The firing today of Reggie Wilson by Nancy Rodrigues gets even more bizarre. Lets hope the Governor gets this mess cleaned up soon before morale collapses there in advance of a very important election in November. From another reader:
“Virginia was among the first states to publish real-time election results on the internet on election night. We owe that to Reggie Wilson. Virginia was among the first states to implement electronic filing and interned publishing of campaign finance disclosure reports. Again, he helped make that happen. Wilson’s work on major statewide projects helped in Virginia receiving the prestigious 2002 Grace Hopper Government Technology Leadership Awards.
As the agency’s Business Manager, Mr. Wilson supervised the agency’s procurement and contractual services coordinator. In this capacity, he participated in the Waste Fraud & Abuse Hotline investigation into Paul Stenjborn’s contract.
The firing appears to continue a pattern of unfair treatment and retaliation against employees who participated in the investigation of the illegal Paul Stenjborn contract. Mr. Wilson is the third employee, who participated in the Stenjborn investigation, that Rodgriues terminated under questionable allegations. Ms. Rodrigues requested and received police escort to the Department of Human Resource Management office to fire Mr. Wilson. It is also reported from reliable sources that Capitol police were patrolling inside of SBE’s offices through out the day. As a final humiliating and highly unusual action, it is reported that James Alcorn, the Deputy Secretary, delivered notices to building security guards stating that Reggie Wilson is not allowed in the government building unless specifically authorized by Nancy Rodrigues. There have been no reported allegations of threats made by Mr. Wilson. So, why the humiliation of police patrols and banishment from government building after the questionable firing.”
Regarding Mr. Stenjborn, we sent Mr. Stenbjorn a list of questions on July 22, 2010 regarding information we have received about the management of the SBE. Mr. Stenjborn said he would get back to us, but never did. The questions we asked are below. Since Mr. Stenbjorn did not provide answers, perhaps some SBE employees can contact us and provide some information:
“More questions, sorry:
1. Were you present in October or November 2008 in a full staff meeting when Nancy Rodrigues referred to XXXXXXX, an african-american employee, as her “slave?”
This is terrible! Absolutely terrible!What if Mr. Wilson has an interview in that same government building? Does Ms. Rodrigues and the delivery messenger have the authority not to allow someone in the government building??? If not, it appears Ms. Rodiculous has violated Mr. Wilson’s civil rights.
In a full staff meeting held in September 2008, Nancy Rodrigues was introducing several interns, during the introductory of one of the black interns, XXXXXX Rodrigues referred to the black intern as her “slave”. The staff was surprised and offended at her reference to a black person as a “slave”. After the meeting, it was brought to her attention that her statement was offensive. She later sent an email to the staff trying to explain what she meant.
State records confirm that there were several instances where Mr. Caldas’ company, Trim Inc, was given business by Nance without a contract, purchase order or required bonding. In many instances, state documents show that Nancy, in violation of the Virginia Public Procurement Act, by-passed eVA, the State’s procurement system, to divert business to Mr. Caldas.
Staff knew of the friendship between Nancy Rodrigues’ family and Mr. Caldas family. So, most staff was reluctant to say anything to her regarding the inappropriateness of diverting business to a personal friend and violating the Virginia Public Procurement Act. This reluctance resulted from staff knowledge that a manager, who had attempted to persuade Nancy of the inappropriateness to use State funds to pay Mr. Caldas to send Christmas cards to members of the Virginia General Assembly, was subsequently demoted from her manager’s role and harassed to the point of poor health and resignation. This manager told Nancy that such an act is against the law and that she (the manager) would report it to the State Waste, Fraud & Abuse Hotline if Nancy carried out her plan to use state funds for this purpose.
It was common knowledge to staff that Mr. Caldas was a personal friend. There was an occasion where Mr. Caldas, his sister, Nancy Rodrigues and her husband visited Washington DC together to attend a ceremony. Mr. Caldas was allowed to be at SBE all day for prior elections.
Nancy Rodrigues showed pictures to some staff of her and her husband visiting with Mr. Caldas parents while vacationing in the Dominican Republic. To my knowledge this trip was not funded directly with State funds.
