Defense rests in Jackson wrongful termination case
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - City attorneys have rested in a case that could determine whether Jackson’s former water plant manager was wrongfully terminated for speaking to WLBT.
Mary Carter, the former deputy director of water operations for Jackson, is suing the city for wrongful termination, saying she was fired weeks after speaking out to 3 On Your Side about staffing issues at the city’s main water treatment plant.
Wednesday marked the third day of proceedings before U.S. District Court Judge Kristi Johnson, with the defense resting its case shortly before lunch.
Attorneys for the city called three witnesses: former Public Works Director Robert Lee, Ward 7 Councilwoman Virgi Lindsay, and Amy McLeod, the current manager of the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant for Jacobs Solutions.
Much of the testimony focused on comments Carter made to 3OYS as part of an investigation into staffing issues at Curtis.
Lee said Carter and then Public Works Director Marlin King likely violated city policy by talking to reporters, telling attorneys Director of Communications Melissa Faith Payne wouldn’t have allowed the interviews to go forward had she known about them.
“It was very surprising to see Marlin being interviewed in his office in response to emails and other things from Ms. Carter,” he said. “In my dealings, I couldn’t see Melissa allowing staff to go on air to discuss things like that.”
Lee went on to say no one indicated Carter would be fired for the interview. However, he said the report did prompt him to request a meeting with city leaders regarding King’s handling of the city’s water issues.
Jackson had been under a boil water notice for much of the summer of 2022, due to problems at the Curtis plant.
“Marlin was not taking very serious steps to deal with the emergency at hand, to deal with the failure of the raw water pumps, which led to the boil water notice,” he said. “There didn’t seem to be urgency... So, the discussion went from my concern about Marlin to the lack of urgency, to ‘Let’s get other team members in the room in a meeting.’”
That meeting occurred on August 22. Carter was invited to that meeting and was the last to arrive.
Carter alleges that at the meeting, she was forced to sit at the end of a long conference table, opposite Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and she shouldn’t be airing the city’s dirty laundry.
As for the mayor’s comments, Lee says those were likely directed at everyone, not just the deputy director over water.
“It did come off as Mary versus Marlin, Marlin versus Mary,” he said, referring to WLBT’s report. “That’s not good for the city at all.”
Defense attorneys also called McLeod, who is the assistant project manager over the Curtis plant.
Before taking on that role, McLeod was with the Bureau of Public Water Supply at the Mississippi State Department of Health.
While with the Bureau, she was involved in multiple inspections at Curtis between 2020 and August 2022 and had numerous interactions with Carter.
She also sat in on calls with the city, state, and EPA after the federal regulatory agency issued an Administrative Compliance Order against the system in 2021.
During those interactions, she said Carter was unresponsive to requests to address inspectors’ findings. She also was unable to answer questions from EPA officials when asked.
Deputy City Attorney Jason Nabors: “Was she helpful?”
McLeod: “Not typically.”
Nabors: “Was she responsive to fix problems?”
McLeod: “No.”
She said Carter offered much the same after emergency officials took over the plant during the 2022 crisis.
Nabors: “Did she contribute?”
McLeod: “No”
Nabors: “Was she someone the emergency team could count on when they needed help or things to be done?”
McLeod: “No.”
Nabors: “Do you believe Ms. Carter had the knowledge and skill to work successful as a Class A operator?”
McLeod: “No.”
Attorney Robert Norris asked McLeod whether she was aware that Carter’s operations and maintenance budget had been cut by tens of millions of dollars.
On Tuesday, Carter said she couldn’t do maintenance at the plant because her budget had been cut from $72 million in 2013 to $48 million in 2022.
“We discussed those issues, but I was not intimately involved in that,” she said.
Water Operations is funded by collections in the Water/Sewer Business Administration Office. Revenues had been dropping off for years as a result of problems with the Siemens meter contract.
McLeod was unable to say how much it currently costs to run the plant, saying Jacobs is under a “time and materials contract” with JXN Water.
Lindsay, meanwhile, was asked about her interview with WLBT and her reaction to the emails she was shown by reporters.
Multiple documents were leaked to WLBT in the summer of 2022, amid ongoing struggles at the Curtis facility.
The documents, which had previously been sent to the EPA, included emails, employee timesheets, and other items related to operations at the plant.
The first time Lindsay had seen the documents was when she spoke to us. She didn’t believe that Carter was fired for the interview, but she does believe the documents revealed more dysfunction in the city’s Water Operations Division.
“There was complete dysfunction in the water department,” Lindsay said. “We were already in such a crisis in the city. We had so many boil water notices, so many shutdowns... The only thing I could think was, ‘We are doomed. Our water department is going to shut down again.’ And it did.”
Jury deliberations were expected to begin Wednesday afternoon.
See our previous coverage by clicking the links below:
‘We did not have time to deal with the dead weight’: Mary Carter wrongful termination trial begins
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