STUART — A lawsuit against the Martin County School Board claims the school district owes Florida Mechanical over $235,000 in payments.

In the civil lawsuit filed Sept. 16 in Martin County, the Riviera Beach-based company claims that the board owes $235,615.50 plus interest for work the company completed between June 2008 and February 2009.

And Barbara Petersen, an expert in open government and public records law, said it’s possible Florida Mechanical might have a second lawsuit against the district over public records if the district is not complying with the state’s public record law.

The company hasn’t received public records it requested in July and it could take several more weeks until the request is completed, district staff said.

“Now they might be facing two lawsuits,” said Petersen, executive director of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation. “They might be facing whatever lawsuit this company was thinking about before and a public records lawsuit.”

On Sept. 10, Martin County School Board Attorney Doug Griffin was reviewing the records and planning on sending them to Florida Mechanical when Superintendent Nancy Kline asked for time to review the records.

The files were removed from Griffin’s computer by the district’s education technology department on Sept. 11. The files are copies and have not been altered in any way, said Kim Sabol, the school district’s labor and employment representative.

“It was all for the sole purpose to have sufficient time to review what is an abundance of documents,” Sabol said. “I think it was necessary to preserve not only the integrity of the records, but to preserve the integrity of the criminal investigation.”

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is looking into fraud allegations regarding the Martin County School District’s facilities and maintenance departments and Florida Mechanical is one of two companies that were identified in an earlier school district investigation.

Griffin said he didn’t have a plan on when the documents would be sent out. After Kline asked for time to review the documents, Griffin said he agreed to wait.

“I apologize, but we will not be sending the response today,” Griffin wrote in an e-mail to Gary Dunkel, an attorney representing Florida Mechanical, on Sept. 10. “The superintendent has directed that the records not be released until she approves them.”

Earlier the same day, Griffin told Dunkel via e-mail that the district would be mailing a “disk with all or most by the end of the day.”

On Friday, Ben Bedard, an attorney representing Kline, said the district plans on complying with the public records request and the documents are in the process of being reviewed.

“The documents need to be reviewed just like every other public records request,” Bedard said. “My understanding is the documents are being produced in accordance to Florida law.”

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Martin County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.