Welcome to

The Rick Scott and Charlie Crist campaigns are throwing out he said she said’s after a whistleblower held a press conference organized by a Crist consultant. As Matt Galka tells us, the woman has some serious claims about a high profile state department.

Dianne Parcell worked for the Department of Economic Opportunity for 30 years. She claims that when she found wrongdoing, they fired her.

“There really is no place for state workers to go when they have concerns about wrongdoing, they’re pretty much on their own,” said Parcell.

Parcell says she was told by her supervisors to stop investigating nearly 100 fraudulent claims from the DEO to collection agencies for unemployment overpayments. She was placed on administrative leave after filing her whistleblower letter and then later let go. Her lawyers say there are 19,000 other cases, and the Governor isn’t helping.

“They didn’t reach out to make sure that the 19,000 cases were resolved,” said attorney Keisha Rice.

The Governor’s re-election campaign responded by pointing out the political ties to the organizers of the press conference.

“Florida’s government has over 150,000 employees – and, in a system that large, there are always bound to be employee conflicts. But in typical trial lawyer fashion, Charlie Crist and his campaign are doing what they’re good at – using lawsuits for partisan political purposes. Charlie Crist is also good at losing jobs – and today’s stunt can’t distract from the fact that he lost 832,000 of them while he was governor,” said Greg Blair, Rick Scott for Florida spokesman in an emailed statement.

Parcell says it has nothing to do with the Governor’s race.

“I do feel that his office was not helpful or receptive, that they kind of shrugged it off, but I don’t have a vendetta. As I said, I’m a Republican.”

We reached out to the Department of Economic Opportunity. They responded in a statement calling Parcell’s claims “meritless.” But a jury didn’t find the claims meritless. Parcell was awarded $50,000 in court in April. Nearly $200,000 more was awarded in a settlement.

The organizers of the whistleblower press conference released a response to the Governor’s office statement.