did not do as much as they could have to resolve some of the issues at the landfill, Langstaff wrote.

“What was on short supply in the proffered evidence by (Barkley) were details and documentation of particular management failures, outside of two failed scores on EPD inspections set against a long history of similar failures,” the ruling said.

The scale was tipped in the favor of Stringer and Dunning, however, when within weeks after they were fired, the county drastically reduced the amount of waste being put into the landfill, Langstaff wrote.

“It is hard to write this diversion off as a coincidence or as unrelated,” the ruling said.

In response to the landfill’s inspection history, Macon-Bibb officials have proposed spending about $20 million, which includes funding to close the Walker Road site, in the next special purpose local option sales tax referendum.

This story was originally published August 15, 2016 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Ruling says fired landfill employees should get jobs back."