COLUMBIA, South Carolina- A prison official fired last year during a probe of allegations that some prison employees viewed porn on their prison computers has been ordered back to work by a state grievance committee, the prison system's director told The Greenville News.
The prison system plans to appeal that decision but must first by law get the permission of the State Budget and Control Board, director Jon Ozmint said.
"They disagree with our decision that this was a serious problem and the employee shouldn't have been fired," Ozmint said. "We felt like this was an offense that under our standards called for termination."
Ozmint said the employee, whom he didn't identify, was a longtime, "top-notch" worker at the agency whose argument against his firing was that the punishment was too harsh. He said the board ruled that the employee should be returned to work and the state should pay his back wages.
The computer images touched off an internal investigation by the prison system last year and a review by State Attorney General Henry McMaster.
In December, McMaster said he had decided no criminal charges would be filed concerning the probe because while the images might be considered offensive, they didn't rise to the level of obscenity because they didn't depict sexual conduct.
Josh Gelinas, a prison system spokesman, said then that an employee was fired as a result of the images and another retired. Others received the images but didn't forward them and are still with the agency, he said.
Ozmint said the most of the images were of scantily-clad women, and that he considered none to be pornographic or obscene.
"It was incredibly poor judgment once he received that on state email, which was outside his control, to forward it to the five or six people he forwarded it to," he said. "It was a very difficult decision to terminate somebody with that experience and of that caliber."
Sen. Mike Fair of Greenville, chairman of the Senate Corrections and penology Committee, said he thought Ozmint did the right thing in firing the employee and the decision should stand. He said absent a "black and white legal argument," he believes the five-member State Budget and Control Board should give Ozmint permission to appeal the grievance decision to the courts.
"I would be very disappointed if they didn't give him that discretion," he said.
The grievance committee is made up of almost two dozen employees from across the state who hear disciplinary appeals in smaller groups, said Michael Sponhour, a spokesman for the State Budget and Control Board.
Any appeal by an employee must first be heard by the agency, he said, before it then can be appealed to the grievance committee. An employee can appeal the committee's decision to the courts, according to the law, as can agencies once they get the permission of the State Budget and Control Board, Sponhour said.
Ozmint said the grievance committee is "nothing more than a mechanism for second-guessing decisions made by the executive branch."
He said the agency fired an officer at Perry Correctional Institution in Greenville County after he tested positive for cocaine. The grievance committee ruled that he should be hired back, he said, but reversed the ruling after Ozmint indicated he would appeal and argue they were forcing the agency to hire drug users into the prisons.
He said he doesn't believe agency officials should have to ask the State Budget and Control Board's permission to appeal the grievance board's decisions.
"It's why there can never be any accountability or any effective, efficient government," he said, if agency heads have to get the board's approval over disciplinary actions. "This is exactly what's so broken about our government."
Fair said he agrees. "I agree with the director that a cabinet-level agency should not have to go to the Budget and Control Board for this kind of thing," he said.
Joel Sawyer, a spokesman for the State Budget and Control Board, said the process of employee appeals "is absurd and highlights the real-world implications of the need for restructuring."
"Not only was this individual fired by the executive branch, there were legislators clamoring for this person to be fired," Sawyer said. "Then, when the director did not only what the legislators want but he feels should be the appropriate course of action, the legislatively created committee says, 'Sorry, you can't.' "
