A lawsuit filed by the former Shelby County Emergency Management Coordinator against the Shelby County Board of Supervisors and Shelby County EMA was settled on Friday, January 22nd. The settlement provides plaintiff Jason Wickizer with a total of $860,000. Wickizer will receive a payroll check in the amount of $58,701 for wages, with all standard withholdings. A check will be made payable to the Wicker’s attorneys, Skinner and Paschke, PLLCE in the amount of $801,299, for damages which include physical injury, emotional distress, attorney’s fees and costs.

The County Emergency Management Commission and County EMA had authorized their legal counsel with the Iowa Communities Assurance Pool (ICAP), to resolve claims against the county. The settlement concludes a case that had been was transferred to, and pending in, Page County District Court. Wickizer’s Attorney, Kellie Paschke, told KJAN News the suit was filed to clear her client’s name and prove his innocence in an alleged case of improper payroll disbursements. The lawsuit was filed in July 2019. Paschke said “Jason, through the course of his employment was not your typical 9-to-5 employee (due to the nature of his Emergency Management position).”

(She says he was always on-call for natural and other emergency situations, he had to cover dispatcher shifts when necessary. Which resulted in many hours of overtime.)

The overtime was compensated through either an overtime rate as an hourly employee (at time and 1/2), or “Comp time,” in lieu of overtime, allowing him to take time off at a later date.

(When Wickizer discovered he wasn’t being compensated on a time-and ½ basis for Comp Time, he began to question why he wasn’t receiving that on a regular basis.)

The Supervisors, she said decided “Maybe Jason was just earning too much, and so they took away his Comp time altogether,” which led to the lawsuit. The petition alleged that the defendants knowingly and intentionally failed to compensate Wickizer for his labor, services and paid leave. The County went to the State of Iowa’s Auditor’s Office and requested an audit, which led to the County hiring its own auditing firm: RSM U-S, LLP, out of Indianapolis, IN., to conduct an internal audit of the time-off policies within the EMA. A special investigation was released in March 2019 where Wickizer was named in the audit report. Wickizer was named among the others for allegedly receiving improper payroll totaling $13,494.62. His employment was then terminated.

Paschke says the auditing firm failed to include Wickizer’s Comp Time in their analysis.

She says “It’s incredibly frustrating that Jason’s good name has been dragged through the mud in the community, all because somebody had a bone to pick with how much he worked, apparently. Paschke noted that it seems “A little unusual, that rather than vote themselves (The EMA Commission/Supervisors) on the settlement agreement, they authorized their legal counsel to do it.”