Although Nancy Rodrigues had the State Police state’s lap top and cell phone retrieved from a classified employee who is out on sick leave, she allowed her friend’s daughter named J_____T______ to telework from the University of Virginia, which resides in Charlottesville Virginia, for at least 4 or 5 days a week. Full-time classified employees were permitted to telework only one day a week. After resigning as a classified employee with SBE, Nancy Rodrigues allowed Paul Stenjborn to take the state lap tops and blackberry to New Mexico. During the Hotline investigation, Paul Stenjborn shipped the equipment back to SBE with the hard drives being completely wiped, resulting in the agency paying to have software reinstalled on the computers.
. Knowing that his contract was being investigated, the wiping of the hard drives ensured that the use of the computers for his other business purposes would be undetectable by the investigators.
Yes, it was common knowledge for most staff that R____ E_____ was the son of a friend of Nancy Rodrigues. His employment with SBE ended when he found permanent employment in Atlanta Georgia.
B______ A______ is Nancy’s neighbor and the husband of one of Nancy Rodrigues friend. B____ A______ told staff that he had been laid off of his former job as an accountant. A couple of weeks before B____ A____ was hired by Nancy, she caused another employee, who happened to black, out of SBE citing lack of funding. Miraculously, funding was not lacking when she hired B____ A____ to perform the same job the forced out black employee was doing. His employment with SBE ended when he found permanent employment elsewhere.
State records show that payment for S____ P______ is being paid with federal HAVA funds. However, the activities performed by S_____ P_____ are state, not federal, activities such as constituent letters.
Additionally, Nancy Rodrigues’ husband “Mr. Mike” frequently comes to work with her. He is given full access to state files and equipment. She encourages black employees to refer to him as “Mr. Mike”. After some of the black employees suspected that “Mr. Mike” was monitoring and spying on them for Nancy, they decline his assistance in helping them in some of their tasks in their area. Nancy Rodrigues constantly stated to the staff that the individuals in that department did her husband wrong. The supervisor for that the department became a major target and Nancy found a way to abolish his position at SBE citing Governor’s Executive Order 2 as the reason for the termination of the employee (who happened to be black)
When Nancy Rodrigues discovered she had to pay a minority employee overtime, she gave that employee’s duties to Paul Stenjborn whom charged the agency over $1,000 more than what the agency would have paid in the overtime payment.
Her efforts to ensure reliance on Paul Stenjborn contract extended into her hiring decision for the agency’s IT manager’s position. In the job advertisement and the Employee Work Profile for the position, supervision, database and object oriented programming experience are among the stated required prerequisites. Although, several IT professionals with the required knowledge, skills and experience applied for the position, the positions was awarded to a person with a History major degree with zero supervision experience, zero database experience and no object oriented programming knowledge or experience.
Because Paul could perform all the tasks that the IT Manager who replaced him could not perform, Nancy was attempting to ensure that Paul Stenjborn’s illegal contract, in which she colluded with Paul Stenjborn on a no bid contract, would be in effect with the agency for a long time. The Hotline investigation threw a monkey wrench into her scheme. Therefore, the Stenjborn contract was eventually terminated.
To get a clear picture of this scheme, it is important to know that Paul Stenjborn was the agency’s IT Manager until the end of August 2009. He resigned his full-time classified position with SBE and moved to New Mexico in September 2009 where he was employed again by SBE as an hourly wage employee. He was in effect, teleworking from New Mexico 5 days a week although agency policy only allowed telework one day a week. Staff was told that this arrangement would last only until a new IT Manager was hired to replace Paul Stenjborn. In November 2009, Paul Stenjborn resigned the wage position and established his own company using State computers and communication devices, Election Information Services (EIS) with Virginia SBE as his only customer. In January or February 2010 (while the Hotline investigation was underway), Nancy hired an IT Manager with insufficient skill sets to support her assertion that Paul Stenjborn was the only person/company familiar enough with the technology and election laws to do the job. As a result of this scheme, SBE now has had to hire two additional IT professionals to do the job that Paul Stenjborn once performed as IT Manager. As a small agency, SBE’s managers were working managers. In other words, their duties and work profiles went beyond mere supervision. Paul Stenjborn was originally hired as IT Manager because of his ability to perform database administration tasks and report writing. Since the person who replaced Paul Stenjborn as IT Manager can not perform these tasks, the agency has now hired two additional IT professionals. Three people now perform the task historically performed by one person because of the hiring decision made to prop up Paul Stenjborn’s company. So, state and federal taxpayer dollars are now being used to pay the cost of Nancy’s failed scheme.
