Swift actions

Hernando County Administrator, David Hamilton needs to be commended for his swift actions relating to the charges of racism at the Utilities Department. Mr. Hamilton had been criticized publicly by some community activists for hiring an outside law firm to handle this delicate matter but this proved to be a wise decision on his part to get the unvarnished truth. In this "unvarnished truth," racism reared its ugly head but more importantly it gave a birds eye view to the administrator, and public, that their system for handing grievances, such as this, has been broken for a long time. The opinions by this outside law firm brought to light the antiquated methods used in the office of former Human Resource Director, Barbara Dupre.

In this investigation, several disturbing points were made about the practices in the Utilities Department which were not related to the charges of racism. Eight employees of the Utilities Department said they were instructed to dump raw sewage onto the grounds of the waste water treatment plant in Aripeka. They also indicated that they had not been given gloves and hazards suits to wear when handling this type of material. These revelations should send up red flags to everyone in Hernando County, in light of the fact we have spent millions of dollars cleaning up the hazardous waste in the Department of Works compound. It is quite remarkable that the Department of Environmental Protection has not issued citations for this flagrant violation of the rules to dispose of this waste material.

Even though Mr. Hamilton has had a rough start in his new job as our county administrator, it appears that he handled these problems with the ease of a true professional...