IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A board has ordered the reinstatement of an Iowa employee who was fired in 2017 after sending sexual text messages, including a photo of a penis, to a saleswoman for a state vendor.

The decision puts taxpayers on the hook for nearly two years of back pay and benefits for Nicholas Carnes, a power plant engineer at the Glenwood Resource Center, an institution for the disabled in southwest Iowa.

The cost hasn’t been calculated but could top $100,000, given that Carnes earned $60,000 in his final year of state employment.

In its July 19 decision, the Public Employment Relations Board agreed with an administrative law judge that Carnes’ misconduct did not warrant termination but a 10-day suspension instead.

The decision said Carnes had been an otherwise excellent employee for 13 years and that his inappropriate texts began one minute after his shift ended, not during the work day as investigators had alleged.