To substantiate Your Truly writings, you can see the distribution of payments to Leo Caldas which total over $30,000 at SBE’s Checkbook on its website at http://www.sbe.virginia.gov. The checkbook also contains 2 entries of payments made to T_____ C_____, sister of vendor, Leo Caldas, who volunteered during the 2008 Annual General Registrars’ Training. Ms. Rodrigues authorized these payments when no other volunteers were paid a stipend or were reimbursed for their mileage. If this was a workerbee in State government (full-time classified employee)committing these types of acts, their employment would have been terminated. That has been demonstrated by Ms. Rodrigues, herself, in her questionable firings at SBE. By definition, corruption is dishonesty, fraud, sleaze. There is no way this should be happening and allowed to continue to happen in an Administration which is elected by the people and who have oversight of our taxpayer dollars. I condem and do not support this blatent violation of trust and the law and neither should the Administration.
S_____ P______, a full-time classified with the Department of General Services (DGS) was added to the Payroll of Leo Caldas in 2008. This was done after DGS did not approve Ms. Rodrigues’ request for her to provide communication services for the May/June General Elections in 2008. Ms. P_______ is now under contract with SBE for communications services at a flat rate of $1174 per month. She works for SBE for 20 hours per week and for DGS 20 hours per week. It was learned that Ms. Rodrigues entered into the contract with DGS to prevent the layoff or reduction in work hours for Ms. P______. She performs daily tasks such as coordinating responses to constituent inquiries and editing a quarterly newsletter to General Registrars. State records will also show that she is paid using Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds which is a clear violation of what those funds should be used for. While Ms. Rodrigues will not continue to use HAVA monies for local General Registrars to purchase electronic pollbooks which advances the electoral process in Virginia. Ms. Rodrigues continues to disappoint and continues her rampage of gross mismanagement.
Wow, almost all of the information on this site is pure fiction. Mr. Wilson is personally responsible for the state loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to his poor accounting practices. He is the most investigated accountant in state government and the most written up for poor performance. He mismanaged the funding of the state board to such a state that they were over a million dollars in the hole. His attendance was a joke. This guy was just a waste of the tax payers money. Is Nancy Rodrigues trying to clean up state government. Firing this guy was a good start.
Desperate people do and say desperate things. To say that the information contained on this site is pure fiction is a telling sign that people’s toes are being stepped on. The Editor’s note on 7/23/10 indicated there were documents to substantiate the EIS contract improprieties. State records will show that B___E___, J___T___ and B___ A___ were all employed at SBE. These employees, if they were ever under oath, would have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth as well. Employees at SBE would also substantiate these employees’ personal ties to Nancy Rodrigues. State records show payments made to Trim which is owned by Leo Caldas. Records further show disbursements to T___ C____. State records will also show payments made to TRIM were not only for graphic design services but for communication services in 2008. These services were performed by S___ P____ who is now under contract with SBE working 20 hours per week. Now how do you suppose S____ P____ made her way on to Mr. Caldas’ payroll, by coincidence? There is one common denominator, Nancy Rodrigues. This information is irrefutable. Records don’t misrepresent facts, people do. The racial disparities and bullying by Nancy Rodrigues at SBE are true and unrelenting. The employees who have and are continuing to experience this disparate treatment have worked for numerous other Agency Heads at SBE and their work ethic and performance can be verified. Things only changed under Nancy Rodrigues, another coincidence? Tell you what I do know about Mr. Wilson, he saved jobs at SBE when there was a 15% budget cut because of the State’s shortfall. If Mr. Wilson is responsible for the state loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars then Nancy Rodrigues is responsible for giving at least that much away to personal friends in contracts and it is not because of poor accounting practices. If Mr. Wilson in the most investigated accountant in state government, then Ms. Rodrigues should be the most investigated Agency Head. No, the waste of tax payers money is giving it away to friends who don’t have to compete in an open market for services or employment. If Nancy Rodrigues is trying to clean up state government, then it should start at the top w/her. We will be awaiting her resignation. Good try Truthbetold but readers are smarter than that. The next thing you will ask us to believe is that Nancy Rodrigues is Mother Teresa.
Being the “most investigated” person might be proof that he was being targeted for inappropriate reasons. But being targeted is NOT proof that Mr. Wilson was wrong. Actually, Jesus was and is probably the most investigated religious person on earth…does that make Him wrong?
Yes Nancy was a Dirty Dog. From that supervisor she got rid-off.