St. Petersburg mayor responds to outcry over five-figure bonuses, suspends HR director

St. Pete suspends HR director after bonus debacle

Evan Axelbank reports

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - The mayor of St. Pete is responding to an outcry over bonuses he ordered given to city staff.

He had said those staffers deserved the five-figure bonuses after working for months on the Rays-Gas Plant redevelopment project.

"They worked day and night, and holidays and through personal issues, through deaths in the family. And we're here the next day working," Mayor Ken Welch said.

But he rescinded the bonuses after the public and city councilors questioned them.

He suspended the director of human resources, Chris Guella, for five days without pay.

"He's acknowledged that he's made a mistake here," Mayor Welch said. "I think it was the level of the mistake. And, both Rob [Gerdes] and myself depended on information from our subject matter expert that these bonuses were authorized in line with all policies and regulations. And they were not."

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City councilors on Thursday said they felt slighted by the lack of heads-up from administration, and were confused as to why bonuses were given for this, as opposed to say, to crews who worked to clean up a storm.

"Do we consider them going above and beyond and then being able to give them some type of bonus or acknowledgment financially for their contribution other than cookies and a round of applause," said councilor John Muhammad.

The mayor pointed on Friday to a city policy from 2005, that says salary adjustments may, at the mayor's discretion, be awarded in recognition of an employee's past performance.

There is a state law that requires government bonuses to be paid based on performance, but that the evaluation process for the bonuses be laid out beforehand, and that all employees have to know about it before evaluations begin.

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He says Guella should have advised him and city administrator Rob Gerdes of those state rules or spoken himself to city attorneys, before making the mayor-ordered payments to seventeen people averaging $15,000.

Pictured: Mayor Ken Welch

"The first question that I asked when this was brought to me by Rob was, number one, do I have the authority as mayor to do this? Do I have the budget authority, and do we have budget capacity to do that? The answer to all three of those was yes," said Welch.

On Wednesday, two days after the payments were rescinded by the mayor, and five after he made them, Guella wrote an email to the mayor saying, "I take full responsibility and apologize to you and the recipients so negatively affected by this."

"A mistake was made here. We are acknowledging that mistake," said Mayor Welch. "The most important thing to me is that those seventeen employees who have done nothing but give their all, to bring in the biggest project the city has ever seen."

So far, ten of the seventeen employees have paid their bonuses back, as directed by the mayor.

Officials said today no one has indicated they have already spent the money, which was in their account for about 48 hours until the mayor rescinded the bonuses.

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