While showing one of the nation’s top transportation officials around Tampa in March, Mayor Jane Castor praised the city’s mobility department as “one of the best in the world” and a core component of her vision to unlock more of downtown for reinvestment.
But in the last month, records show the department has lost two top employees — one of whom filed a grievance alleging gender discrimination and a hostile work environment that undermines efforts to fulfill the mayor’s plans.
Transportation engineering manager Danni Jorgenson and chief planner Alana Brasier are no longer with the city, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported earlier Monday.
Mobility department director Vik Bhide and administrator Jean Duncan alerted Jorgenson of her dismissal June 2, records reviewed by the Tampa Bay Times show. Brasier submitted her resignation two weeks later.
“I was terminated because of my gender,” Jorgenson wrote in a grievance letter June 7, reviewed by the Times.
Bhide repeatedly told Jorgenson to keep her opinions to herself, according to the letter, and “continually chided” women in his office for occasionally taking advantage of remote work for child care reasons. He also fabricated a citywide policy that prohibited employees from working from home, she wrote.
City communications director Adam Smith and Bhide declined to comment on Jorgenson’s dismissal and allegations Monday because of the possibility of litigation.
“Mayor Castor has confidence in Jean Duncan, Vik Bhide, and the entire, outstanding mobility team,” Smith said, adding that the city has reviewed the allegations.
The high-profile departures come as Tampa, Florida’s third-largest city, grapples with bare-bones public transportation and a poor track record of pedestrian and bicyclist safety. The mobility department is responsible for the future of city-owned streets.
Transit investment has not kept up with basic maintenance costs, let alone delivered infrastructure such as rapid bus lines and light rail found in other similarly-sized metro areas. The public agency in charge of buses across Hillsborough County also faces a renewed spotlight for its impending fiscal cliff, scant service and a revolving door of senior staff. The agency parted ways with its latest CEO earlier this year after a monthslong investigation into her leadership.
In interviews and speeches across the city, Castor often cites improving transportation as her central priority for her second term. In May, she left the board overseeing public transit in Hillsborough County, a position she had held since winning her first election in 2019.
Jorgenson grew up in Tampa and began her public sector career in 2018 after a decade in the private sector, striving to rethink the public engagement process and, ultimately, “to make our city’s streets safer for all,” she told the Times on Monday.
She was promoted last January. In a performance evaluation of her first year as transportation engineering manager, Bhide described her as a “superior problem solver” and an “outstanding leader” who has “her team’s full support,” public records show. He awarded her the highest rating possible across all 11 categories of evaluation.
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Explore all your optionsFive months later, he notified her of her termination.
“The notice came without formal reason, constructive or negative feedback,” Jorgenson told the Times. “I don’t know how any of this has happened.”
Through “back channels” she says she learned Bhide built a case against her, alleging she was “insubordinate,” had attempted to get him fired and “took advantage” of her telework allowances.
The city’s personnel manual handbook details a progression of disciplinary actions for dealing with employee misconduct, with dismissal initiated when “all previous disciplinary actions have failed to bring a satisfactory change.”
The policy, however, does not apply to “unclassified positions,” such as Jorgenson’s, Smith said. He said the city is testing pilot hybrid work initiatives.
In addition to her grievance with the city, Jorgenson has filed complaints based on gender and familial status with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Florida Commission on Human Relations.
Karen Kress, senior director of transportation and planning at the Tampa Downtown Partnership, praised Jorgenson for fostering a can-do spirit in the city at a time when transportation is an ever-pressing issue.
“She’d always say, ‘Yes, let’s try it,’” Kress said, adding she’s also enjoyed working with Bhide and the rest of the mobility team.
Jorgenson had a pleasant and productive working relationship with Bhide, she said. But tensions mounted while her team worked with Bloomberg Associates, a pro bono consultant hired to give feedback to Castor’s administration across several departments last year, she told the Times.
The consultants “identified several inadequacies” with Bhide’s leadership and began coaching him, according to Jorgenson’s letter.
“After his coaching began, he grew increasingly hostile,” she wrote, “particularly to me and my female staff.”
Bhide told the Times on Monday that, though his team has been working with Bloomberg Associates, he is “not aware of any specific leadership coaching.”
“That’s not what they do,” Smith said of Bloomberg Associates.
Jorgenson said the consultants believed she was doing “great work,” while finding Bhide to lack vision and require staff to react to his whims, according to her grievance letter.
“In short, the staff nearly universally felt a burnout,” she wrote.
Bhide has worked for the city for about a decade and in May, the City Council approved his renomination as department head.
Brasier, one of three staff members who reported to Jorgenson, joined the city in 2020 to head its Vision Zero program. It’s part of an international effort to eliminate traffic deaths through slowing traffic, community education and fair enforcement of the law. Her position was the first of its kind in the Tampa Bay region.
Her last day with the city was Friday, according to public records. She did not return a phone call requesting comment Monday afternoon.
“My goal,” she told the Times in 2020, “is to create a healthier, happier, more sustainable community.”
Her position will be filled “very soon,” Bhide said, possibly by the end of next week. Meanwhile, he has assumed Jorgenson’s role of transportation engineering manager, in addition to his director duties. The city will be rehiring for the position, but is “not in a rush,” he said. “We feel good about our team.”
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Top staff exit Tampa mobility effort, one alleging hostile workplace - Tampa Bay Times
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